5 Card Sorry!

Lookout Texas Hold 'Em! 5 Card Sorry! is now the hot game in town!

Back in the early 80s, my father and I decided the original Sorry! game and rules were too boring, too robotic. The game was a process of going through the motions flipping one card over at a time and leaving it entirely up to chance. Strategy, a key element in making a game great, was no where to be found.

There was so much potential in the original. Just look at the board! There are safe houses, slides, and curveball playing cards (my favorite is the 11 switch). And don't you just love the Sorry! font? I can't get enough of it. But the makers botched it by keeping the rules elementary and targeting it toward children under 12.

I don't understand. So this game was suppose to teach kids to say Sorry! when they, by chance (i.e. it's not their fault), killed another player? I don't see the lesson. The only long term effect I saw happening was kids learning how to say Sorry! and not mean it.

Throwing the above out the window, my dad and I changed three things that made Sorry! into an all out vicious, deliberately killing rainbow colored survival game. Three simple changes created a monster fight. Here they are:

1. Deal 5 cards out to each player. Each player plays from their hand. When you play one of your cards, you need to pick up another. Always have 5 cards in hand.
2. At the start of the game, each player gets one of their playing pieces active in the 1st box.
3. If you use the 2 card to make a playing piece active, you place it on the 2nd box from your start, and not on the 1st box.
   

Rule #1 not only adds strategy to Sorry! but makes knocking off other players deliberate. A game of sweet revenge indeed! Rules #2 and #3 help speed the game up a bit. The original had you wait until a 1, 2, or Sorry! appeared to get you out of start. Often, you could take a brief nap before someone got out. Rule #2 gets you going right from the beginning. Rule #3 allows you more room to get playing pieces out of start, or another chance to knock someone off if they are sitting in your 2nd box.

I hope you enjoy these new rules of Sorry!

I recently viewed a re-released version of Sorry! and saw they have Adult rules that are similar to the above, but not exactly the same. These rules must have come out recently because they weren't present in our early 80s version.