Zar, the card game like no other!  We'll that's not quite true.  It's very similar to man other card games, but this one is a ton of fun.   The thing that I liked best was it's ability to modify or build on top of cards played.   The biggest string of modifiers we had was 10.

We started my shuffling up the deck, then picking someone to deal.   The person with the longest hair turned out to the be the one that went first.  I have not seen an official statement as to who is supposed to go first in Zar , but maybe we will define it as the person with the longest hair.  Then rotate it to the left or clockwise.  The first player to get rid of all of their cards wins.

 

From there the game smells a bunch like UNO.  Where you play in cards that match the previous played card in either color or symbol.  If you are lucky enough to have a card that matches BOTH color and symbol, you can play that our of turn.   A couple of things happen at this point, it will be officially your turn (skipping anyone that is between you and the player that played the card).  And, that play who you matched, has to pick a number  of cards equal to the number shown on the card.   So, if you play a fanned out peacock, and can play my fanned out peacock to match that and you then have to draw four cards (4 is the number on the peacock card).

 

Where it gets truly wacky is when people start string together draw twos and skips and reverses.  All of which that can be played on top of each other.    That's how we strung 10 card plays together.   The final recipient of the play had to draw 12 cards.  Oh joy.

 

When it comes to finishing the game, no only do you have to play out with either a color or symbol match, but you have to hope that the cards match is not in an opponents hand.  Play a yellow cloud, and if another play matches that yellow cloud, you have to draw a number of cards equal to the number on the card.  And the game Continues. 

 

In a typical deck of 52 cards you will normally get two jokers.  Zar is no exception.  For our game, we "called" that the Zar cards are draw 4, you can make it what ever you like.  Maybe I'll try the Zar be "go again" for next time.   However, unlike a typical deck, Zar has 62 cards.  If you run out of cards during play, just reshuffle the stack and keep going.