How to play Spite & Malice
Spite & Malice is a fast, cutthroat two-player card game — half solitaire, half race against your opponent. Here's exactly how it works, matching how Card Night deals and plays it.
The goal
Each player has a 20-card Payoff pile. Empty yours first and you win — everything else on the table exists to slow that down or speed it up.
Setup
- Two standard decks are shuffled together (104 cards, no jokers) into a shared stock pile.
- Each player is dealt a 20-card Payoff pile, face down except the top card, which is turned face up.
- Each player is dealt a 5-card hand from the stock.
- Each player has 4 empty discard piles in front of them.
- 4 shared build stacks sit empty in the middle of the table, open to both players.
Card Night deals for you automatically and figures out who goes first by comparing both players' face-up Payoff cards — highest card starts (Kings count highest). Ties get reshuffled and redealt.
Your turn
On your turn, play as many cards as you can onto the four shared build stacks, then discard once to end your turn. You can play a card from three places:
- The top card of your Payoff pile — this is the one you actually want to play, every chance you get.
- Any card in your hand.
- The top card of one of your own discard piles (never your opponent's).
There's no limit on how many cards you can build in a turn — keep playing as long as you have a legal move. If you ever empty your hand while building, it's refilled to 5 cards immediately from the stock so you can keep going.
Build stacks: Ace to Queen
Each of the 4 build stacks starts empty and must be started with an Ace. From there, cards go on in strict ascending order — 2, 3, 4, and so on up to Queen. The moment a stack reaches 12 cards (Ace through Queen), it's complete: all 12 cards are shuffled back into the shared stock immediately, and the stack is open again for anyone to start over with a new Ace. Completing a stack doesn't end your turn — keep playing.
Kings are wild
Every King (all 8 of them, across both decks) is wild. Play one onto a build stack and it stands in for whatever rank that stack needs next — it just doesn't advance the count the way a real card of that rank would signal to your opponent. Kings can't be discarded onto a build stack from a discard pile before you've drawn them there through normal play, and they're too valuable to give away lightly — see the tips below.
Ending your turn
When you're out of legal builds — or you'd simply rather stop — discard exactly one card from your hand onto any one of your 4 discard piles. Any card can go on any pile; there's no rank restriction. This is the only way a turn ends, and it's mandatory: you can't pass without discarding.
One exception: if playing a card empties your Payoff pile, the game ends immediately, mid-turn — no discard required. You've won.
Winning (and the rare draw)
First player to play the last card off their Payoff pile wins. If the shared stock ever runs completely dry and the player to move has no legal move left at all, the game ends in a draw — rare, but possible.
Tips
- Always play your Payoff top card the moment it's legal. It's the only card that actually brings you closer to winning — everything else is just clearing a path or stalling.
- Don't burn Kings early. A wild card is precious exactly when you're stuck; playing one from your hand or a discard pile just to tidy up costs you flexibility later.
- Watch your discard piles. Since you can only ever play from the top of a discard pile, burying a card you'll need soon under one you don't can cost you several turns to dig back out.
- Playing bots: Card Night's bot opponent is unapologetically greedy — it plays its Payoff top card whenever it legally can, above everything else. Matching that instinct is the single best way to keep pace with it.