Blaze, the perfect game for you!

Do you love Durak and have played it countless times? Or do you not know it and just fancy a new, fresh game experience? Then try playing Blaze!

Our fun card game Blaze is a stand-alone card game for 3–5 players, which is a Durak game at heart and therefore offers all Durak players a fresh alternative for social gaming. As in Durak, the main aim is to challenge the player on the left, whereby the left player of the challenged player can support you by attacking him with color and number values, which he must fend off with the same or higher values. But then you can continue to challenge with the new numerical values that have now come into play. So you try to get rid of your cards in order to draw new ones until the draw pile is empty, and you all have to try to give the last cards from your hand to another player before your opponents do. So far so Durak.

Blaze is an independent and fresh alternative to Durak

Blaze takes the core principle and turns it into something completely new. The most striking difference is probably that there are only three instead of four colors. There are exactly two of each number in the three colors, which makes it easier to keep track. And that is also the core focus of the game, because in Blaze you collect points in two rounds instead of just picking a loser as in Durak. You get these in two different ways. Firstly, through the bets, which must be placed by all players as soon as the draw pile is empty. You have to determine face down who the player is, that will lose this round. If you are right, you get a point, if you are wrong, the player you bet on gets the point. You can also bet on yourself. Furthermore, points are awarded at the end for the players who got rid of their cards the quickest. The loser goes home empty-handed. In the second round, more points are awarded for winning quickly at the end.

BUT: We have not only added more rules, but also changed existing ones that support the new approach to the game. For example, it is no longer possible to pass on a challenge with the same number. Instead, you can fend off the challenge with the same number of the same color. We have also introduced the phoenix card. It changes its value. If you challenge a player with it, the phoenix will have a value of 10 and is therefore the strongest card in the game and can only be countered by trumps or the same phoenix. However, if you want to counter with it, its value changes to 0 and therefore has the lowest value in the game. So you have to pay close attention to who has which phoenix in their hand, or where which phoenix is. Because there’s a good reason why two rounds are played in Blaze!

Before the first round, all the cards are shuffled. The pile is divided into two piles of approximately the same size. One pile is used as a draw pile for the first round, the other for the second round. This means that in the first round you gradually get to know the cards that are in play, and in the second round you have to consider which cards have already been removed from the game. But to make this not too easy, in the second round you take the starting hand from the discard pile of the first round. Pretty cerebral, isn’t it? That’s true, and that’s exactly where Blaze‘s strength lies, because it completely changes the dynamics of the original Durak game. It’s no longer enough just to play well, you have to know the location of the cards to make the right bets and predict which player will make which move next. Maybe you don’t want a player to be unable to refuse your challenge, because then the next player will challenge you with the trump phoenix? Blaze offers you a strategically fun round full of crazy action!

Blaze is a fun card game for ages 10 and up for 3–5 players, which is based on the rules of Durak. One round takes about 20 minutes.

The illustrations are by Nadezhda Mikryukova. As part of the Radiant Culture Series, Blaze features a shimmering gold effect on the cards and the box.

In total, the card game comes with 1 rulebook & 58 deluxe cards. You can buy Blaze from us HeidelBÄRen in our online store or from well-stocked specialist retailers.