War

How to play War

1. The 52 cards are shuffled and dealt out, 26 to each player, face down. Nobody looks at their cards: your deck is your face-down pile.
2. In each battle, both players turn over the top card of their deck at the same time.
3. The higher card wins and takes both cards. Aces are highest, then king, queen, jack, 10, 9 and so on down to 2, which is lowest. Suits don't count: a 9 of clubs beats an 8 of hearts.
4. The cards you win go on your won pile, next to your deck.
5. If the two cards are the same rank, such as two queens, it's war. See below.
6. In a quick game, play stops when the decks run out, after one pass through the deck. The player who has won more cards wins, and 26 cards each is a draw.
7. In a full game, when your deck runs out, your won cards are shuffled to make a new deck, and play goes on. The player who wins all 52 cards wins the game.

What happens in a war

When both cards have the same rank, each player puts three cards face down on top of their tied card and then turns one more card face up. The higher of the two new face-up cards takes every card in the war: both tied cards, the cards face down and the cards face up. If you choose 1 card down before you start, each player puts down one card instead of three.

If the new face-up cards are the same rank too, there's another war on top, and the winner of that one takes everything on the table.

Running out of cards in a war: a player who doesn't have enough cards puts down as many as they can, and their last card is their face-up card. In a full game, a player with no cards left at all can't fight the war, so the other player takes the cards and wins the game. In a quick game both decks always hold the same number of cards, so if both run out in the middle of a war, each player takes back their own cards from it.

Quick game or full game?

Quick is the default: one pass through the deck, usually about 20 battles and a minute or two of play. Because the cards don't come round again, about one quick game in ten ends in a draw.

Full is War the old way: play goes on until one player holds every card, so a game can turn round many times. It takes a long time. We played 20,000 full games by computer to find out how long: with three cards down, half of them were over within about 200 battles, the average was about 270 battles, and about one game in ten took more than 550. With one card down, games last longer, about 450 battles on average. That's what the Auto button is for.

Controls

• Turn over a card: tap your deck, the stack with the number on it.
• 2 Players: Orange's deck is at the bottom and Purple's at the top, turned round so you can sit facing each other across the device. Each of you taps your own deck, and the battle is decided once both cards are up.
• vs Computer: tap your deck, and the computer turns over its card at the same moment.
• Auto: tap Auto and the cards turn over by themselves, a little faster, until you tap it again. It's handy for full games. If you switch to another tab or app while Auto is on, the game pauses until you come back.
• Keyboard: A turns over Orange's card and L Purple's. Against the computer, Space and Enter work too.

The number on each deck shows how many cards are left in it, and the small pile beside it holds the cards you've won. A dashed card shape in the middle shows where your next card will land, and the winning card bounces with a yellow edge.

The computer player

War has no choices to make: nobody can play well or badly, because the order of the cards decides everything. So there are no computer levels. The computer simply turns over its top card when you turn over yours. Both decks come from the same shuffle, made with your browser's secure random numbers, so every order of the cards is equally likely. The computer never sees the cards before they're turned over, and nothing changes the order of the deck once the game starts.

Tips

• Enjoy the luck. You can't plan in War, so it's a game for the surprises: the ace that saves you, the war that swings the game.
• Watch your aces. An ace can never lose a battle. The worst it can do is meet another ace, which starts a war.
• A war is worth a lot. With three cards down, a war moves 10 cards at once, and a quick game only has 52 to share out. One war can turn a quick game round.
• Play it with children. War is a gentle way to learn which card is higher, the order of the ranks from 2 to ace, and counting: count the cards in a war as they come in.
• Use Auto for full games. Turn it on, put the device down and watch the decks go up and down. Turn it off whenever you want to tap again.
• One card down or three? With 1 card down, a war moves 6 cards instead of 10, so one war swings the game less. Three cards down makes every war a big moment.

About War

War is one of the simplest card games there is, and often the first one children learn. It's played the same way almost everywhere: two players, a shuffled deck, and the higher card wins. In Britain it's also called Battle. Nobody knows who invented it: it's a traditional game, passed on in families.

Families play wars in different ways. Many put three cards face down and turn the fourth face up, saying "I de-clare war" as they go, one card for each part of the words. Others put down just one card. Some put the cards they win straight under their deck instead of on a won pile, and some play with three or four players. This version keeps to the common two-player rules and lets you choose one or three cards down.

Questions

Updated 10 November 2026