Cups

This page is about the card game. If you meant:

• ... the drinking game, see: Flagon/Cups
• ... the suit in a deck of cards, see: Catholic Tarot#Cups
• ... the electronic-to-paper mail gateway, see Calibrate Universal Printout Service

Simple Rules

Many people learn to play Cups as children, in a simplified version. In this version, the object is simply to end the game with no cards in your hand. The game is played with the standard Catholic Tarot deck. Players both play cards and draw new ones, but some cards (especially Cups) are removed from play, meaning that the number of cards going around gets fewer and fewer.

Each player is dealt 7 cards, and the remainder are placed face down in the centre of play, known as the stack. One card from the stack is turned face-up next to it, and is the start of the dump. Starting with the eldest player and going to the right, each must play a card onto the dump from his hand. Which cards may be played depends on the suit and value of the top card on the dump, known as the active card.

• If the active card is a Cup, you may play any card except another cup, and then play reverses direction
• Otherwise, you may play either:
  • a card of the same suit and higher value (aces count low)
  • an ace of the same suit, and each player may give you one card from their hand
  • a spot card of another non-Cup suit, and draw cards from the stack equal to its number
  • a court card of another non-Cup suit, and draw cards from the stack equal to the number of players
  • a Cup of the same value as the active card, and take the top 3 cards from the dump

    it is common to put the cup aside in a separate pile, to one side of the table, in the children's game; some families play with different rules about whether the next player can "not see" the cup and treat the top card of the dump as if it were active again, and if so whether they are allowed to play another cup. Sometimes you may also play the next Cup card onto the side pile (for example, 8 onto a 7) if you have no other legal move

• If you cannot play any card on your turn, you place your cards face up in front of you to form your graveyard. If you already have a graveyard, you may put your new graveyard on top of it, covering cards so other players can't see them. Then you draw the same number of cards from the stack, to make a new hand.
• If you play the last card from your hand, you pick up your graveyard and continue playing with it

  To make the game quicker for younger players, some families skip this step and allow a player with an empty hand to sit out for the rest of the game (though possibly still handing over a card when an ace is played); when nobody has any cards left in their hand, the player with the smallest graveyard wins

• If you have no cards in your hand and no graveyard, you win
• If the stack becomes empty, the card just played and all Cups in the dump are put away to one side; the dump is shuffled back into the stack, and a new card is dealt to the dump.
  • If no Cups remain in play, the game ends and the player with least cards wins.

    On Democratic League planets, this rule only applies if someone notices. Whether you put Cups aside separately from other cards to make this easier may be up to the player whose turn it is

    Cards in graveyards may count double, or not at all, with some players

  • If you need to draw from an empty stack, for example if you have to draw 3 cards when only 2 are left, you draw the entire dump before shuffling. You don't have to draw from the new stack.

    There are a couple of alternate versions of this rule:

    • Democratic League Rules - if the stack isn't big enough to draw the required cards, it is discarded and you draw from the bottom of the dump before re-shuffling it.
    • Magellan Variant - any left over cards you can't draw are dealt straight into the new dump after shuffling the stack

• If nobody has cards in their hand (but still have graveyards), deal the stack equally between all players, then reshuffle the dump. Any leftover cards (after everyone has received the same number) are removed from play.

  In the children's game, this doesn't happen.

  In some variants, a player who gets an ace in this way may play it immediately, returning the rest of the stack to its place (or removing it from the game) and continuing play normally with the player to his left

Mathematicians' Rules

Like the basic game, but played with 5 decks shuffled together; in this variant "higher" for spot cards is taken to mean "equal or higher", one Cup can be played on another if they are identical (in which case the order of play is not reversed until someone plays a different card), and when a cup spot card is played, cards equal to its number are removed from the game (from the top of the stack)