Complete Card Reference
This page lists every card in every deck this game uses, how many of each there are, what each is worth at the end of a round, and how likely you are to draw one. The numbers below are read directly from the game’s own deck builder, so they describe exactly what you are playing with — not a generic rule book.
On this page
The Standard deck (112 cards)
There are four colours — red, yellow, green and blue — and each colour contains 26 cards. Eight further cards are colourless wilds. That gives 4 × 26 + 8 = 112.
| Card | Per colour | In deck | Points each | Total points |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number 0 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 0 |
| Numbers 1–9 | 2 of each (18) | 72 | Face value | 360 |
| Skip | 2 | 8 | 20 | 160 |
| Reverse | 2 | 8 | 20 | 160 |
| Draw Two (+2) | 2 | 8 | 20 | 160 |
| Discard All | 1 | 4 | 40 | 160 |
| Wild | — | 4 | 50 | 200 |
| Wild Draw Five (+5) | — | 4 | 50 | 200 |
| Total | 26 | 112 | — | 1,400 |
Two figures from that table are worth memorising. The deck holds 1,400 points across 112 cards, so the average card is worth 12.5 points — which makes an average eight-card starting hand worth about 100. And 36 of the 112 cards are action or wild cards, so just under a third of everything you draw does something other than match a number.
A difference from the commercial rules worth flagging: this game uses a Wild Draw Five where the traditional deck has a Wild Draw Four, and it adds a Discard All card that has no traditional equivalent. Both are deliberate — they make rounds swing harder — but if you learned the game from a physical deck, expect those two differences.
What each card does
| Card | Effect when played | Playable on |
|---|---|---|
| Number 0–9 | Nothing. Passes the turn. | Same colour, or the same number in any colour. |
| Skip | The next player loses their turn. Skipping all the way round returns the turn to you. | Same colour, or any other Skip. |
| Reverse | Direction of play reverses. With two players this acts as a Skip. | Same colour, or any other Reverse. |
| Draw Two (+2) | Next player draws 2 and is skipped — or answers with their own +2 if stacking is on. | Same colour, or any other Draw Two. |
| Discard All | Plays itself and every other card of its colour from your hand at the same time. | Same colour, or any other Discard All. |
| Wild | You name the colour that play continues in. | Anything. |
| Wild Draw Five (+5) | You name the colour; the next player draws 5 and is skipped, unless they answer with their own +5. | Anything. |
| Skip Everyone (No Mercy) | Every other player is skipped at once, so you immediately take another turn. | Same colour, or any other Skip Everyone. |
| Wild Draw Ten (+10) (No Mercy) | You name the colour; the next player draws 10 and is skipped, unless they answer with their own +10. | Anything. |
Note the like-for-like stacking rule: a draw card can only be answered by the same draw card. A Draw Two cannot answer a Wild Draw Five, and nothing can answer a Wild Draw Color.
The No Mercy deck (124 cards)
No Mercy uses the Standard deck plus twelve extra cards. Each colour gains two Skip Everyone cards, and four Wild Draw Ten cards join the wilds — so each colour now holds 28 cards and there are 12 colourless cards.
| Added card | Per colour | In deck | Points each | Total points |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Skip Everyone | 2 | 8 | 30 | 240 |
| Wild Draw Ten (+10) | — | 4 | 60 | 240 |
| No Mercy deck total | 28 | 124 | — | 1,880 |
That pushes the average card value from 12.5 to about 15.2 points — roughly 21% more expensive to be caught holding — and it raises the share of non-number cards from 32% to 39%. Combined with compulsory stacking and the 25-card knockout, this is why No Mercy rounds end with much larger scores. Full details on the No Mercy page.
The Flip deck (116 double-sided cards)
Flip mode uses 116 cards, and every one of them is printed on both sides. Only one side is active at a time for the whole table; a Flip card turns every hand, the draw pile and the discard pile over simultaneously. A card's two faces are always different colours, so a flip genuinely rearranges your hand rather than just recolouring it.
Light side
| Card | Per colour | In deck | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number 0 | 1 | 4 | 0 |
| Numbers 1–9 | 2 of each | 72 | Face value |
| Skip | 2 | 8 | 20 |
| Reverse | 2 | 8 | 20 |
| Draw One (+1) | 2 | 8 | 10 |
| Flip | 2 | 8 | 20 |
| Wild | — | 4 | 50 |
| Wild Draw Two (+2) | — | 4 | 40 |
Dark side
| Card | Per colour | In deck | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number 0 | 1 | 4 | 0 |
| Numbers 1–9 | 2 of each | 72 | Face value |
| Skip Everyone | 2 | 8 | 30 |
| Reverse | 2 | 8 | 20 |
| Draw Five (+5) | 2 | 8 | 20 |
| Flip | 2 | 8 | 20 |
| Wild | — | 4 | 50 |
| Wild Draw Color | — | 4 | 60 |
The light side totals 1,280 points and the dark side 1,520 — so the same 116 cards become about 19% more expensive to hold the moment somebody plays a Flip. That is the number to keep in your head: flipping to dark is not a neutral event for whoever is holding a big hand. More on the Flip mode page.
Draw probabilities and your opening hand
These are the chances that a single card drawn from a full, freshly shuffled Standard deck is of a given type.
| You draw… | Count | Chance | Roughly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Any number card | 76 | 67.9% | 2 in 3 |
| Any action or wild card | 36 | 32.1% | 1 in 3 |
| A card of one specific colour | 26 | 23.2% | Just under 1 in 4 |
| Any Wild (either kind) | 8 | 7.1% | 1 in 14 |
| A Skip (any colour) | 8 | 7.1% | 1 in 14 |
| A Reverse (any colour) | 8 | 7.1% | 1 in 14 |
| A Draw Two (any colour) | 8 | 7.1% | 1 in 14 |
| A Wild Draw Five | 4 | 3.6% | 1 in 28 |
| A Discard All | 4 | 3.6% | 1 in 28 |
| One specific numbered card, e.g. red 7 | 2 | 1.8% | 1 in 56 |
Applied to the eight cards you are dealt at the start of a round, the averages work out at about 5.4 number cards, 1.7 action cards and 0.6 wilds — and about two cards in each colour. Two practical consequences follow:
- Most opening hands have no Wild at all. You will hold at least one roughly half the time. Planning a round around having a Wild in reserve is planning around a coin flip.
- A colour you have none of is normal, not unlucky. With two cards per colour on average, being void in one colour at the deal is very common — which is exactly why an opponent naming that colour hurts so much, and why you should be watching for the same weakness in them.
One note on how the deck is shuffled
In the interest of being straight with you: this game does not use a perfectly uniform shuffle. It applies a small deliberate bias that nudges action and wild cards slightly earlier in the deck, so they turn up a little more often in dealt hands and early draws than pure chance would produce. The effect is intentionally subtle — it is there because rounds with no action cards in them are boring, not to influence who wins, and it applies identically to you and to every computer opponent.
The probabilities in the table above are the mathematical baseline for a uniform shuffle. Treat them as very close to accurate rather than exact, with real action-card frequency a touch higher than listed.