Spite and Malice

Spite and Malice is a card game for two or more players; it is a form of competitive solitaire.

The Basics

Deck: The deck consist of four regular playing card decks with the jokers removed

Players: 2 - infinity (if too many people play it is possible you will need to add additional standard playing card decks added to your spite and malice deck). Usually the game is played with 2 to 4 players.

Object: Be the first person to play all the cards in your pile thus winning the game.

Deal: Players cut for the deal with the highest card winning the deal, aces being high. Thereafter the deal goes to the person on the left of the dealer. Once a dealer is chosen he or she deals 26 cards to each player. The players do NOT look at these cards but simply collect them into a pile, hereafter called the goal pile. Once each goal pile is dealt, the top card can be turned over by each player and placed face up on the pile. The remaining cards are left face down in a stack called the draw pile.

Play

Once everyone has a pile, everyone draws 5 cards from the draw pile to make their hand. Play then starts with the dealer who is first to be able to attempt to play the card which he or she had turned face up on their goal pile. To learn how to play the cards on the goal pile you need to know the layout of the playing area first.

There are four playing piles, which are shared for all players, and four discard piles, which belong only to the player who laid them down. These piles exist if there are cards in them or not. Thus, for a two-person game, the piles in the playing area would looks as follows:

                 X  D D D D

                      P  P
               Z
                      P  P 

                    D D D D  X

KEY

Z draw pile

X goal pile

D discard pile

P playing pile

For the sake of explanation, I will call the dealer in this exhibition game Joe and the opponent Jane. Since Joe is the first to be able to attempt to play because he was the dealer, if Joe has an ace on his goal pile, he can move it immediately to one of the playing piles. This is because each playing pile starts with an ace. If the card is not an ace, he must use the cards in his hand to build the playing pile up to the number on the goal pile. Cards are played on the playing pile in numerical order, suits mattering not at all. An ace is played as a one and then two through ten. After ten comes the jack and the queen. Once a queen is played on a playing pile that those cards are removed and the play continues on that pile when someone lays down a new ace upon the blank pile. The kings are wild and can be played as any card. So, if the five cards Joe drew to make up his hand were 3, 2, Queen, Ace and 7 and the card face up on his playing pile was a 4, he could play from his hand the Ace, then the 2 and 3 in order, and then remove the 4 from his playing pile and place it on the playing pile on top of the three thus moving him one card closer to finishing his goal pile and winning the game.

Once a card is played from his goal pile, he then turns the next one down face up and places that card on top of the playing pile, like the 4 was previously. Lets say the card he turns over is a ten. He is now looking at three empty playing piles, one playing pile which has been played up to four, and he has a queen left in his hand. There is no way for him to get to his playing pile card and no place for him to play his queen, so he must end his turn with a discard. After playing his Queen on one of his four discard piles, his turn is over and it is now Jane?s turn. Every turn ends with a discard. When Jane discards it will again be Joes turn and the first thing he will do is draw cards from the draw pile to reconstitute his hand to the five cards he started with. Since he played 4 cards and discarded the last, he will draw five cards. If he had nothing he was able to play and simply had to discard, he would now draw one card to start the turn with five cards in his hand again. Occasionally, someone is able to play all five cards without discarding. In this event that player draws five more cards from the draw pile and continues to play until they have no place to play or until they choose to stop. Then, they end their turn with a discard. Very rarely, a player will go through fifteen cards or more in one turn by finding a way to play every card they have. As a reminder, if the last card is played as a discard, that ends the turn and the player has to wait for the opponents turn to be over before he or she can draw five cards. It is only when all the cards are played without a discard that the turn continues with the player drawing five new cards and continuing to play. Anyway, back to the exhibition game.

Once Jane begins her turn it follows the exact same pattern. She either plays the card from her goal pile, plays cards from her hand to either get to her goal card from her goal pile or to block her opponent from playing his card with ease, or she having no moves ends her turn with a discard. As you can see, in order to win, Jane concentrates both on making her goal AND blocking Joe from making his. This is why the game is called Spite and Malice. The only cards you MUST play if it is your turn and there is an opening to play them are the Ace and the Deuce. Any other card can be played or saved at the whim of the players.

As play continues many cards can accumulate in the discard piles. In order to make your goal card or prevent your opponent from reaching theirs, you can use both cards from your hand, and cards from your discard piles during your turn. There is an important point to remember about playing cards from the discard piles though. The cards in the discard piles may only be played in the reverse order in which they were laid down in that pile. Since the cards in the discard piles are played from the bottom to the top, we can see that adding cards to a discad pile in decreasing value will make them easiest to play on the playing piles with no help from your hand. Take this in consideration when you are discarding. Though there is no RULE about how you can lay cards down in the discard piles, it does pay to keep them in some kind of order that will make them easy to use in play. In decreasing order or all of one number are common ways to attempt to keep some amount of order in your discard piles.

Strategy & Tips

When you are playing and you have just played a card from your goal pile, remember to IMMEDIATELY turn the next card in that pile over. Many players occasionally play from their hand before looking at the next card in the goal pile and discover when they finally flip the goal card over that they have blocked themselves. Similarly, when your turn starts and you see that with some combination of cards from your hand and your discard piles that you can get to your goal card, do not remember the rule that you must play aces and deuces if you are able to and choose to play the ace first, and then get to your goal card. If the card under the goal card is an ace you will be sorry for the order you choose. The rule is that you must play the ace and deuce if you are able before your turn is OVER. So, do not let that rule distract you into not taking care of business first.

Additionally, when the card in your Goal pile turns up a king (wild card) try to play it in a place that will allow you to play out all of the cards in your hand so that you can draw five more in the same turn, or, try to play it in such a way that it will not block your next goal card. For example, if the playing piles have two of the same number showing, threes for instance. Then playing the king as a four will ensure that if the next card under the king is a four, you can still play it and will not have blocked yourself.