Dutch Blitz Card Game: Rules for How to Play

Types of Piles

In Dutch Blitz each player will use a number of different piles of cards. Each of these piles have a different use in the game.

Wood Pile: Each player places their Wood Pile in front of themselves. As you reveal cards from your hand, you will place them face up in the Wood Pile.

Dutch Pile: Players will create these piles in the middle of the table. All of the players can play to these piles. Players will start each Dutch Pile with a one card. Players can play additional cards to these piles if their card is one higher than the current top card on the pile. The card they play must match the color of the pile they are playing the card to .

Post Piles: Each player has three Post Piles in front of themselves. Each card placed in one of these piles has to be lower then the previous card in the pile. The cards have to alternate between boys (blue and red) and girls (green and yellow). Should a player play all of the cards from a Post Pile, you will take the top card from the Blitz Pile to create a new Post Pile.

Blitz Pile: All of the players will create their own ten card Blitz Pile at the start of the game. The goal of the game is to play all of the cards from this pile before the other players.

Setup

Each player takes all of the cards from one of the decks. The decks are differentiated by the artwork on the back of the cards. Each player shuffles their own deck of cards.
All of the players will take their top three cards from their deck. They will place them face up in front of themselves to create the Post Piles. If there are only two players, each player should take the top five cards to create five Post Piles.
Each player then counts the next ten cards and places them in a face up pile to create their Blitz Pile. If you are right handed you should place this pile on your right. If you are left handed, you should place the Blitz Pile on your left. The Blitz Pile should be placed in line with the Post Piles.
The rest of the cards are held face down in each player’s hand.
One of the players (usually the scorekeeper) gives all of the players a signal to start the game.

Setting up a player's cards — Here is the setup for one of the players. The green four, red seven, and yellow three cards are this player’s post piles. The yellow two pile is the Blitz Pile. The pile of face down cards are the player’s hand. They will turn these cards over three at a time to create the Wood Pile.

How to Play Dutch Blitz

There are no turns in Dutch Blitz. As soon as the round begins, all of the players play at the same time. In order to get rid of your cards, you want to try and play them as quickly as you can. During the game you can only pick up one card at a time. You can only use one hand to play cards. Players cannot throw cards onto the piles. You must place each card on the pile that you are playing it to.

Playing Cards to the Dutch Piles

Whenever a player has a one card face up in front of themselves in either their Blitz, Post or Wood Piles; they must play the card to the middle of the table to create a new Dutch Pile. If a player plays a one card that was the only card in a Post Pile, the player takes the top card from their Blitz Pile and places it to create a new Post Pile. You can only start a Dutch Pile with a one.

Playing a one card — One of the players has created a Dutch Pile by playing a yellow one to the middle of the table. Any player that has a yellow two could play it on top of this card.

After at least one Dutch Pile has been created, all of the players need to keep track of the Dutch Piles in the middle of the table. If you have a visible card (Blitz, Post, Wood Pile) that is one higher than any of the top cards of a Dutch Pile, you can play it to the pile. The color of the card has to match the color of the Dutch Pile though. For example there is a Dutch Pile that only has a blue one in it. If you have a blue two, you can immediately play it to this pile. You should prioritize playing cards from your Blitz Pile when you can play them.

Playing a two to a Dutch Pile — One of the players had a yellow two face up on top of their Blitz Pile. They play the card on top of the yellow one.

Playing a three from a Post Pile to a Dutch Pile — This player has a yellow three in one of their Post Piles. They can play it on the yellow two Dutch Pile in the middle of the table. Since this player would only have two Post Piles left, they will take the green six from their Blitz Pile and create a new Post Pile with it.

Playing Cards to Post Piles

In addition to playing cards to the Dutch Piles, you can add cards to your Post Piles from your Blitz Pile, Wood Pile, or one of the other Post Piles. If the last card from a Post Pile is played somewhere else, you will take the top card from the Blitz Pile to start the Post Pile again.

When playing cards to the Post Piles you must follow a couple rules.

Each card you add to a Post Pile has to be one lower than the previous card in the pile. For example if the top card is a five, you can only play a four on it.
Each card in a Post Pile has to alternate between boy (red and blue) and girl (green and yellow) cards. For example if the top card on the Post Pile is red or blue, the next card you play has to be green or yellow.
When placing cards in a Post Pile, you must play them so the number and color of each card is visible at all times.

Adding cards to Post Piles — This player had a blue five card that they decided to place on top of their green six Post Pile. This is allowed because they placed a boy card on top of a girl card. This player could also move the green four from its own Post Pile and place it on the blue five. This opens up a Post Pile. They would then take the blue ten from the Blitz Pile and place it to create another Post Pile.

You can add as many cards as you want to a Post Pile. The only card you can play from a Post Pile to a Dutch Pile or another Post Pile is the current top card (lowest value card).

There is some debate about whether you can move an entire Post Pile to place it on top of another Post Pile. For example in the picture above, could you play both the green six and blue five (at the same time) on top of the red seven card. The rules do state that you can only move one card at a time which would mean you can’t move a whole Post Pile at one time. When the publisher of the game has been asked this question in the past though, they have said that you can move an entire Post Pile to another Post Pile. In this case you could move both the green six and blue five. Because these two things contradict one another, the players have to agree on whether you can move entire Post Piles.

Wood Pile

Should you have no visible cards that you can play to a Dutch Pile, you will count three cards from your hand and place them face up on top of your Wood Pile. Once cards are in your Wood Pile, you can use the top card like any other face up card. You can only use the top card at any given time. Once you play the top card, you can then play the next card and so on. Whenever you have no cards that you can play, you will flip over three new cards for the Wood Pile.

Once you have placed all of the cards from your hand onto the Wood Pile, you will take the cards from the Wood Pile back into your hand. Turn the cards so they are facedown in your hand. You will not shuffle the cards at any time during a round. Once again you will count off three cards at a time and place them on the top of your Wood Pile.

Should you ever have no cards that you can play, you can choose to take the top card from the Wood Pile and place it on the bottom of the pile. This will lead to new cards becoming visible on the Wood Pile when you turn over three cards.

End of Round

The current round ends when a player plays the last card from their Blitz Pile. They will shout our “Blitz”. At this point all players stop playing cards.

The players will then determine their points for the round.

First each player counts up how many cards they have left in their Blitz Pile. A scorekeeper writes down how many cards each player had left.

One player gathers up all of the Dutch Piles from the middle of the table and sets them aside from the rest of the cards. Each player then gathers up all of their cards from their Wood Pile, Blitz Pile, and Post Piles and sets them to the side. All of the players sort the cards from the Dutch Piles (set aside previously) by the symbols on the back of the cards. Once the players have sorted all of the cards, each player takes the cards that match their deck. Each player counts up how many cards they played to the Dutch Piles.

To calculate each player’s score for the round, they will first score one point for each card they played to the Dutch Piles. They will then subtract two points for each card left in their Blitz Pile at the end of the round. Record each player’s score.

Scoring in Dutch Blitz — This player was able to play the top cards to the Dutch Piles in the middle of the table. Since they were able to play 15 cards, they will score 15 points. They had three cards left in their Blitz Pile at the end of the round. They will lose six points for those cards. This player scores a total of nine points this round.

To play another round each player gathers all of the cards from their deck and shuffles them together to create a new deck.

Winning Dutch Blitz

The first player to reach 75 or more points wins the game. If multiple players reach 75 points after the same round, the player that scored the most points wins the game.

Making A Mistake

If at any point a player makes a mistake playing a card and another player notices, they will call out “Dutch”. At this point the game temporarily pauses. The players will look at all of the played cards to see which were played incorrectly. Any cards that were misplayed are returned to player who played them. If possible they should be returned to the position they were played from.

After all of the incorrectly placed cards are returned, the game resumes.

Components

4 player decks consisting of the following:
- 1-10 Blue Cards
- 1-10 Green Cards
- 1-10 Red Cards
- 1-10 Yellow Cards
Instructions

Year: 1960 | Publisher: Dutch Blitz Games Company | Designer: Werner Ernst George Muller

Genres: Card, Family, Speed

Ages: 8+ | Number of Players: 2-4 (more with extra decks) | Length of Game: 15-30 minutes

Difficulty: Light | Strategy: Light | Luck: Moderate-High

For more board and card game rules/how to plays, check out our complete alphabetical list of card and board game rules posts.

Written By:

Eric Mortensen

Eric Mortensen is an owner and head writer on Geeky Hobbies since 2014. He is an avid board game player and collector with over 3,000 board and card games in his collection. Since 2014 he has written more than 1,100 board game how to play guides.