Welcome to The Particle Physics Card Game online website!

Here you will find a complete guide to how to play this fun and easy-to-learn card game for all ages!

You’ll also find suggestions for alternative game-play, tips on strategy, a forum for sharing game-play experience, new game-play suggestions by the community, and more…

If you just want to learn the rules of this game to play quickly, skip to the How to Play section below.

A bit of history…

If you’re reading this, you have a deck of The Particle Physics Card Game in your possession, you like to play card games with friends and family, and you are eager to try this one out.

Congratulations!

This is a simple card game for all to enjoy. Above all, it is meant to be fun. But be careful, you may just learn something about particle physics along the way…

Those familiar with card games should find the concepts of game-play for The Particle Physics Card Game pretty straight-forward. (Think old-school Rummy meets Magic the Gathering, or something like that. ;-))

I’m sure that anyone can learn the rules of this game and start playing!

Remember, you don’t need to be a particle physicist to play or enjoy the game! You just need a deck of PP cards, some basic rules, and an imagination. This game is intended to be educational, sure, but first of all, it is intended to be fun.

I hope you enjoy this game as much as I had in making it.

For those sceptics out there, let me say my 10-year-old niece loves this game. Before I printed my first design, my niece and I played this game on Jiffy marked-up cards and had a blast! And though she is pretty clever for 10 and I’m a physicist by trade, I didn’t expect her to know ‘why’ quarks need be combined such that their ‘color’ is white; that was just the rule of the game! (I’m not even sure even the physics community really knows ‘why’!)

So, let go of what you think you know about science… and just enjoy this game with friends and family. You just might learn something along the way.

The fact is, the concepts of this game – of building matter and using certain attack and defense cards (if you have the forces that allow it) –  are easy to learn, even for children.

Forget that this game may be intimidating or that there’s an educational purpose… think of it as just another card game to have fun!

With that said, let’s move on to the basics of game-play!

Although we encourage you to enjoy this game with your friends in any way you please, here are some basic mechanics of suggested game-play to get you started.

Are you ready to play? Here we go…

How to play

The fundamental forces

The first most basic concept of the Particle Physics Card Game is that you must have certain forces in your universe in order to do certain things.

There are four fundamental forces in the game (not counting the Higgs!). Their cards are shown below:

If you acquire a force card that you don’t already have, play it! Place it face-up on the play surface in front of you and continue your turn. Now you now have the power to do things this force is required for…

Having more than one of each force is not necessary. Forces are unique cards in that way.

Of quarks, protons and neutrons

The next most fundamental concept in this game is that, in order to win players must build matter. They do this by building protons and neutrons.

So how do you do that?

Simple! The rules for building protons and neutrons are as follows:

1. A proton is any combination of 2 up quarks and 1 down quark (u-u-d, d-u-u, u-d-u)
2. A neutron is any combination of 1 up quark and 2 down quark (u-d-d, d-d-u, d-u-d)

But here’s the catch… you must combine the quarks with three separate colors! (For those who like particle physics, this is called Color Confinement.) So here’s the last rule of combining quarks to build protons or neutrons:

3. The color of the quarks must add to be white (red-green-blue, red-blue-green…)

It may sound complicated but here’s the idea, illustrated with cards.

A proton. (u-u-d, all 3 colors.)

A neutron. (d-d-u, all 3 colors.)

Note: the order isn’t important for you combine the quarks to build protons or neutrons, as long as you use one of each color: red, green and blue.

Forge Helium to win!

So how do you win the game? Easy!

In the most basic game, you need to combine 2 protons and 2 neutrons to win. This is equivalent to making a nucleus of Helium, the second most abundant element in our physical universe!!

To win the game you need to have 2 protons and 2 neutrons in your universe and have 3 energy cards in your hand. Play the 3 energy cards and win by forging Helium for the first time since the Big Bang though fusion!

Note: in principle, players can decide that the first to forge any element from the periodic table wins the game… try Lithium for a longer game… for the shortest game choose Helium.

Game Play Method 1 – (rummy-esk)

In order to win the game, regardless of the chosen end point, players must first build protons and neutrons.

Below is an example of a proton that can be played in your universe during a turn.

[UNDER CONSTRUCTION]