Drinking Card Games

Spice up your next get-together

Get the playing cards out - it's time for a drinking game

Playing games while drinking alcoholic drinks are hardly a new invention – they have been around as long as fermentation. But while the first drinking game recorded was nothing more than betting who could drink their beer the fastest then throwing cups against walls, things have changed a bit since then. Now there are countless drinking games throughout the world for all moods, and so we thought we would share some of our favourites for you to try at your next get-together!

Stock that fridge

Before jumping into the rules of each game, make sure your guests won't go thirsty. Home draft machines are a great way to enjoy pub-quality pints in your own home – and you don’t need a pub shed to have one. Our BLADE machine provides the ultimate home draught experience with a whole range of great beery tastes to choose from in 8L kegs.

Bussen (Ride the Bus)

Phase One: Dealing the Cards 

One player is assigned as the dealer. The dealer asks a series of questions of the other players, and they must guess the answer. If they guess wrong, they take a sip of their drink. Play continues until everyone has answered all the questions below:   

• Red or black?  
• Higher or lower than your first card?  
• In-between your last two cards or outside? 
• What suit is your next card? 

Phase Two: Building the Pyramid 

Players collect their four distributed cards and make sure to keep them secret. The dealer then builds a pyramid of face-down cards, with five cards at the bottom, four in the next row and so on until there is one card at the top. The number of sips increases as you go up the pyramid, with cards on the bottom row counting for one sip each, and the single top card counting for five sips—or a forfeit/dare if you want to spice things up. One card is then flipped each turn, and if you have a card with that suit, throw it down and take the appropriate number of sips. The player with the highest number of cards by the end must ride the bus!* 

*If it is a draw between two players, whoever has the highest number in card value is the loser! 

Phase Three: Riding the Bus 

There are as many variations of 'riding the bus' as there are beers to drink during it, so here is our version! The dealer lays 9 cards down, in a diamond format. One by one, the dealer flips a card over, asking the player if the card is red or black. If they get it right, they can progress to the next row of the diamond. If they don't, the card gets flipped back over and they take a sip. How many turns will it take you to get out of the bus? Find out! 

The game is then reset once the player completes the bus by reaching the other side of the diamond, and play continues! 

Killer 

If you loved wink wink murder as a kid, this is the game for you! Start by making a small deck of cards consisting of a red suited card, an ace of spades and fill the rest of the deck with black suited cards until the number of cards in the deck matches the number of players.  

Shuffle and give one card to each person. The person with the red card becomes the 'killer', the person with the 'spade' becomes the detective, and everyone with a black card are the civilians. Like wink wink murder, the 'killer' can kill the civilians by winking at them. When a civilian dies (as dramatically as you wish it to be) and everyone drinks to their health – then the detective tries to figure out who it is but does not reveal their identity to the group until they guess.

For every round where someone is killed, the detective must drink along. If the detective figures out who did it before they are killed, they give out as many sips as people dead. However, if the killer is found, they must drink as many sips as people they killed. In this game, you can adjust the rules as you wish – so see what you can come up with! 

Give and Take  

For those looking for a beery version of Truth or Dare, look no furtherthan Give and Take! Lay out two parallel rows of 12 cards – one is to be the 'truth' row, the other the 'dare' row. Each player is then dealt four cards each, then each player reveals a card in turn. If anyone has a card that matches (ignore suit here, just face value) the cards in the rows, then they must complete a dare or truth depending on the row. If they refuse or fail to complete the dare, they must drink for a duration of time from 1 to 12 seconds, depending on where the card was in the row. Enjoy!