Open War
(requires one deck of cards )

Setup:
Divide the deck of cards into red and black suits. Give one player the red cards (hearts and diamonds) and the other player the black cards (clubs and spades).

Play:
Each turn is a battle, and whoever plays the highest card wins that battle. After each battle, the winner collects the loser's card. The goal is to collect all of your opponent's cards.

On each turn, look at your cards and decide which one you want to play. Place it face down on the table in front of you. Your opponent will do likewise. Once you've both placed your cards, turn them over at the same time. Whoever has the high card collects both cards and puts them aside (not back into the hand).

If there's a tie - if both cards have the same value - things get very interesting. Shuffle your cards and pick three random ones from them. Place them face down on the table in front of you (on top of the card that you played initially). The other player (of course) will do the same. Now, each of you select a single card from your hand to win the battle for you. Place it face down on the table (on top of the other cards). Once you're both done, reveal your top cards. Whoever wins gets all the cards on the table. If there's another tie, there's another "war".

Once you don't have any more cards in your "hand", pick up the cards you've been collecting from the battles. This is your new hand.

Card Values
The cards are numbered, with Ace high. Ace beats a King, which beats a Queen, which beats a Jack, which beats a 10, and so on. The only thing that beats an Ace is a "2", and everything else in the deck beats the "2".

Variations:
Sometimes, the games can drag on forever. One answer to this is to decide ahead of time that the game will be over once someone only has 6 cards.

Notes:
This is simply a variation of an old card game known as "War". In that version you didn't look at your cards, or even split the deck evenly, but simply played randomly. Looking at the cards and selecting for each battle makes the game much more interesting, however. I call it "Open War" because the choice of cards is "open".