Menko Rules




Ohtani-san says...
The rules
of menko are quite simple and involves, for ease of writing, two
‘players’ with both placing their chosen menko on the ground and trying to flip
the opponent’s menko by slamming it with a heavier or “slammer” menko. If you
flip one of your foe’s cards you get to claim it and if he flips yours – the
same applies. It’s actually a similar concept to the game of marbles and almost
exactly like the POG craze in recent times. There are a couple of variations of
menko rules that were also equally as popular and less vicious. "Gu-choki-pa”
marks on the back of the menko are played as rock-scissors-paper. Kids took out
one of their menko to compare with their opponent's simultaneously following a
given signal. If they won, they take home the opposing menko. Playing with
"Fighting Numbers" is largely the same; trying to outnumber your opponent's
menko on certain digits. For example, one player might have a Fighting Number
of 58786 on his particular menko and the other might have 777596587 on his. If
they were dueling with the last digit, then the boy with the 7 as his last digit
would win and again get the other boy’s menko. There were many more ways to
play with Fighting Numbers, but this is one example. The last common way
to play with menko was to stand them up against each other so they'd lean on
each other without falling. Then you would tap the surface they were on
trying to make one of the menko topple over onto the other one.