What is best strategy in card game war?

Answer 1

I recommend practicing with face-up decks; this means you don't need card counting to learn the basics.

The main decision is what order to put the cards on the bottom of your deck. If you know the bottom. If your opponent has more cards than you when you win a combat, you choose the matchups for the cards you put on the bottom.

For example, if your decks are

You: A57

J

4

Him: 3K8 2Q9

You can match the Jack against the 2 to avoid losing it.

The 2Q9 sequence in this example is your opponent's 'Tail', the cards on the bottom of his deck that aren't matched on the bottom of yours. This is what you need to memorize or write down in a face-down deck to use strategy.

Greedily winning as much as you can is better than no strategy, but still not great. Once your deck is larger than your opponent's, you have the tail and your opponent gets to drive. It's better to lose a lot so that you keep control.

So the strategy I suggest is to play until your opponent has the tail. Then use your matchup power to win Aces and Kings, by War if necessary, while losing as many other cards as possible. When you have all of one rank, proceed to the next rank down. By the time you lose control, you should have, roughly, the top half of the deck vs. the bottom half of the deck.

On defense, there's not much you can do. Try to spot possible wars while you're building the tail and keep your aces out of the way. Try to clump pairs of the same card to force your opponent into wars they don't want - setting up an unavoiable war and losing it is one of the easiest ways to regain control. Set up pairs of similarly-valued cards as well, since it gives your opponent less options. When you have no idea what else to do, put your lower card first.

This might not be the best possible strategy, but it beats most players the vast majority of the time.

Oh, and if you can't be bothered counting cards, putting your high card in front so it comes up more helps a bit vs. people who play randomly but loses horribly to anyone who knows what they're doing.