Regular Jackaroo is a game for four players played in teams, players who are seated across each other form a team, in which one set of playing cards (52 cards without the joker) and 16 stones are used, four stones for each player, all four of one colour.
Board sections:
Jackaro is played on its own special playing board, which consists of 6 main sections:
1. Home section: there are four of them on the playing board; A home for every player.
2. Base hole: there are four of them on the playing board; A base for every player.
3. Safety zone: There are four of them on the playing board, a safety zone for each player.
4. Track Zone: There is one shared track for all players.
5. The discard pile/ fire section.
6. The card pile section.
Cards and Dealing
The objective of the game is to move the stones from the home to the base and move them on the track to the safety zone, the team that moves all its eight stones to the safety zone first is considered the winning team.
Each player chooses four stones of the same colour and places them in his/her own home, the dealer deals 4 cards one at a time to each player, and the rest of the cards are placed in the pile of cards section.
The cards’ functions in Jackaroo differs from the cards' functions in other card games as follows:
- Ace cards: can be used to move any stone from the home to the base, or to move the stone inside the track either one step or 11 steps, as you like.
- King cards (k): Its function is only to move any stone from the home to the base.
- Jack cards (J): used to exchange any stone of yours for another player's stone, as long as neither of the two stones is in the home, the base, or the safety zone.
- The 7 cards: their value can be divided into steps for two of your stones.
- The 4 cards: Its function is to move any of your stones 4 steps to the back.
- The rest of the cards: enables you to move one of your stones forward on the track according to the value of the card.
How to play
At the beginning of the game, the players choose the dealer randomly, and the dealer's job is to shuffle the cards well and deal 4 cards to each player one at a time. The game starts with the player sitting to the dealer’s left, and the turn moves clockwise. After the cards are all finished in the pile, the cards in the discard pile are taken, shuffled and placed in the pile of cards section, the new dealer is the player sitting to the left of the first dealer and so on until the game ends when all of the team’s stones are moved to their safety zone.
Special rules
● If your stone is stopped on another stone, the other stone is returned to the home section.
● If there is any stone on the players base, it cannot be bypassed, killed, or altered.
● You cannot skip yourself, in any case.
● If there are two stones in a row, the one in front is considered a "base"; so it cannot be bypassed, killed or altered.
● To enter the safety zone, the value of the card played must be sufficient to allow you to enter the stone into the safety zone, so that you cannot turn again.