Rally Round
By ice rivers
- 142 reads
Cat and Murph taught me to play rally round.
We had just got done playing Euchre. During that "game", I had lost my spending money for the week. I was feeling pretty low.
Cat asked me if I wanted to play some rally round. It wouldn't be for money. We'd play the game for fun.
I said that I didn't know how to play rally round.
Cat assured me that I'd catch on. Murph agreed. He had learned the game earlier in the year.
What the hell?
First of all Cat and Murph argued about which rules we would play by. Murph wanted Lockport rules. Cat said Lockport rules might be too complicated. Cat suggested simple Magellan rules. Magellan rules were based upon the card game that had been played aboard Magellan's voyages of discovery.
Murph agreed that the older game was easier to grasp.
Cat shuffled the cards and laid twelve cards on the table in a clock shape.
He dealt out 21 of the remaining cards, giving 7 cards to each player with one card on top. These cards were refererd to as the Gibraltar. The top card of each Gibraltar was turned up and known as the Spaniard. Gibraltar could not be moved. All of the cards remained face down. Only the revealed Spaniard could be moved. When the Spaniared moved it was known as a Spaniard in the Works.
Then Cat dealt out the remaining 18 cards which were known as cannons. Each player could look at his cannons and "fire" them whenever a "pirate ship" approached.
Murph went first.
He slapped a red deuce down where the two would have been on the clock and removed the king of hearts from his Gibraltar as it was the top card; the Spaniard. He placed the king in the center of the circle which was known as the Calcutta.
Cat placed a black four where the four would have been on the clock. He used his Spaniard which brought another card to the surface of his Gibraltar. The card that came up was the red queen. Cat placed the queen on top of the King in the Calcutta, announced a royal marriage and awarded himself 11 points.
I placed a seven from my Gibraltar where the seven would have been on the clock. My Spaniard turned up a red jack. Figuring that I had a good thing, I placed the red jack in the Calcutta on top of the red queen.
Cat and Murph flipped out.
"Holy Shit, I've never seen that before, have you Murph?"
Murph said he had heard of it and believed it was worth 43 points.
Cat thought that it would have been worth double that if thet were playing Aztec rules but in this case, yes 43 was accurate. In Aztec rules, especially as played before Mexico, this move would have been known as a "sacrifice".
We continued around the clock buiding a Magellan strait in the Calcutta.
Every so often a "battle" would break out which was played like war except that three was the high card.
Somehow, I had all four threes in my canon. I had to turn them all over which was called an Armada when Murph demanded a turnover which was called an Inquisition.
Unfortunately for me, Cat was holding the jack of spades known as the Tork Amada. This meant that I had to turn over all the cards in my Gibraltar and if more black cards showed up than red cards I would be safe but if I had more black cars than red cards in my Cannon. If more red cards showed up, called a heresy, I would be "burned at the stake" . If I was safe, I could change any of the rules which was called a Luther.
All of the cards that I turned over were blackwhich meant that Cat and Murph would both suffer a "red plague" which ended the first round. If we had been playing for money, I would have won $50 which would have been twice, my weekly spending money.
Both Cat and Murph agreed that they had never seen such good fortune.
I felt much better after the game. Couldn't believe how lucky I was.
I went on to teach the game to many other people.
We played the Roman version of Rally Round which included a five card Appian way.
We played the Ionesco version in which whoever won the game (by losing) had to imitate the Ghost of Richard Nixon coming back from the dead and attempting to strangle Gerald Ford who was disguised as Jimmy Saville.
We played the Beatle version of Rally Round in which the eights were wild and the game always finished before the ending usually after somebody played the Yoko Ono card.
We played Lebowski Rally Round where the perfect hand is a rug which ties everything together.
On and on. Variation after variation, limited only by time and imagination.
It always amazed me how quickly newcomers grasped the game and how overjoyed and surprised they were when they won. One of the rules of Rally Round is that the newcomers always win.
Many of them went on to be Rally Round teachers themseves as the game spread throughout the world.
Eventually, Donald Trump created the MAGA version which half of America understood and played to their own advantage.
No matter if f they "lost"; they won.
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