So here you go guys. Another game for you to try out. I call it The Castle Card Game, a little game involving building a card castle. I used to love building castles from a well worn deck of cards as a kid. Who didn't? But what was more fun than building? Bringing them down.
So here are the rules. Have fun. Email me questions.

The Castle Card Game Rules
This game is written and published by Creppy
Game time: 60-90 minutes.

The Castle Card Game is both a strategy and a skill based game. Build the best card castle, try to take down your opponent's castle before you run out of castle defenders. The game takes a little card building skill, a little card throwing skill, and a little strategy to win the day.

Take two 54 card poker decks and separate each into to a pile with face cards (including the Jokers) and one with the aces through tens. Give one deck (of two piles) to each player. Shuffle each face card deck and number card deck, keep them separate and place them in front of you.

You will need a little space. A table top will due but watch out for overly smooth surfaces, they are tough to build on. Map out about a 2 foot by 2 foot area for each player. This will be where you will build your castle and play your face cards into battle.

We assign numbers to each face card. Kings are 3, Queens are 2 and Jacks and Jokers are 1. These numbers will be used to resolve the battle phase. So in battle Kings beat Queens and Queens beat Jacks and Jokers. But King vs King could result in a tie and the player whose turn it is wins all ties. We will talk more about battles soon. First we need to understand the object of the game and turn sequence.

Objective:
There are two win conditions. Kill all your opponents face cards and you win. Or dominate the battle arena and you win. There are three battle spaces for each player left right and center. If at the end of any battle you have three cards in the three spaces and your opponent has none you win. You will need to build a better card tower, throw a better catapult card (ace) and keep you face cards strategically placed to accomplish one of these conditions.

Layout:
Split a table in half (again 2' X 2' per player should be enough space.) The center line is where your face cards will battle there are three men in battle at a time each placed centered on the center line about a card with apart, no more. The area on your side it where your reserves, castle, catapults, face, number and discard decks will be. See picture below:

Building:
Any enclosure that has three sides and is covered will be considered a castle. Each of the three sides must be slightly taller than the width of a card. There are small marks on the long side of each card to indicate legal height, about 2.25 inches. A roofs must cover nearly half the space to be considered legal. There will be room for interpretation here. Part of the game is throwing cards to destroy card castles so there will be times when part of a castle is standing and part is not. Any card that was part of a castle and is now laying flat after being hit by a thrown card (catapult) is discarded to the Number Deck Discard Pile. Any card(s) that fall in the game in non-build time, when moving reserves around for instance are left flat until the players next build phase. Events like bumping the table or a breeze from a passerby should stop the game for a short re-build phase. Again there is much that can happen, work it out with your opponent in a fair way.

Build Phase:
Let the building phase last 3 to 5 minutes depending on the skill of the players. If the castle falls down and you have some build time left, scoop up the cards and re-build. However, any card that does not make it into a building in the allotted time should be held by the player or laid flat out of the play area. The player whose turn it is builds first, after the start card is flipped, the number of face vs. number cards is decided and the face cards are drawn and placed.

Turns:
Each player flips the top card of his or her number deck. Aces are moved to the bottom of the deck and cards are drawn until a non-Ace card is drawn. On turn one the player with the highest number goes first. The other player then decides which card is used to determine face cards and which is used to determine number cards (this is decided by the player whose turn it is after turn one.) Divide each number by two and round up for the number of cards to draw and play. Use the card flipped as the first card drawn. This table will help.

Card	Num
2	1
3	2
4	2
5	3
6	3
7	4
8	4
9	5
10	5

So if Bob draws a 10 and Sally draws a 4. Bob goes first but Sally decides that they will each draw 5 number cards and 2 face cards.

Face cards fill the area in front each player left to right. So the first card drawn goes to the left spot and the second card goes to the middle spot and the third card goes to the right spot. The 4th and 5th cards if there are any go to reserves. Reserves must be placed one card length from your left spot and all cards in reserves must be face down and adjacent so that they form box if possible. You may rearrange them each turn as you draw.

So in the build phase players build the best Castle they can. For each level you add to your castle Kings, Queens and Jacks get Plus 1 to their number score. Queens will also get a point for each structure you build. Jokers get no castle bonus. Aces (Catapults) can be used after the build phase or placed in reserves. They can only be used after both build phases but before battle and before moves. If there is a need to decide who Builds first. The player whose turn it is builds first. Then moves unused build cards to his hand of off the play area. Any build card that has text on it that allows it to serve some other function, if played, must be moved to the area indicated on the card. Player two must follow the same sequence after player one.

Battle:
After player two has completed his or her build phase players move to the battle phase. The player whose turn gets two moves and is able to throw his catapult(s) if he has one. So player one gets two moves but player two gets one. Swaps are legal from Reserves to any of the three battle spaces. Moves into adjacent empty space is OK and adjacent swaps are OK. Then the battle is waged; deal damage with lowest number first where the corners cannot strike each other, in case of a tie player one strikes first. When the assigned number of the striking face card is larger than the blocking face card the blocker is removed. You may strike on blocker with more than one attacker but the corner cards are out of reach from each other.

For example our player from above start with 5 Number cards to build with and 2 face cards. The both build one structure each and it's Bob's turn. No catapults were drawn so there will be no card throwing this turn. The battle field looks like this:

Sally		Q	Ja
Bob	Ja	Ja

Bob knows he can kill the Sally's Queen here, each Jack is 2 while Sally's queen is for (Q starts at and gets +1 for each structure and +1 for each level.) moving his Jacks around won't do him any good, All he could do is move his jack into a corner which would allow Sally to move her queen into the corner and out of reach. It's his turn so his Jacks both strike before Sally's one Jack. So he is ready to kill her queen. Sally knows queen get big fast so she make the following one defensive move.

Sally		Ja	Q
Bob	Ja	Ja

So damage takes place and Sally loses a Jack. Her queen takes two damage but it restored on the next turn.

Throwing:
Throwing happens when a players draws an Ace in the build phase. If it's drawn in the initial phase it's move to the bottom of the deck. The Ace is then moved to reserves and can be picked up and hurled at your opponents castle prior to battle moves. A player throwing against your castle should stand back about 2 or 3 feet depending on the player. Misses should be possible. A thrown card that touches any battle card or any reserve card after it lands, destroys those cards. They are discarded to their proper piles. A catapult card is discarded to it's owner's number discard pile after it is thrown. Any Number cards that are part of a structure before the throwing phase and are flat as a result of the throw after the throwing phase are discarded to the number discard pile.

Reserves:
May be moved around as you draw. Each reserve card must touch at least one other reserve card on at least one side unless it's the only reserve card. The first reserve card should be about a card length from the leftmost battle space.

Turn sequence:

Both players	Initial phase each player flips his/her top Number Deck card . Aces get put on the bottom of your deck.
First turn player 2 choose which deck to draw which number from. After that the player whose turn it is chooses.	Remember to take the number divided in half and round UP.
Player one draws and places face cards left to right.	Extras into reserves.
Player one draws build cards and builds a castle	Aces go to reserves.
Player two draws and places face cards left to right.	Extras to reserves
Player two draws Number cards and builds	Aces go to reserves
Player One may throw catapult.	See rules on Throwing
Player two may throw catapult.	See rules on Throwing
Player one may make two legal battle moves.	Swap, move adjacent, swap with reserves.
Player two may make one legal battle move.	Swap, move adjacent, swap with reserves.
Battle lower numbers always strike first. Dead cards don't strike	If you have a face card at each of left, right and center space you win.
Next turn. Players flip the top card of their number decks	Player two decides which number pulls from which deck again, b/c it is now player two's turn.
Player two places face cards left to right in any open space.	don't move the cards that are there (until the move phase.)
Player two draws number cards and builds.	Aces to reserves
Player one draws and places face cards cards left to right.
Etc...

This was a more simple game when I started, but I think it will still be enjoyable if you are patient. It takes time to build a good card castle and they do fall down often/easily, but seeing your card throw wipe out an opposing castle and then consequently destroy their forces is just worth the time and effort.