ITT Game Club - Phase 10 House Rules

Here are the "permenant" house rules:

  1. Laying down partial sets: If you need to make a run of 3 and a set of 3, you can lay down just the set or just the run in order to get points out of your hand. You can't start laying cards on other people's sets (or your own) until you have all your combinations exposed.
  2. Drawing unwanted discard out of turn: If the current player opts not to pick up the discard, you can quietly take it even though it's not your turn along with a "penalty card", which is the top card on the draw pile. If 2 (or more) people both want the discard, the person who would normally go first in the clockwise order of play wins the tie. Any discard beneath the topmost one is "dead" and cannot be picked up.
  3. Laying down combos out of turn: You can lay down cards out of turn, provided that they are exactly the cards needed for one of your combinations. You can "phase" this way. Corollaries: you can't lay down extra cards on your own combos, nor can you lay down cards on other people's combos, nor can you "go out" out of turn. (This is the logical next step to the two previous house rules.) Caveat: you must lay down partial sets before someone goes out. After the final discard of the round has been put down, it's too late.

Here are the "rules of the week". We just try these out for a week at a time. If they're popular and useful, we'll keep 'em. If there's a date next to it, it means we tried it on that date. If we've already tried it, I usually put a little "update" note that explains how it went.

  1. (11/29/05) "Skip" always skips the next person. We played with this before we actually read the official rules and figured out that the person that plays a "Skip" can just name someone who will be skipped on their next turn. We like the official rule better.
  2. (12/15/05) Take unwanted discard with a "May I". This was how the current "permenant" house rule came to be. We modified it when we discovered that we're a rather uncooth bunch, not given to saying "May I".
  3. (12/08/05) Replace an exposed "Wild" with the corresponding number. IOW, if a "Wild" is serving as a placeholder for a '6', you can lay down cards on other people's sets and you're holding a '6', you can swap the "Wild" for the '6' and play the "Wild" elsewhere. This was a popular one and stands a good chance of being made permenant.
  4. (1/12/06) One last "grace round" after someone goes out. Everyone else can take one last turn to try to get points out of their hand.
  5. (1/19/06) Roll a d10 to determine which phase you get to do next. (IN-teresting...) You'd be stuck on the current phase until you complete it. In the event that you roll a phase you already had, reroll. Update: This one was a lot of fun. We got to try some higher phases that we normally don't do.
  6. (1/26/06) We allowed people to pick up "deep" discards, meaning you could pick up a long-since discarded card along with all the other discards on top of it. You could do this out of turn, too, as long as you draw a penalty card from the draw pile. 'Skip' cards acted as road blocks (since they can't be picked up) rendering the discards beneath it un-pick-up-able.
  7. (2/02/06) You can pick which phase you want to do after your hand is dealt and before you draw your first card. You can't repeat phases. If you don't phase that turn, you're stuck with it until you do phase. This was a fun one.
  8. (2/09/06) You can lay down cards out of turn. (Probably via drawing a card out of turn.) You can "go out" out of turn, too. If someone does, the game is over but everyone else can dump as many cards from their hand as possible before recording scores. Update: the first several rounds went blindingly fast when we did it this way.
  9. (3/15/06) Start at phase 10 and go backward (meaning phases get easier and easier). Update: while cute at first, we discovered that whoever gets in the lead tends to run away with the game after that. (Almost as though the phases were designed to get increasingly harder...)
  10. (3/22/06) Runs have to be the same color. This effectively made phases 4-6 harder than phases 7-10. We also had to make an addendum that once all player's runs are closed off on both ends (goes from 1-12), we just call the round and total scores (which contributed to one of our plays of the week).
  11. (3/22/06) An 11 can count as two 1s (say, to form a set of 1s) and a 12 can count as a 1 and a 2 (say, to form a run). An amusing rule, and one that kind of took the sting out of phase 7.
  12. (4/05/06, 4/19/06) We invented our own phases, using the standard ones as a guideline. The dealer picks which phase is next. We strayed a bit from just the pure "sets" and "runs" idea; some examples: a "Jackrabbit" run (2-4-6-8 or 1-3-5-7), 4 cards of 1 color + 1 run of 3 (all the same color), and a combination that required a pair of Wilds. Good times. We could do this house rule over and over.
  13. (4/26/06) Each phase had only 1 combo: a single run. The number of cards required into the run was equal to the number of the phase. IOW, phase 1 was 1 run of 1, phase 2 was 1 run of 2, phase 3 was 1 run of 3, etc. We also said that runs can "wraparound" from 12 back to 1 (or from 1 down to 12), so people could still go out. We actually got to phase 12 (and could have kept going). Lots of fun.
  14. (5/03/06) Discarding on your turn is optional. This was mostly used to keep a bunch of good cards or to avoid having to discard something your neighbor could use. In practice, it didn't come into play very much.

    (5/17/06) The dealer picks a random card to be a "screwball"; all other copies of that card can be anything (including a Skip).

  15. No discard (except for a Skip) is "dead". Allows for more than one unwanted discard to be drawn out of turn. (Mild variant on the existing, pemenant house rule.)
  16. Play without Skips. (But that would remove all the spite from the game!)
  17. Skips act like Reverses, sending play anticlockwise.
  18. Skips count as Wilds. (No one can be skipped)
  19. Wilds count as Skips. (No Wilds can be used to fill in holes)
  20. If you have been skipped, when the time for your turn comes around, you can nullify the skip by playing one of your own out of your hand and then take your normal turn. (Possibly picking up a replacement for the 'Skip' you dropped?)
  21. Runs can "wrap around" from 12 back to 1. (Partially done on 4/26/06)
  22. You can pick up discarded skips, but you can't play them on the same turn that you've picked them up.
  23. Swap your whole hand for the discard pile. Pick up as many cards as you were holding right off the top (you can't pick and choose). If the discard pile doesn't have enough cards in it, draw from the draw pile. Your old hand becomes the discard pile (or the top thereof).
  24. After you've laid down your entire phase, you can lay down additional combinations, as long as they're like a combo you've already set down.
  25. Skips skip everyone else at the table, giving you an extra turn.
  26. You can stack skips. If you skip someone, they can be skipped again. (Maybe we could leave the skips on the table in front of the Skipee to keep track of when they can go again.)
  27. You have to call "Uno" when you're down to one card, or other people can call it on you and you hafta draw 2.
  28. You can play cards on other people's combos before you put down your complete phase.
  29. "Screwball" rule from Psycho UNO: starting card counts as anything (including a Skip).
  30. Cards count as face value when we calculate points.
  31. You must skip the guy with the lowest points, even if it means skipping yourself.
  32. Runs can keep going after 12, you just start back at 1 again.
  33. 6s can count as 9s and 9s can count as 6s (with tip o' the hat to Psycho UNO).
  34. Wilds can count as 0 or 13 (or -1? or 14?).
  35. Unrealized Skips carry over to the next round (i.e. A person gets skipped, and someone in the circle before them goes out before they can be skipped.)