Turtle Flowage is a card game for all ages.  It is played by 3 to 93 year young people and it has been adapted for use on college campus' for Friday night entertainment.  It is fun and easy to learn.  This web page is dedicated to the creation of the game and the association of friends dedicated to its promotion, fair play, and fun.  If you are interested in becoming a member of the ATFAA, please fill out the information below and send it along.  Donations are welcome, but not essential to become a member.  Play the game for awhile and if you like it, revisit this webpage to give us your feedback.

The Rules

The game is played with normal, 52 card, decks of cards.  One deck of cards for every 4.5 people playing, rounding up to the nearest whole decks of cards, although many variations have been tried successfully.  One of the optional rules includes the two standard joker cards as part of the variations.

The cards are placed in the center of the table, face down, and "kid shuffled".  The shuffle is ended without straightening up the cards into piles (the cards are left in their scattered state).  The game begins with the youngest player pulling the first card and then placing it face up in front of them.  The pulling of cards from the central pile proceeds one by one around the table in a clockwise manner.  As each player pulls from the pile, they place their card face up in front of themselves.  If the card [number?!?] matches the number on the top of any other players pile, that other players pile is added to the pile of the player that has just pulled a card.  The process of systematically pulling cards and taking other players piles continues until all the cards have been removed from the center of the table.  When all cards have been pulled from the center pile, the players count up their cards and the one with the most cards is declared the [insert name].

For the next game, the winner of the previous game pulls the first card and the fun continues.

Rule Variations

Although the variations on the rules are too numerous to list here, we will cover the top five variations that we know makes the game more fun and exciting.  We do recognize there are Turtle Flowage purists who do not believe in variations.  So, we beg their indulgence for the moment.

First variation.  When a player sees that the card they have drawn matches a prior players card, they must notify the other player to hand over their card pile.  However, the initiating player cannot use their finger, or any part of their hand, to point to the other player or to the players pile of cards.  They must point with another body part, such as their elbow or head.  Pointing with their finger will either cause the initiating player to forfeit their cards to the central pile, or to give their cards to players pile they were hoping to receive, or to drink an adult beverage (the later for adults only).

Second variation.  [help]

A Brief History of Turtle Flowage

"It was a dark and stormy night..."  Actually, it was neither dark, nor stormy, but it was night.  A night within shouting distance of the Turtle Flowage (of the Wolf River) near Hayward, Wisconsin.  A bunch of kids with nothing better to do created a game to pass the time until daylight.  You see, there isn't much to do at night in the northern woods of Wisconsin.  The Ladendorf family, from Des Plaines, Illinois were on their annual vacation retreat from the big city and found themselves in want of something to do.  A deck of cards, some imagination, and that's all it took.  The rules were very simple at first and remained so for 25 years.  Variations started to show up as college students bent and added rules to make this a game to encourage consumption of adult beverages on the weekends.  The ATFAA was created to preserve the history and intent of the game, which is for youngsters to pass the time, while simultaneously allowing for fun and exciting variations of the rules.