Mattis Card Game Rules

Mattis is a Norwegian card game for two to six players, played in two rounds that want opposite things from you. The first round is a fight for cards. The second is a race to get rid of them.

Whoever is left holding the last cards is Mattis, and staying clear of that is what the whole table is playing for.

A standard 52-card deck with the jokers left out.

• 2 to 6 players
• Table room for a stock in the middle and a won pile in front of every player

Two players should set ten cards aside face down before the deal, without anyone looking at them. Otherwise both of you would know exactly what the other holds once the second round begins.

Nothing is written down, so the pen can stay in the drawer.

Ace is high, then king, queen, jack, ten and on down to the two.

Suits are ignored in the first round. The three of hearts beats the two of diamonds, and that is all there is to it.

The second round works the other way around. There you have to follow the suit on the table, and the trump suit outranks everything else.

The dealer gives three cards to each player and puts the rest of the deck face down in the middle as the stock.

The player to the dealer's left starts, laying one card face up in front of their left-hand neighbour. That one opponent answers it. The card does not travel around the table.

The neighbour has to answer with a card from hand, and any card is legal. The higher of the two cards wins the trick. The winner puts both cards face down in a pile of their own and leads the next card, again to their own left-hand neighbour.

Nothing forces you to win. Answer a low lead with something even lower and your opponent is welcome to both cards, which is often the smart play. The cards you win here become the hand you have to shed in the second round, and low cards are the hard ones to shed.

Two cards of the same rank mean war. Both players lay another card, and the higher of those two takes everything in the trick. Equal again and they carry on until one of them comes out on top.

Top your hand back up to three cards from the stock after every card you play, for as long as the stock lasts.

You may also chance it. Instead of playing from your hand, draw the top card of the stock, and whatever it turns out to be, that is the card you have to lay.

Chancing pays off when your hand is all cards you would rather keep, or when nothing you hold can win a trick you want.

Whoever has to draw the last card of the stock keeps it out of their hand. It goes face down to one side, unseen, and its suit becomes trump for the second round.

Play carries on while at least two players still hold cards. As soon as one player is the only one with cards in hand, those cards join that player's won pile. The holder of the trump card then turns it over, shows it around and adds it to their own pile, so the whole table knows the trump suit before the shedding starts.

A player who won no cards at all in the first round is a Blåmattis, blue Mattis, and enters the second round empty-handed.

The pile you won is your hand now. One player may hold four cards and another twenty, and every card has to go.

The holder of the trump card leads first, with any card at all. Low is usually the wise choice.

The next player has to lay a higher card in the same suit, or a trump. Once a trump is down, only a higher trump beats it. Anything short of that and you pick a card up instead.

The highest card takes the trick and its player leads the next one. The trick itself is worth nothing. Those cards go into a common heap, and it makes no difference at all who took them.

A trick is not finished until it holds as many cards as there are players at the table. Norwegians call a finished trick an avstikk.

With no legal card to play, you pick up the first card that was laid to the trick, not the last one.

Three players, spades are trump. Anna leads the four of clubs and Bjørn covers it with the jack. Cato holds no higher club and no spade, so the four of clubs goes into his hand. That leaves the jack alone on the table, and the turn moves on to Anna, who now has to beat it. Bjørn plays after her, which brings the trick up to three cards for three players, and Bjørn takes the avstikk.

A Blåmattis has nothing to play, so their first turn goes on picking a card up. Everybody has to lay at least one card before they can be finished, and an empty hand is no shortcut out of the game.

Lay one card, shed the rest, and you are out and safe.

The others keep playing for second place, third place and on down the line. The game stops when a single player is left holding cards. That player is Mattis, and the next deal is the penalty.

One pass through both rounds is a whole game. Deal again if you want another one.

Mattis and Dog are all but the same game. Two rounds, three cards each, the last card of the stock as trump, and a loser stuck with everything.

The first round is where they part. Mattis plays two-card tricks between you and the player on your left. In Dog every player lays a card to each trick, which lets two or more of them end up at war at the same time, and the highest war is the one that counts.

The second round is identical in both. Mattis is the easier one to teach, Dog the one with more to keep track of.

Plenty of tables allow sequences in the second round. A sequence is two or more cards in order in the same suit, say the five, six and seven of hearts, laid as a single move.

Any higher card or higher sequence in the same suit beats it, and so does a trump. Length makes no difference, so a single card can beat a run of three.

If you cannot answer and the trick was opened with a sequence, the whole sequence comes into your hand. Some tables count only three cards or more as a sequence.

This page follows the Norwegian description of Mattis. Two to six players, a 52-card deck without jokers, and a first round of two-card tricks played to the neighbour on your left. A player who cannot answer in the second round picks up the first card in the trick, the rule Norwegians call undertrekk. Tables where everybody plays to every trick are covered under the variants, and that version has a page of its own here as Dog.