How to Play the Galactic War Card Game

The Basics

• 1). Find a few friends to play against. The minimum number of players in Galactic War is two; the maximum is six. The ideal number of players is between two and four.
  
  
• 2). Combine two standard 52-card decks. Remove the jokers from each deck and shuffle.
  
  
• 3). Deal an equal number of cards to each player. Any extra cards are set aside and are not part of this game. Do not allow the players to look at their own cards. Direct each player to put his cards in a face-down pile in front of him.
  
  
• 4). Direct each player to flip over the top card in her deck. The player with the highest card collects all of the face-up cards from that round and places them face-down at the bottom of her deck. If two or more players tie for the highest card flipped face up, conduct a Galactic War based on the directions in Section 2. The cards are ranked with the ace being the highest and the 2 the lowest.
  
  
• 5). Repeat Step 4 until one player has all the cards from the two decks. That player is declared the winner. If a player does not have enough cards to complete the directions in Section 2, that player is out of the hand. If he or she is involved in a Galactic War with one other player at the table, that player gets the cards; otherwise, the winner of the Galactic War wins the cards from the player that was eliminated.
  
  

Conducting a Galactic War

• 1). Conduct a Galactic War if the face value of two cards match. A Galactic War is only conducted if the matching cards are the highest-value cards at the table. If the players who have matching cards are defeated by a higher card flipped by another player, there is no Galactic War.
  
  
• 2). Flip over three additional cards face down and flip one card up that only match the face value of the card flipped, but not its color or suit.
  
  
• 3). Flip over seven cards face down for each player involved in the Galactic War, with matching face-value cards if their cards also match the color of the other player's matching card. Then flip over a face-up card as the eighth card.
  
  
• 4). Flip over 11 cards for each player involved in the Galactic War, if the matching card not only matches face value, but is also of the same suit. Remember, this is possible because two decks of playing cards are used in Galactic War. Flip over the 12th card face-up for each player.
  
  
• 5). Compare the face-up cards for each player involved in the Galactic War. The player with the highest face-up card wins the Galactic War and collects all the face-down cards from the Galactic War and all the face-up cards on the table, including the cards from players that were not involved in the Galactic War.If two players tie for the highest value face up card again, repeat steps one through four in this section of "Conducting A Galactic War" among just those players that tied for the highest face value card again.