UNO Elite NFL Card Game: Rules for How to Play

For a complete list of all of the players included in the 2024 Core set, check out our card list post.

Objective

The objective UNO Elite NFL is to be the first player to get rid of all of the cards from your hand.

Setup

Separate the UNO cards from the NFL Player cards. The UNO cards do not feature any players on them and have a black border on the back.
Choose a player to shuffle all of the UNO cards. After shuffling the cards, they will deal seven cards facedown to each player. You can look at the cards you are dealt, but you shouldn’t show them to the other players.
Place the remaining UNO cards facedown on the table to form the Draw Pile.
Turn over the top card from the Draw Pile to form the Discard Pile. Should an action card be flipped over (any card that is not a number), you will ignore its effect and flip over another card.
Shuffle the NFL Player cards and deal eight cards facedown to each player. The rest of the cards are set aside as they won’t be used in the game.
Each player takes their eight NFL Player cards and shuffles them. After shuffling the cards you will flip over the top three cards. These three cards form your “Lineup”. Place the remaining NFL Player cards facedown in a pile next to your Lineup. These cards form your Player Draw Pile. Leave room next to the Player Draw Pile for a Discard Pile.

Creating your initial Lineup — This player’s initial Lineup is Justin Herbert, David Andrews, and Tommy Devito. The pile to the right is their personal Player Draw Pile.

The game does not say who starts the game or in what turn order play begins with. All or at least most UNO games have the player to the left of the dealer start the game with play moving clockwise to start the game.

How to Play UNO Elite NFL

On your turn you will try to play one of the cards from your hand to the Discard Pile. Look at the top card on the Discard Pile. You are looking for a card that matches one of three elements from the top card on the Discard Pile.

Color
Number
Symbol (the Elite Icon does not count as a matching symbol)

If you have a card that matches one of the elements of the top Discard Pile card, you can play it. You can only play one card on your turn. If you play an Action card (a card without a number on it), you will take a special action. See our Card Meanings post for details on what each card does. Should you play a card with the Elite Icon (star) on it, you can potentially activate one of your NFL Player cards. See the Activating an NFL Player Card section below for more details.

Playing a card to match a green three — The top card on the Discard Pile is a green three. Pictured are four potential cards that the next player could play on their turn. The green five could be played because it matches the color. The blue three matches the number. The Elite Wild and Wild Recover cards are both wild so they can be played at any time.

Matching a Recover card — The top card on the Discard Pile is a Recover card. The next player could play their own Recover card because it matches the symbol.

If you have a card that you can play but don’t want to play it, you can choose not to play it. You will play the rest of your turn as if you didn’t have a card that you could play.

After you have played a card and potentially taken a special action, your turn ends. Play passes to the next player in turn order.

Drawing a Card

If you do not have a matching card or you choose not to play one, you will have to draw the top card from the Draw Pile in the middle of the table. Look at the card that you just drew. If you can play the card you just drew, you can play it immediately. Otherwise you will add the card to your hand.

If you chose not to play a card from your hand that you could have played, you cannot choose to play the card now after you drew a card.

Should the Draw Pile ever run out of cards, you will shuffle the Discard Pile to form a new Draw Pile.

After you draw a card and potentially play it, your turn ends. Play passes to the next player in turn order.

Activating an NFL Player Card

There are a number of cards in the UNO deck that feature the Elite Icon (star) on them. Each color has a 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, and 9 card that have the icon on them along with the Elite Wild cards. When you play a card that has an Elite Icon on them, you can potentially play one of the NFL Player cards from your Lineup.

This green one card has the Elite Icon on it.

When you play a card with the icon on it, look at the three cards in your Lineup. See if one of the cards match the current color of the Discard Pile. If you have a card that matches the color, you can activate the card’s ability. You may only activate one card each turn. If you have a card that you can activate, you can choose not to activate it.

Activating an NFL Player card — The current player played a green card with the Elite Icon on it. They can activate one of the Player Cards from their Lineup if the card is green. Since Justin Herbert’s card is green, they can activate his ability.

Should you choose to use your foil cards, some of the Player cards are unique. If the Player Card features two colors, you can activate its ability if either color matches the Discard Pile’s color. If the Player Card is wild, you can activate it whenever you play a card with an Elite Icon.

Two color and wild Player Cards — This Courtland Sutton card is both green and blue so it can be activated by an Elite Icon of either color. The Najee Harris card is wild so it can be activated by any Elite Icon.

Should you not have any NFL Player cards in your Lineup that match the current color, you cannot activate any of your cards.

When you choose to activate a card, you will perform the action printed on the bottom of the card. See our card meanings post to see what each symbol means.

After you take the action of the card you activate, you will add the card you activated face up to your personal Player Discard Pile. You will then draw the top card from your Player Draw Pile and add it to your Lineup. Your turn will then end with play passing to the next player in turn order.

Should your Player Draw Pile ever run out of cards, you do not reshuffle the Player Discard Pile. The only way to get cards back into your Player Draw Pile is to use the Recover action. See the card meanings post for more details.

Calling UNO

When you play the second to last card from your hand (you only have one card left), you need to call out “UNO”. This is to tell the other players that you are close to winning the game.

If someone catches you not saying UNO, you are forced to draw two cards. A player has to call you out before the next player begins their turn.

Winning the Game

UNO Elite NFL ends when a player plays the last card from their hand. The first player to play the last card from their hand wins the game.

To play another game you will shuffle all of the cards.

Draft Mode

Instead of randomly choosing your players at the start of the game, you can choose to use the Draft Mode in order to have more control over what Player Cards you will have in your deck. Outside of changing how you choose your Player Cards, the rules are the same as the main game.

At the beginning of the game you will shuffle all of the Player Cards. You will then flip over a number of cards equal to the number of players plus two. Lay the cards on the table so everyone can see them.

Starting with the youngest player, each player chooses one Player Card. They will add the card to their Player deck. The next player in clockwise order then chooses a card. This continues until all of the players have chosen a card (there should be two cards left).

Draft Mode choosing cards — In this four player game the first player gets to choose one of these six Player Cards. The next player in clockwise order then gets to pick one of the remaining cards. This continues until all of the players have taken a card. Then you will reveal six new cards and the players will pick another player.

The two cards that aren’t chosen are returned to the bottom of the pile of Player Cards. You will then flip over a new set of cards equal to the number of players plus two. The player that took the last card in the previous round gets to choose the first card from this new set of cards. The players will then choose cards in counterclockwise order.

This process is repeated until each player has eight Player Cards. Each player shuffles their eight cards to create their Player Draw Pile. The game is then played the same as the normal game.

Dynasty Mode

If each player has their own set of NFL Player Cards you can choose to use the Dynasty Mode rules to create your roster of Player Cards. Before you begin the game each player creates their own Player Deck. You can choose whichever players you want, but there are a couple rules that you must follow:

Your Player Deck has to have exactly eight cards.
You can only have one card of each player. Basically you can’t have two cards with the same player name.
You must choose at least one blue, green, red, and yellow card to add to your deck. If you add a Dual Color card, they will count as one of the two colors.
No more than two Wild cards and/or Dual Color card can be added to your deck.
Look at the actions on the cards you want to add. You cannot have more than four of the same action in your deck. For example you can only have four cards with the Draw action icon on them. Should a Player Card have multiple symbols, it will count as one of each symbol. If an action has a modifier (Targeted, Everyone, etc), it still counts as one of the base actions. For example a Target Draw card still counts as a Draw action.

Picking your roster in Dynasty Mode — This set of Players Cards would be allowed since it follows all of the rules.

UNO Elite NFL FAQ

If you have any questions about how to play UNO Elite NFL, leave a comment below on this post. I will try to answer any questions asked as best and as quickly as possible.

Components

19 Blue Cards (one 0, two each of 1-9)
19 Green Cards (one 0, two each of 1-9)
19 Red Cards (one 0, two each of 1-9)
19 Yellow Cards (one 0, two each of 1-9)
12 Recover Cards (three of each color)
18 Elite Wild Cards
6 Wild Recover Cards
56 NFL Player Cards (randomized in each copy of the game)
4 Foil NFL Player Cards (randomized in each copy of the game)

For each color one 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, and 9 card have the Elite Icon on them.

Year: 2024 | Publisher: Mattel

Genres: Card, Family

Ages: 7+ | Number of Players: 2-7 | Length of Game: 15-30 minutes

Difficulty: Light | Strategy: Light | Luck: High

For more board and card game rules/how to plays, check out our complete alphabetical list of card and board game rules posts.

Written By:

Eric Mortensen

Eric Mortensen is an owner and head writer on Geeky Hobbies since 2014. He is an avid board game player and collector with over 3,000 board and card games in his collection. Since 2014 he has written more than 1,100 board game how to play guides.