Spite and Malice

What You Need

• Two standard 52-card decks shuffled together. No jokers in the standard game. Kings are wild.
• Table space for two pay-off piles, eight side stacks and three centre stacks.

Setup

1. Shuffle both decks together.
2. Deal 20 cards face down to each player. This is your pay-off pile. Turn its top card face up.
3. Deal 5 cards to each player as a hand.
4. Put the rest face down between you as the stock.
5. The player with the higher top pay-off card goes first. If they are equal, both players shuffle their pay-off piles and turn up a new top card.

The Piles

• Pay-off pile. Your 20 cards. Empty it and you win. Only the top card is ever in play.
• Centre stacks. Shared building piles in the middle. Each starts with an ace and climbs 2, 3, 4 and so on up to queen. Suit does not matter. Never more than three centre stacks at once.
• Side stacks. Your personal discard piles, up to four. Cards go on them in any order.
• Hand. Five cards. Refill to five from the stock at the start of your turn.

How a Turn Works

1. Draw from the stock until you hold 5 cards.
2. Play as many cards as you like to the centre stacks. An ace starts a new stack. Otherwise play the next card up from the one showing, so a 6 on a 5, or a jack on a 10.
3. Cards for the centre can come from your hand, the top of your pay-off pile, or the top of any of your side stacks.
4. Play all 5 cards from your hand without discarding? Draw 5 more at once and keep going.
5. End your turn by discarding one card from your hand to any one of your side stacks. You may put it on top of any card.

Things you cannot do. You cannot discard a pay-off card to a side stack. You cannot move a card between side stacks. You cannot take a card back off a centre stack. If you have no legal play to the centre, you still discard to end your turn.

Kings

Kings are wild. Played to a centre stack, a king becomes the next card in the sequence. Discarded to a side stack, a king commits to nothing until someone plays it later. When a queen (or a king standing in for a queen) completes a stack, your opponent shuffles that stack into the stock.

Winning

Play the last card of your pay-off pile to a centre stack and you win at once. If the stock runs out first, the game is a draw.

If you play a series, score it. The winner gets 5 points plus 1 point for each card left in the loser's pay-off pile. In a draw, the player with fewer pay-off cards scores the difference.

Strategy Tips

• Your pay-off card is the whole game. Every move should either play it or set up the stack that will.
• Watch your opponent's pay-off card. If they need an 8, do not build a stack up to 7.
• Discard high cards first and lower ones on top of them. Then they come off in climbing order when a stack needs them.
• A wild king on a side stack is a saved key. Spend it on your pay-off card, not on a card from your hand.

Variations

• Cat and Mouse is the same game under another name.
• Some play with jokers as extra wild cards. Others make only the jokers wild and build centre stacks all the way up to king.
• Pay-off piles of 21, 25 or 26 cards make a longer game.
• Some forbid a wild card standing in for an ace, or for an ace and a 7.
• A meaner rule lets you load your opponent's pay-off pile with a card of the same suit, one rank up or down.
• If the stock runs out, some award the game to the player with fewer pay-off cards left.