Archives by: Bruce Sanders

We “made” a king-size deck of Dutch Blitz cards out of cardboard about 16″ x 12″. You will need 40 cards for each of four teams.
Spray paint the front of the cards, we used red, blue, green and yellow. Then number each set 1 through 10. On the back of a set we put a dot of paint, so each team has a set of 4 colors of cards with the same color on the back to identify for their team.
Then divide the group into 4 teams, 4 to 6 per team works best. Each team designates one person to turn over the cards, one to control the stack and a couple of runners to take the cards out, one at a time, to a central area. We done this at a gym with the center circle being the central area, but also adapted to fit into our church basement.
You will need to know the basics of the actual Dutch Blitz card game. “Shuffle” your teams cards, and then deal 10 cards number side or face down in a pile. then place 3 cards face up next to this pile. The object is to play all 10 cards from the first stack, either by placing them in numerical AND color sequence in the central area or by playing one of the 3 cards to the central area and moving one of the 10 to the vacated spot. When a card plays to the central area, starting with a 1, send the card with one of the teams runners. They must play the card in the designated area and hurry back. The team can not send another card with a runner until the first runner has returned. eg, red 2 has to go on a red 3 etc.
As the game progresses, two teams will try to play the same card at once, eg, green 5 on green 6. The first one played stays and the runner has to take the non-played card back. When one team plays all 10 cards from the face down stack, they yell out “blitz” and there is no other plays made. All other teams count the number of cards remaining in the face down pile and lose 2 points for each one. Then the leaders sort the played cards in the central area according to the paint spot on the backs and return them to the proper teams. They receive 1 point for each card played.
We either play a pre-designated number of “hands” or to a number goal, first team to 50. Then have each team move around the tasks, runners become card turners and vice versa. We played this first in our own group and then took it to a district gathering where everyone had a great time.