Been a while since my last how-to, but it seems no one is quite sure how to play this, and it's one of my favorite games!

This is gonna sound kind of complicated, but I swear it's not, ok?

Terms

• Trick a trick is a round (each player has played a card, and someone has taken the pile)

• Shoot the moon (take all the Hearts (13 of them) PLUS the Queen of Spades)

• Hearts (unless you shoot the moon, each of these is worth 1 pt. Whoever has the least points, wins)

• Queen of Spades (unless you shoot the moon, she is worth 13 pts. Whoever has the least points, wins)

• Suit (Spades, Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts)

Goal

You want to avoid taking any tricks that contain Hearts (suit) or Queen of Spades. There is something called shooting the moon, where you take all 13 Hearts, and the Queen of Spades, but this is pretty tricky, and if you fail, then you're pretty screwed. However, if you're successful, you get 0 points, and all of your opponents GAIN 26 points. The goal is to have the lowest number of points.

ALRIGHT SO!

Now that that's out of the way, we can get down to business. The way that this game is played is that each trick, every player must play a card. You must follow the suit that's been led if possible. However, if you have no cards of the current suit, you can play another suit. This does not affect other players. They must still follow the original suit. Whoever plays the card with the highest value will take the trick (I will include card values below). Whoever takes the trick leads the next round. This progresses until someone runs out of cards and plays a HEART.

Hearts may not be led until someone discards (runs out of the suit that's been led, and plays a Heart) one. After that, Hearts are fair game. This is when the game gets risky. Only Hearts and the Queen of Spades carry any points (you want to have the least points). **Note** Queen of Spades can be led at any time. 

I think that about covers it. Key things to remember are:

• You generally want to play your highest cards towards the beginning of the round, that way you can get rid of them while there are no stakes. Just be careful of the Queen of Spades.

• Get rid of the Queen of Spades as fast as you can. It is worth a lot of points, and you DON'T want points (unless you're shooting the moon!)

• Hearts can't be led until they're "broken" by another player.

• ONLY HEARTS AND QUEEN OF SPADES ARE WORTH POINTS

• YOU DON'T WANT POINTS

• SHOOTING THE MOON IS DIFFICULT.

Suit Values

I'll list these highest to lowest.

• Ace
• King
• Queen
• Jack
• 10
• 9
• etc.

If you have any other questions, comments, or suggestions, feel free to leave them below! If I've missed anything (I'm sure I have, there's a lot to go over!) please let me know, and I'll update this. Have fun! :)