Dutch Blitz Rules — How to Play and Keep Score

Overview

Dutch Blitz is a real-time race with no turns at all. Everyone plays at the same time, as fast as they can, trying to dump cards into shared piles in the middle of the table before anyone else claims the same spot. Each player uses their own colour deck of forty cards, so at the end of a round it is easy to sort out who contributed what.

Setup

Give every player one colour deck. Each player shuffles, counts out ten cards face up as their Blitz Pile, deals three cards face up beside it as Post Piles, and holds the rest face down as the Wood Pile. In a two-player game deal five Post Piles instead of three. Leave the middle of the table clear for the shared Dutch Piles.

How to play

Someone says go and everybody plays at once. Any card numbered one can be pushed into the middle to start a Dutch Pile, and Dutch Piles then build upward — two, three, four and on to ten — but only in matching colour. Post Piles build downward in alternating boy and girl symbols, and only the top card of a Post Pile can be moved into the middle. Empty Post slots are refilled from the Blitz Pile, which is the whole point: the Blitz Pile only shrinks when you keep feeding your Post Piles. When you are stuck, flip three cards at a time from your Wood Pile and play the top one if you can.

The round stops the moment somebody empties their Blitz Pile and shouts "Blitz". Hands off immediately — a card that had not landed does not count.

Scoring

Break the middle piles apart by colour so each player can count their own cards.

• +1 for every card you played into the Dutch Piles.
• −2 for every card still left in your Blitz Pile.

Round score = cards played − (2 × cards remaining). A player who blitzed has nothing left, so their score is simply their card count. Somebody who played eight cards but still holds seven scores 8 − 14 = −6, and that negative number is added to their running total. Totals really do go down, so the sheet must accept negatives.

Ending the game

Add each round to the running total. The first player to reach 75 wins. If two players cross 75 in the same round, the higher total takes it; if they are exactly level, play one more round. The app records a dead level as a shared win, so raise the target in match settings to open that deciding round.

Common variations

Longer games go to 100 or 150. Some tables let the round run until nobody can place another card rather than stopping on the Blitz call, which softens the penalty for slow players. With expansion decks five to eight can play, though the middle becomes chaos. In team play partners share a single running total.