Coming soon!

The ALL or NOTHING front page.

The (hopefully) final proofs have been sent to the publishers. Two proof decks have been ordered, and will be on their way soon, in my hands within a week or two. If those pass muster, the first large deck order will be placed, and the game will be officially released!  Yay!

My wife is in the process of setting up an Amazon seller account, the plan at this time is to put decks into the hands of Amazon so they can sell them for us with their giant marketing machine. Every dime earned from sales will go into stocking the Amazon warehouse with sufficient product to meet demand.

Things to expect to see here:

1. A few different types of score sheets for different numbers of players and for team play. Don't expect this tomorrow, but it will eventually happen.
2. A PDF of optional rules from the devs, and a PDF conglomeration of the best (as judged by us) player submitted optional rules. 
3. Links to buy pre-printed score sheet pads, for those who don't have a printer available.
4. Once written, an Amazon link will be here for a strategy guide.  Crush your opponent!
5. If sales are high, more ALL or NOTHING products.

That's it!  Thanks for checking us out. All or Nothing cards is not a one time thing. I'm already working on my next game, and once released it will be available here as well.

So keep checking in!

Damon

The newly designed card back

Click here for the score sheet.

Click here for the rules.

All or Nothing Cards, Inc.

Officially, as of January 1, we are now All or Nothing Cards, Inc.

That is how much confidence we have in the game, spending money to incorporate. It's an extremely interesting process, but not one that I particularly wanted to know in detail, so we hired our accountant to set it up for us. Let's just say we're satisfied and feel we got our money's worth. I'd post a reference for him, but I don't have his permission so won't. Let me know if you need a good accountant in Colorado Springs and I'll send you his way.

We also got our UPC code for the ALL or NOTHING card game. It will be on the next set of prototype cards to come to our door, and if that looks good, on the production run.

So things are moving along although you wouldn't know that by looking at our blog.

Lots of good news for the ALL or NOTHING game. But there is also other news on the game front. The design process is under way for our second game, which at this time is titled Swap Out. Here is a copy of the preliminary logo/card back for that game. Swap Out is a game of partners, so you and your spouse/BFF/BF-GF can work as a team to take down those evil Jones's together. The Jones's being your other BFFs or the neighbors. Or grandma. :)

As always, thanks for stopping by. When I order the production run for ALL or NOTHING, you'll find out first here.

- Damon

Cards, cards, and more cards.

It turns out that the only way to know if your cards look good or not is to order some.

So we did. And guess what? The first test run of two decks looked pretty good. The cards were awesome quality, the print was spot on, and the design really popped.

Then I, being who I am, lost the original file that I uploaded to the printer. And, in recreating it, slightly changed the image file size of the card fronts. It was a fairly laughable result, as it looks like the numbers are trying to flee the cards by leaping from the edges.

Sooooo, back to the drawing board. I reloaded Scribus, software I have grown to loathe nearly as much as root canals, and recreated the entire 48 card deck and 3 additional cards.

That product shipped to us earlier this week, and hopefully will be in our mailbox today. If not today, Monday.

Once that product passes muster (please, please, please) we'll order our first 300 decks for distribution via local stores and on Amazon.

I am a firm believer that the patience of our friends and those who want a copy of this game will be rewarded with an amazing looking deck of cards, a deck that is both durable and pleasant to use, and one that is high quality to last a long time in your card playing hands.

I can't wait to get past these last few days of the design stages and into production.

- Damon

We Have The Videos!

We shot a bunch of footage at a local studio of game play and such that we thought we might use as part of a possible Kickstarter campaign. Below are links to a few of the edited videos. Enjoy!

All or Nothing Promo

All or Nothing Tutorial 1

All or Nothing Tutorial 2

All or Nothing Blooper Reel

The Rules

What follows are the rules of play for All or Nothing, a trick taking card game for people, young or old, in all walks and stages of life, who truly enjoy card games, camaraderie and friendly competition.

How to Play:

For 3 to 6 players. With 3 or 4 players, deal each player 10 cards. With 5 or 6 players, deal each player 8 cards. There will be cards left over with anything other than 6 players. Place those aside for the next dealer.

Players start with 100 points, the goal is to get to 0 points or to have the lowest score at the end of 10 hands.

The player to the left of the dealer bids first, then clockwise around the table. Bidding is simple: you bid All to take all of the tricks, or Nothing to take none of the tricks. The scorekeeper notes the bid on the provided score sheet.

Play Sequence:

The first player that bid is first to lead. That player plays any card from their hand. If the player is attempting to take all of the tricks, that card will likely be high. If that player bid Nothing, then that card will likely be low. Play continues clockwise, following the suit of the first suited card played, unless an A or N card is played These ALL or NOTHING cards (shown in second photo below) may be played at any time.

The ALL or NOTHING cards are special, and will be described in full below under card hierarchy. What's important now is that the highest card of the lead suit takes the trick. The person who took the trick leads next. This process is continued until all cards in the players hand are played, one per trick, completing that hand.

Scoring:

If a player bid NOTHING and took no tricks, that player gets 20 points subtracted from their score. For example, if you had a score of 100 and successfully bid NOTHING in hand 1, your score would then be 80. If a player bids ALL and takes every trick, that player gets 100 points subtracted from their score. If that player had 100 points or less at the start of the hand and reaches a score of 0, that player immediately wins the game.

If a player fails to make their bid, either ALL or NOTHING, they get 10 points added to their score for each trick they missed their bid by. So if you bid all and two tricks were taken by other players, you'd get 20 points added to your score. If you bid NOTHING and took 1 trick, you'd gain 10 points to your score. That is not how you win, for the record.

Card Hierarchy:

There are 48 cards in the ALL or NOTHING deck: 40 numbered cards, and 4 each of the ALL and NOTHING cards.

Cards come numbered 1 thru 10, in 4 suits. Larger numbers beat smaller numbers. Players must follow suit with the following exceptions:

• They play an ALL card from their hand.
• They play a NOTHING card from their hand.
• They play a FLIP card (that's a new one! More in a second.) from their hand.
• They have none of the suit led, and then may play any card they choose.

ALL cards start out high; the first one played is the highest unless it is FLIPPED.

NOTHING cards start out low; the first one played being higher than subsequent NOTHINGs, unless one of them is FLIPPED, in which case the FLIPPED one becomes highest.

FLIPPING:

You will notice some cards have yellow suits below the numbers instead of black or white. These are FLIP cards. They FLIP the associated ALL or NOTHING card to the opposite state. For example, the 1 of Spades (or 9 of clubs) will FLIP the NOTHING card (second photo below) to an ALL card. A 2 of Hearts (or 10 of diamonds) will FLIP the ALL card in that photo to a NOTHING. Notice there are 2 cards shown on each ALL or NOTHING. If the other FLIP card is played (the 9 of Clubs and 10 of Diamonds in these examples) the card will FLIP AGAIN to its original state. So if the 1 of Spades is played, the NOTHING becomes an ALL; it becomes a NOTHING again if the 9 of clubs is played.

Trust me, you want to pay attention to when FLIP cards are played if you have ALL or NOTHING cards in your hand. This is key to successfully making your bids.

That's it! Later you will be able to find optional play rules on www.allornothingcards.com that will provide for team play, harder bidding, and increased level of havoc. That's what this game is all about.

Welcome Reviewers!

Welcome Reviewers,

All or Nothing is a fast-paced, trick-taking game with many twists and turns. The 48-card game of four suits is appropriate for 3-6 players, singly or in teams, ages 8-108.

We are reaching out to avid gamers and game reviewers for their valuable feedback and support.

For insight into All or Nothing game play read the following blog entries (click below):

The Rules, Card Tricks, You'll Flip!!!, Score!, Suit Up!, Who We Are, and Score!!!(Sheet)

Please leave your contact information if you would like us to contact you when All or Nothing is available for purchase. We appreciate the time you have taken to visit the All or Nothing website.

With kind regards,

Debby and the rest of the team, Damon, Shannon and Jeff

Cars and Cards

One letter different, but worlds of frustration apart.

I love cards. I love the concept, the interplay of the rules, and the gatherings in friendship that cards creates.

I love cars too!  The fun of acceleration, the concentration in a hard corner, the sound of the engine, the smells of petroleum derivatives. I love everything about them. Except the $$$ involved.

My favorite car is sitting in my garage, taunting me with the lack of a water pump. This is no American car, with the $100 repair that a bad water pump would be on Chevy small block. This is a German car. And because of that, you can add a ZERO to pretty much any repair it seems. $984 to put a new water pump on my car.

I was scheduled for Monday to get it repaired. I cancelled that appointment. Why?  Because I have cards. I have cards to play, I have cards to Kickstart, and I have a commitment to my friends to get this game out the door.  That money, it seems to me at this point, is far better spent on cards than cars.

So thank you, cards, for giving me an alternative. Thank you for giving me something that is mostly joy with only occasional moments of frustration, as opposed to joy followed by a grinding noise then continuous frustration.

Thank you cards.