Canon: The Card Game is available in a variety of decks but you only need one to play. It has been played all over the world, literally! Available decks are:
Apostolic Fathers and Text Criticism
The rules are simple:
Each person begins with a hand of five cards (and may have as many as seven in their hand at one time). There is a draw pile face down, seven spaces in the center for the collaboratively-determined canon (to and from which any player may place or take cards), seven spaces in front of you for your own canon (which only that player can alter), and a spot for a discard pile where cards are placed face up. The draw pile and discard pile should be oriented the opposite way from the seven canon slots, so that they are not confused with one another.
Possible moves: In any given turn, a player may do one of the following:
- Take a card from the draw pile into their hand
- Place a card from their hand into the central canon
- Take a card from the central canon into their hand
- Place a card from their hand into their personal canon
- Take a card from their personal canon into their hand
- Place a card from their hand on top of the discard pile, face up
- Take the visible card from the top of the discard pile into their hand
One cannot move a card directly from the discard pile to one of the canons or vice versa, nor from one’s own canon to the central one or vice versa. Such moves must be mediated by moving the card into one’s hand on one turn, and then moving the card from there to the desired destination on the second turn.
You can place a card from your hand onto an identical card either in the central canon or your own personal canon, reinforcing its status (and increasing the points earned at the end of the game). The game ends when the draw pile is empty, and then each player has the opportunity to play one additional card from their hand. Any additional cards that players have in their hand then go on the discard pile.
Scoring: One’s score at the end of play is determined by:
- Multiplying each card in one’s personal canon by each matching card in the central canon, and
- Subtracting one point for each individual card in one’s own canon that does not have an equivalent in the central canon.
Note that there is no penalty related to cards still in your hand if you are holding cards at the end of the game. These are simply discarded. Only what is in your canon determines your score by comparing it to the central canon.
Here is a video tutorial that I made for the game soon after inventing it.
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