Driving home tonight, I stopped to view this boomer walking down and watering the Rio Grande Valley.

Along with so many others, my sister and her family opted to get out of town for a little escape this Independence Day weekend, and in a display of maturity, her younger son also opted, but in his case, he opted to not join his family and go out of town, which meant he was local this weekend- which also meant we needed to go to dinner together.

And so tonight we did.

We went to Dion’s pizza on Montgomery, and he ordered a slice of cheese pizza with double black olives, and I the half chef salad I had been craving (with blue cheese dressing) and a cup of lemonade, and we grabbed a sunny booth on the west side of the building, and Grant broke out the two card decks I had asked him to bring. (He usually brings one with him when he joins people out doing meals or activities anyways).

“What are we playing?”

I asked him if he remembered playing War at all. Kind of- remind me how to play it, he said.

Whe I was in junior high school, War was commonly played with two decks of card. Each of the two players started with a complete deck (sans Jokers), and in simple form, your goal in War was to accrue all of your opponent’s deck by winning skirmishes card by card- each player flips a card over from the top of their deck at the same time, and the higher card beats the lower card, giving its owner both card for their discard pile. When the opponents both turn over cards of matching value (two 8’s or two queens, for example), “war” is verbalized, and then three cards from each player deck are dealt face down onto the player’s original card, and then another one is drawn and laid down face up on the player pile.

And whoever has the higher card on their deck wins that war, and all played cards in both piles go to the victor.

And if the war cards match, the stakes escalate as three more face downs are added to each pile, and a new determining card I laid down face up by each player, etc.

Oh yeah, he said.

“But”, I commented, “I would like to request we modify our game play.”

We agreed that for each round played, the two players would alternate being able to choose a trump card for each hand. The chosen card would be selected simply by value (4, 7, Jack), and if either player presented the trump card when the two compared cards were played, that player automatically won the hand (unless both players played the trump car, which escalated the hand into a war). The trump card also carried it’s power into each round of war if tie plays occurred (a 4 called at the start of the hand would let a 4 win a war if a 4 was played in a war round).

The idea behind the variant was that we might add a little opportunity and slimly mitigate the all-luck nature of the game with chances for each player to flip the high-card-wins rule.

And so our game began, and in time, our new rule added some enjoyed results into the game. One of us would hit on the trump card, and if we chose it, we were pleased. And if we didn’t we were befuddled and amused. When a 2 or a 4 takes a Queen, you feel a sense of accomplishment.

We also increased the consequences of wars by raising the number of unseen cards each player had to contribute to a hand if a second tie of clashing cards occurred in a hand. The second war in a hand requires each player to put 6 additional cards face down on the play piles instead of the usual three.

Grant and I slowly ate our meals as we worked through the first round of 52 battles, and then we reshuffled our discard decks and started the next round. We laughed at moments when our new rule impacted battles three or four plays in a row. Wars won and lost meant larger losses and larger wins. A cloudburst over the restaurant drenched the window by us and the lot beyond it while the western sun continued to brightly glow on the buildings by us.

We played for nearly an hour and a half until we decided to call the game, and we reviewed the variant, and we felt pretty good with it.

We also discussed using a single deck for the game, and each player starts with the full sets of two suits. War collateral draws (those face down additions to the player piles in a war situation) would be 2 cards for the first, and then 4 for the second. The single deck play would make the game go faster.

The dinner was excellent, and the game was oft funny and decently fun, and made for a good get-together.

We’ll see if we try that game (with variant) again sometime.