Uno Without End

I don't really take Uno seriously as a game.  It's a funny card-dumping time.  It's more about the players than the game, which is fine.  I previously wrote a bit about the Minecraft edition of Uno that we keep at our house.  But the game has been around for decades and almost everyone knows how to play, so it's good for a game night, or in between bigger games.  Or ... everyone THINKS they know how to play it.  Here's a fun episode of rule bending:

We had a not-so-quick game of Uno on Christmas Eve that went a bit off the rails.  We started with three players, and when Anne could not play a card and the rulebook said to draw one card and play it if you can, that just did not ring true for me.  We were never big Uno players growing up, but I guess we used to play the variation where you draw cards until you get one you can play.  It does make the game last a lot longer when there's a fair chance that you will end up with ten or twelve cards to get rid of.

We had a winner for that first game, at which point we we were told that the remaining players should keep playing to the end.  But we weren't in the mood for that.  It's okay to just have a winner.  No need to grind down to a loser.

For the second game, we had a fourth player join.  He was unusually enthusiatic about it, so I imagine their family had a lot more fun Uno nights.  Halfway through, we stumbled across other variants.  The new player was hit with a Draw 2 card, and he played another Draw 2 right away and said "Stack It".  We had no idea what he meant.  He was referring to a house rule where you can avoid drawing those two cards by playing another Draw 2 card and saying, "Stack It" ... in which case, the next player has to draw 4 cards, or they can play another Draw 2, and the next player has to draw six.  So we started allowing the Stack It rule, and it was fun and playful.

Once the winner was out, we did keep playing, and I came out as number two.  Then the last two players played on but hit a comical snag.  Player 4 insisted that a Reverse card among two players means it's your turn again.  Logically, the Reverse card is powerless in a two-player game, because it changes the direction of play from clockwise to counterclockwise (on vice versa), and no matter what direction you go, Player 1 plays next after Player 2.

We went with this odd variation on the Reverse card.  This led to some hilarious moments, considering Anne had about 14 cards in her hand at the time.  This rule let her make this move: Reverse, me again, Reverse, my turn again, skip, skip, reverse, skip, Wild, now it's blue, and you have to Draw 4.  That was the play of the game.  And she was down to the original seven cards again.

Unfortunately, due to the "draw until you have a card to play" rule, the game went on too long and the players just gave up and walked away.

But this session was an eye-opener for how many different variations or house rules came out of left field.