What do these good people have in common? I prefer to leave that for you to decide... You may find it easier once you have met the rest of the gang, by means of this little download, (1,2 MB) which will give you the graphics of all 104 cards in jpg-format (each card 200x350 pixels, compression rate 30%, which means decent inkjet printing quality), and a handy names list. Due to web-space restrictions this opportunity may not last forever, so what are you waiting for?
 

In case you have already downloaded these cards in v 1.0 (available here until 2002-01), you may still want to check out this updated version (v. 1.2). On 18 cards I have either replaced the pictures with better ones of the same person or I have replaced the person altogether. I have also now grouped the card grafics in ten sheets of 10 cards plus one sheet of 4 cards, which should make your printing job considerably easier. All you have to do is print each sheet on an A4 landscape page, aprox. 18 cm high, on the thickest cardboard your printer can handle.

As always, I recommend to subsequently protect the card sheets with adhesive plastic from both sides (transparent on the front, obviously, and with some sort of unobtrusive yet structured design on the back), before cutting them out.
With a bit of practice this is quite an easy thing to do. Nevertheless, I have been thinking that, just in case, I might offer a kind of tutorial on making your own playing cards (great fun once you have got the knack!) on this site, if there is any demand for it. So if you feel this might be useful, please drop me a line.

Here's a rundown of the very simple
Rules of "6 nimmt":

Number of players: 2 - 10

Age 10+ (officially, but I know at least one 8-year-old who plays it with relish)

Duration: about 45 min.

Playing material: 104 cards (cunningly numbered 1 to 104)

Your aim is to accumulate as few negative points as possible. As you can see in the examples above, each card has a negative value, ranging from 1 to 7.

Each player is dealt 10 cards. 4 more cards are placed on the table; each of these forms the starting point of a row of cards with ascending values, with a maximum length of 5 cards. The rest of the deck takes no further part in this round.

All players choose one card from their hands and place them face down on the table.

The cards are shown and the player with the lowest value now has to place his card in one of the rows, according to the following pair of rules:

1. Card values in one row must always increase, never decrease.

2. If condition one can be fulfilled in more than one row, the row with the highest current end value (in other words, the one with the smallest difference to the value of the player's card) takes precedence.

(Note that this means that a player has no choice whatsoever as to where he places his card. Strategic and tactical decision-making is limited to the choice of card from his hand!)

Subsequently, the player with the second lowest card makes his play, and so on.
Obviously, this cannot go on forever, and in two cases the players are forced to pick up cards from the table, the negative values of which will later count against them:

A) If the value of the player's card is lower than any of the end values in the four rows, he has to take all the cards in a row of his choice (normally he will pick the row with least negative points), and his own card becomes the first in a new row.

B) If a player is forced to play the 6th card in one of the four rows, he has to take the 5 cards of that row and his card becomes the first in a new row. (This is why the game is called "6 nimmt", which means "6 takes", for those blissfully ignorant of the German language).

The players put the cards they have been obliged to take on the table in front of them (not into their hands!).

Play proceeds until all 10 cards have been placed that way, which ends the first round. Each player's negative points are added up and noted down, and a new round is started (for which the rest of the deck is included again).

The game ends when one of the players has reached -66 points or worse. The player with the smallest negative score wins.
Alternatively, any other score or a fixed number of rounds can be agreed upon.

And that's it - now try it out and enjoy!