How to Play Droog
Description
A shedding game with a journey behind it — learned from an American in Burma, who learned it from Russians in Bhutan. Now it's yours.
Objective
Don't be the last player left holding cards.
Setup
Standard 52-card deck. Hand size scales with the table: eight cards each with three players, six with four, five with five, four with six.
Deal roughly half the deck across all hands; the rest is the draw pile. Reveal and remove the top card of the draw pile — its suit is trump for the whole game.
Rules
The active player opens by playing a card to the next player clockwise.
The defender must reinforce with a card of the same rank (passing the challenge onward), cover with a strictly higher card of the SAME SUIT, cover with any trump, or pick up everything on the table.
Once a challenge is covered, the table opens: any other player may add more attacking cards matching a rank already down, up to as many as the defender holds in hand.
The defender resolves every open challenge, in any order, before the round can close.
Winning
Successful defence burns the whole table pile, and the defender becomes the next attacker. A pickup passes the next attack to the player after whoever picked up.
Hands refill from the draw pile after every turn, starting with whoever just defended. The last player still holding cards when the draw pile is gone and everyone else is out loses.