How to Play the Rat-A-Tat Tat Card Game

We have another fun, quick and easy to learn card game for you today: Rat-A-Tat Tat.

This exciting card game is similar to the Golf Card game, Go Low, and Palace. It’s great for players of all ages. It’s a great game for 2, 3, or 4 players. At first, I though it would be great just for younger kids, but I soon found out that we enjoyed it as much as kids will—especially the special card powers!

In this post we’ll cover how to play, the rules and how to win the Rat-A-Tat card game. Let’s get into it.

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What You Need for the Rat-A-Tat Card Game

You will need one deck of cards with the jokers removed. If you need some new cards, and who doesn’t?, you can shop here; Canadians here. The Bicycle Disney Dogs and Cats look pretty cool.

How to Play the Rat-A-Tat Card Game

To start, the dealer deals four cards to every player. The players keep their cards facedown and arrange them in a line on the table in front of them. The dealer puts the rest of the cards in the middle as the draw pile. He then flips over the top card to start the discard pile.

The goal of Rat-A-Tat Tat card game is to be the player with the lowest score at the end of the game.

The cards from 2 to 10 are worth their face value. Aces count as 1 point each. The jacks and queens are all worth 11 points and the kings are worth 0 points.

Before the game begins, each player gets to look at the two cards at either end of their line of cards. They need to remember what these cards are and decide if they want to keep them in their line up of switch them out. Players are not allowed to relook at any of their cards, unless they have a special card.

The player on the dealer’s left goes first. She can choose to take the top card of either the draw pile or the discard pile. If she decides to keep the new card, she must pick a card to switch it with from her line up of cards. She can’t look at any of her cards before deciding. She will place the new card facedown in the spot and place the old card on the discard pile. It is now the next player’s turn.

Special Cards

There are two special cards in Rat-A-Tat Tat. First is the jack. When a jack is flipped over from the draw pile, that player can peek at one of his cards. He will then place the jack on the discard pile. Second are the queens. When a queen is flipped over, that player may swop any of his cards with any card from a different player. To do this, the player chooses his card, slides it along the table and puts it in the place of the card that he wishes to put in his own line up. He does not look at the new card. Last, he places the queen on the discard pile.

If you flip over a jack or queen as a discard from your card line, its special power is not used. You will discard it as you would any other card.

Knocking

When you think that you have a lower score than anyone else in the game, you will use your turn to knock. This now means that all other players will have one more turn to better their score. When all players have taken their last turn, everyone turns over their cards and counts them up.

Winning Rat-A-Tat Tat Card Game

The player with the lowest score is the winner.

Rat-A-Tat Tat Variations

There are only two small rule changes that I found. First, when you turn over a jack, you place it on the discard pile and tap it twice before you get to peek at one of your cards. The other rule change is that jacks and queens are worth 10 points each not 11 points.

Fun For All

The Rat-A-Tat Tat card game is a fast and easy card game that players of all ages will love. There is a commercial version of this game that has been a best seller for many years called Rat-A-Tat Cat. It has a fun cat theme. You can shop for it here; Canadians here. Or you can get the printable rules for Rat-A-Tat Tat with regular cards here.

If you’re looking to fill game night with even more fun playing card games check out the Six Seven card game (fast action, twists and turns, and some sneaky math too), Dump the Black (also fast and full of sneaky math), and Crazy Fish (this one is just straight up fun—so much that you won’t even care who is winning!). Also, be sure to visit our Family Game Shelf shop for tons more fun ideas for game night including our Dice Sticks game and our Whacky Putt mini golf dice game! Seriously, there’s so much fun there that we can’t even tell you about all of it! Check out the shop here.