UNO Ultimate DC Card Game: Rules and Instructions for How to Play

Objective of UNO Ultimate DC

The objective of UNO Ultimate DC is to be the first player to get rid of all of your cards, or be the last remaining player.

Setup for UNO Ultimate DC

Each player chooses a character. You will take all of the cards corresponding to the character you choose. Return any characters that no player chose to the box.
Separate your Character Deck from the Danger Deck cards.
Take all of the Danger cards for each chosen character and shuffle them together to form the Danger Deck for the game.
Remove the Character Card from the rest of your Character Deck. Place it face up in front of you so you and the rest of the players can see your character’s special ability.
Shuffle your Character Deck.
Draw seven cards from your Character Deck and add them to your hand. You can look at your own hand, but you shouldn’t show the cards to the other players. The rest of the cards in your Character Deck become your Draw Pile.
The youngest player starts the game. Play starts in a clockwise direction to start the game.

UNO Ultimate DC Terms

Various cards in UNO Ultimate DC use terms that have special meaning in the game. These terms are as follows:

Add

When a card says add, you will draw the corresponding number of cards from the top of your Draw Pile. You will add them to your hand.

Draw

A Draw action forces you to draw the corresponding number of cards from the top of your Draw Pile and add them to your hand. You also lose your next turn.

Burn

Take the corresponding number of cards from the top of your Character Deck. Turn them face up and place them on top of your own personal Discard Pile (near your Draw Pile). This Discard Pile is referred to as your Burn Pile. You will take one card at a time and place it in the Burn Pile.

When a card tells you to burn cards, you normally will take them from the top of your Character Deck. The one exception to this is when a card specifically says to take the cards from your hand.

Recover

When you take the Recover action you will recover cards from your Burn Pile. You will take the corresponding number of cards from the top of your Burn Pile and add them to the bottom of your Character Deck. You will take one card at a time from your Burn Pile.

Playing UNO Ultimate DC

On your turn you will try to play a card from your hand to the play pile in the middle of the table. For each of your turns you will follow five steps.

Start of Your Turn
Playing a Card
Battle
Danger
End of Turn

Each player has a unique Character card that goes with the deck you choose. This Character card gives you a special ability. Some of these abilities have a special cost, and other activate when a certain criteria is met. If you activate your Character Card, you can use it on your turn at the time specified in the ability.

Once you have completed each of the five steps, play passes to the next player in turn order.

Start of Your Turn

You will begin each of your turns looking to see if any cards have effects that apply to the beginning of your turn. These effects can come from Danger Cards, Action Cards, or powers from your opponents’ characters.

Start of Turn Action — This player is being attacked by Black Manta. Due to the While Attacking action, at the start of each of their turns this player has to burn one card. If an Aquaman Location is in play, all of the players burn one card.

After you have resolved all of the above effects, you will look at your own character power. If the power activates at the beginning of your turn, you can choose to activate the power at this time.

Playing a Card in UNO Ultimate DC

After dealing with start of turn effects, you will move onto trying to play one of the cards from your hand.

First look at the card in the center Discard Pile. The card on top of the pile is the one that you will try to match with one of your cards. You can match a card in one of three ways.

Color
Number
Symbol

If you have a card(s) that matches any of these elements of the top card from the Discard Pile, you can play one card from your hand. Should you play an Action card, you will take the corresponding action (see The Cards of UNO Ultimate DC section below).

Playing a Card in UNO Ultimate DC — The last played card to the center Discard Pile was a yellow five. Along the bottom are two cards the Green Lantern player could choose to play. They could play the yellow two because it matches the color. They could play the blue five because it matches the number.

Playing a card — The top card on the center Discard Pile is a Reverse card. The next player could choose to play a Reverse as well since it matches the symbol of the previous card.

Should you play a card that activates your character power, you can use its effect at this time.

The first player to play a card each game can choose to play any card from their hand as there is no card on the Discard Pile to match.

You can choose to not play a card if you have one that you can play. In this case you will handle it like you didn’t have a card that you could play.

If you do not have a card in your hand that matches any of the elements of the top card from the Discard Pile, you cannot play a card. In this case you will draw the top card from your Character Deck. If you can play this new card, you can play it immediately. If not you will add the card to your hand.

Drawing a card in UNO Ultimate DC — The Superman player did not have any cards in their hand that matched the Discard Pile. Therefore they have to draw a card from their Character Deck. If they can play the card they just drew, they can play it immediately. Otherwise they will add it to their hand.

Cards of UNO Ultimate DC

Number Cards

Number cards have no special action associated with them. You can only play them if they match the color or number of the top card on the Discard Pile.

Draw Two

When you play a Draw Two card, the next player in turn order has to draw two cards from their own personal Character Deck. They will also lose their next turn.

Reverse

A Reverse card changes the turn order. If play was moving clockwise, it will now move counter-clockwise. If it was moving counter-clockwise, it will now move clockwise.

Skip

The next player in turn order loses their next turn. If that player has a Enemy Card attacking them, the enemy’s effect is ignored.

Should you get hit with a Skip card after already losing your next turn due to another card, you will ignore the effect of the Skip card.

Wild

Wild cards match any other card in the game. Therefore you can play them at any time. When you play a Wild card you get to choose the color for the Discard Pile.

In UNO Ultimate DC all of the Wild cards also have a special ability printed on them. When you play the Wild card you will take the corresponding action.

Battle in UNO Ultimate DC

Throughout the game you will have enemies attack you.

To defeat an Enemy you need to play a card to the Danger Deck Discard Pile that meets one of the defeat criteria of the enemy. If there are multiple icons in the “To Defeat” section, you only have to play a card that matches one of them. Wilds cannot be used to meet criteria other than the Wild criteria. You may not defeat an Enemy on the turn that you first drew it.

The various ways you can defeat an enemy are as follows:

Defeating an Enemy Card by color — Some Enemy Cards can be defeated by playing a specific colored card. You can defeat Poseidon by playing a yellow, red or blue card.

Defeating an Enemy Card with a Wild — Some Enemy Cards can only be defeated by playing a Wild card. Zod is one of those Enemy Cards.

Defeat Enemy with Action Card — You can play Action Cards (Draw 2, Reverse, Skip, Wild) to defeat some enemies including Bizarro.

To defeat some Enemy Cards you need to play a card that has a Danger Icon on it. This includes Hector Hammond.

This set of UNO Ultimate DC does not include one type of Enemy Card. An Enemy Card that has a # symbol in the “To Defeat” section can only be defeated if you play a number card.

Should the card you played during the Playing a Card step meet one of the requirements on the Enemy Card, you will defeat the enemy. Discard the card face up in the Danger Deck Discard Pile. Should your character have an ability that activates when you defeat an enemy, it will be triggered at this time.

Defeating an Enemy Card — Lex Luthor was attacking the Superman player. The Superman player played a yellow card on their turn. This matches Lex Luthor’s defeat criteria, so the Lex Luthor card is discarded.

Danger Cards in UNO Ultimate DC

When you play a card to the Discard Pile during the Playing a Card step, look at the top left and bottom right corners of the card. If the card you played has the Danger icon in the corners, you have activated a Danger card.

This card features the Danger Icon in the top left and bottom right corners.

Draw the top card from the Danger Deck and resolve its effects. If the Danger Deck ever runs out of cards, you will shuffle the Danger Card Discard Pile to form a new Draw Pile.

Draw a Danger Card — This player played a card that had a Danger Icon on it. They will reveal the top card from the Danger Deck and take the corresponding action.

There are four different types of Danger cards which have different affects on the game.

Enemy Cards

The main type of Danger cards are Enemy Cards.

When you draw an Enemy Card, you will place it face up in front of your Character Card. That enemy is attacking you until you defeat it. If you already had an Enemy that was attacking you, this new Enemy Card replaces the old enemy. The old Enemy Card is discarded to the Danger Deck Discard Pile. If an enemy is removed in this way, it does not count as defeating it.

You will take the “When Flipped” action as soon as you flip over the Enemy Card.

While an Enemy Card is in front of you, it could affect you in a number of ways. You will take the “While Attacking” action printed on the card on your turn or when otherwise printed on the card. This will continue until you finally defeat the enemy.

Enemy Card example — When the Bizarro card is flipped over, the player who flipped him over chooses another player to add one card to their hand. While Bizarro is attacking a player, each players’ Character Power is blank.

To remove an Enemy card you must beat it in battle. For more details check out the Battle section above.

Event Cards

When you draw an Event Card, you will read its text. One or more players will have to take the action printed on the card.

Once the action printed on the Event Card is completed, the card is added face up to the Danger Card Discard Pile.

Item Cards

There are no Item Cards included in the four decks in this set. These rules will be applied if playing with a different superhero though.

Should you draw an Item Card, you will place it in front of you. None of the Item Cards are specific to a certain character, so you can use another character’s Item Cards.

You may only have three Items Cards on your character at a time. If you draw a fourth Item Card, you need to choose one of your Item Cards to discard to the Danger Card Discard Pile.

Each Item Card you have in front of you gives you a benefit. Some Item Cards are long term and stay with you until they are discarded. Others are discarded when the corresponding Item Card is used.

Should another card force you to destroy an Item Card, you do not get to take the action corresponding to the destroyed Item Card’s “destroy effect”.

If you have multiple Item Cards that have a “At the Start of Your Turn” action, you can choose the order in which you want to use them.

Location Cards

The final type of Danger Cards are Location Cards.

When a Location Card is revealed it is placed in the middle of the table. This card applies to all of the players. Some Location Cards are beneficial, some tweak the gameplay, and others can be harmful.

A Location Card stays in place until it is removed. Should you draw a Location Card and one is already in play, the new card replaces the old location. Otherwise a Location Card can be removed due to another card that is played that destroys the current location.

End of Turn

After you have completed all of the other steps, check to see if there are any cards that have end of turn effects. If there are any cards with these effects, take the corresponding actions.

Play then passes to the next player in turn order.

Calling UNO

When you play your second to last card to the Discard Pile (you only have one card left in your hand), you should call out “UNO” as quickly as possible. You will do this to alert the other players that you are close to winning the game.

Should you not say UNO and another player catches you not saying it, you will have to draw two cards from your Character Deck. They must call you out on not saying UNO before the next player takes their turn though.

Winning UNO Ultimate DC

Unlike normal UNO there are two different ways to win UNO Ultimate DC.

Should you play the last card from your hand, you immediately win the game. If the card you played last has a Danger Icon on it, you do not have to draw a Danger card.

Throughout the game you will be drawing cards from your own personal Character Deck. Should your Character Deck ever run out of cards, you will be eliminated from the game. If only one player is left in the game, the remaining player wins the game.

To setup for the next game, you should match all of the Danger cards with their corresponding Character Decks.

Aquaman in UNO Ultimate DC

Aquaman’s character is based around trying to battle in locations related to the character. Aquaman has cards that utilize the current Location Card and give him special abilities.

Aquatic Aftershock

Aquaman’s Character Ability triggers whenever they change the active color. Should anyone else change the color of the Discard Pile before your next turn, they must burn two cards from their Character Deck. This only applies to the first player that changes the color.

Wild Cards

Deep Sea Allies

If there is a Location Card in play, destroy/discard it.

You will keep flipping Danger Cards until you reveal a new Location Card. Any cards revealed before the next Location Card are discarded.

All other player will then add one card to their hand and burn two cards.

Riptide Strike

All of the other players add one card to their hand. If a Location Card is in play, all of the other players also have to burn one card.

Sea of Storms

All of the other players must burn two cards from their Character Deck. Should a Location Card be in play, the Aquaman player also recovers three cards.

Titanic Tsunami

You will choose another player who has to skip their next turn.

If an Aquaman Location Card is in play, you will get to take another turn immediately. You will take this action instead of forcing another player to skip their turn.