Take 5

Take 5 or 6 Nimmt Rules

Goal of the Game

The goal of 6 Nimmt! is to avoid collecting the bullheads and to be the player with the fewest points.
6 Nimmt! is played between 2 to 10 players and ends when a player reaches 66 points. A deck of 6 Nimmt! has 104 cards.

Setup

The 4 rows in 6 Nimmt! start with a 16, 20, 31, and 35 in this example
  1. Thoroughly shuffle all of the cards.
  2. Deal 10 facedown cards to each player.
  3. Form a vertical line of 4 faceup cards in the following manner: take the top 4 cards from the remaining (undealt) cards and place them on the table face up. Each of these 4 cards represents the start of a row. Each row can contain a maximum of 5 cards.
  4. Set aside the remaining pile of cards.

Course of the Game

The game is played over several rounds:

  • Each round is played in 10 turns.
  • Each turn, every player selects the card they will place on the table face down.
  • Once all players have selected the cards they wish to place, they turn them over, uncovering them.
  • The cards are placed in increasing order: the player with the lowest card is the first to place their card, followed by the player with the second-lowest card, and so on.
  • Players, one by one, place their cards at the end of one of the four rows.

How to Place Your Cards?

Game of 6 Nimmt
  • Cards are placed in rows in ascending order, increasing in value from left to right. The cards in a row don’t need to be consecutive (you can place a 25 next to a 2, for example). When a player is going to place their card, there is an important rule to remember:
    • The card should be placed in the row whose latest card is closest to and lower than its value (for example, if a player has placed a 32 and the latest cards of each row are 12, 24, 37, and 40, then the 32 card should be placed next to the 24).
  • If the card a player has placed is lower than the latest card of every row, the player must choose a row and gather all the cards in it. For example, if the latest cards in each of the rows are 12, 25, 40, and 75 and a player places a 7, then they must choose one of the 4 rows to collect, and then place their 7 as the new start of that row.
  • The player who places the 6th card in a row must collect the previous 5 cards of that row and then place their card as its new starting point.

End of a Round

A round ends when the players have played their 10 cards. Each player adds up the number of bullheads they have in their pile and writes it down on a sheet of paper.

All of the cards are then picked up and shuffled and a new round is started.

End of Game

The game ends when a player reaches 66 or more bullheads, and the player with the fewest bullheads at that moment is declared the winner.

Card Values

Here are the values of the cards in a 6 Nimmt! game:

  • The 55 card is worth 7 bullheads.
  • Multiples of 11 (except 55) are worth 5 bullheads each.
  • Multiples of 10 are worth 3 bullheads each.
  • Cards that contain the digit 5 (except 55) are worth 2 bullheads each.
  • The rest of the cards are worth only 1 bullhead each.

The reason the 55 card is worth 7 bullheads is that it is a multiple of 11 which would make it worth 5 and it also contains the digit 5 which would make it worth 2, of course 5+2 is 7, therefore it’s worth 7!

Official rules in PDF

Explore the official Take 5 or 6 Nimmt rules in PDF

Questions & Answers

What happens if 3 players place cards in a row?

This can’t happen as players place their cards one by one. If a player’s card is the 6th one placed in a row, the player must collect the previous 5 cards.

How to decide which row to collect if you place a card lower than the latest card of each of the four rows?

There are 3 things to think about when deciding which row to collect:

  • The number of bullheads you’d pick up. Most often you’d want to gather the row with the least bullheads.
  • The cards you have in your hand as you might want to try to avoid gathering more rows in future turns.
  • The cards your opponents have in their hands. If you can work out what cards other players have, then you might be able to force them to gather some rows of cards.

Variations

Remove all the cards higher than 10n + 4 (where n is the number of players) from the deck. For example, a 2 player game would only contain the cards from 1 to 24: 10(2) + 4 = 24.
This variation enables every player to know their opponents’ cards. This makes the game more complex and strategic:

  • Deal all the cards to the players.
  • Everyone gets to choose their 10 cards.
  • Place two cards each turn.
  • When you gather a row you put it in your hand (amongst the cards you already have). In this variation, the bullheads are disregarded and the first player to get rid of their cards wins the game.