I Giochi del 2000: Elemental Wars (1997)

"Elemental Wars" is a non-collectible fantasy card game. It is played with a deck of 40 cards, 10 for each of the Element (Fire, Water, Air and Earth) with a Strength ranking from 10 to 1. The strongest cards (Strength from 10 to 6) have a Fame score of 11, 10, 4, 3 and 2 points.

The classical version is played in four, with the persons sitting in front of each other forming a team (but in the booklet there are variants for different numbers of players).

Before the game begins, one of the four players shuffles the deck and places it in front of the player to his left who must "cut" it. The dealer then distributes three cards to each of the four players (either singly or all three at once), in a counterclockwise rotation, beginning with the player on his immediate right.

He then uncovers the thirteenth card and places it prominently in the center of the table. This card, regardless of its rank, identifies the Elemental plane on which the Tournament takes place: the Dominating one. The remaining cards are usually placed, face down, as a stack on top of the Dominating card, but not obscuring it.

The game begins with the player to the dealer's immediate right, and goes around the table until the dealer has played last. Each round of four cards played constitutes a round of tournament. The winner of each rounf gathers all four cards and places them, face down, on his side of the table

The winner of each hand is determined by the Strength and the Element of the cards. The winner is the player that dropped the strongest card of the Element that has been played first on that round; but if somebody played a card of the Dominating element, the winner is the strongest of that element.

The winner of each round then draws one card from the deck. Then the others also draw one card, in sequence. Play continues until all the cards have been played.

At the end of the game the total number of Fame points is added up for each team. As there are 30 points for each Element, the maximum number of points is 120. The winner of the game is the team which scores 61 or more points. The score over 60 is kept to see which team wins the partita (the set) scoring a fixed amount of points.

The cards have to be cut from a booklet that belongs to "I giochi del duemila" ("The games of 2000") collection: a series of role-playing games, game books, wargames, card games and so on that included 23 titles. The name of the collection refers both to the end of the millennium and to the price: 2000 liras, that means 1.03 Euros, making them the cheapest games in Italy.