Dutch Blitz: The Card Game, Its Expansion Packs and Who It Suits

What Dutch Blitz is

Dutch Blitz is a speed card game. Every listing for it in our data files it under "matching / speed," and the maker's home page talks about skills, smarts and speed in the same breath. Quick eyes count as much as good choices.

Each player has their own deck. The original box has four decks with farm symbols on them: a carriage, a bucket, a pump and a plow. The symbol is how you tell your deck from your neighbor's when the cards get mixed.

A note before the details. The maker teaches the rules with a video and with the rules printed in the box. I couldn't open a written rulebook from the maker online, so I'm not going to walk you through a turn from memory or from somebody else's summary. What follows is what the maker's own written pages say, plus what the Amazon listings state. That's a smaller set of facts than a full rulebook, and I'd rather give you fewer facts than guessed ones.

Here are the box facts for the original deck, from the listing and the maker:

• Players: 2 to 4 (listing), up to 4 (maker)
• Ages: 8+ (listing)
• Cards: 160 (listing)
• Play time: 15 minutes on the Original and Expansion Combo listing; the original deck's listing doesn't say
• Competitive, not co-op
• Expansions: yes, but the maker says they also play on their own

Who makes Dutch Blitz

The maker's About page says the game was created by Werner Ernst George Muller, a German immigrant and optometrist, who thought it might help his children learn colors and numbers. It caught on in Eastern and Central Pennsylvania. Today the Fisher family runs it as a family business that the page says grew out of game nights at the kitchen table. The company lists a mailing address in Flourtown, Pennsylvania.

That origin story explains a lot about the game. Colors and numbers are the whole vocabulary. A child who can tell a red 4 from a blue 4, and knows that 5 comes after 4, has every skill the cards ask for. Speed is the part that takes practice.

The maker's tagline, printed on its product pages, calls it "A Vonderful Goot Game." I'll leave that one exactly as they spell it.

What the maker says about how it plays

The maker's FAQ answers a handful of rules questions directly. In my own words:

1. The Wood Pile flips three at a time. Your hand pile is called the Wood Pile, and you always flip three cards from it. When only one or two are left, you cycle the pile so you're still flipping three.
2. No going back. If you miss a card you could have played, and you've already flipped the next three, it's gone for now. You move forward.
3. Post Piles move one card at a time. You can move cards between your Post Piles, but only one card at a time. You can't shift a whole pile in one go.
4. Scores can go negative. The FAQ says so, and says it happens most in the first round.

That's four rules out of a full game. They tell you the shape of it: you have a Wood Pile you flip through in threes, Post Piles in front of you that you can rearrange one card at a time, and a score that can drop below zero. For setup, the rest of the piles and how points are counted, use the rule sheet in the box or the maker's video. Those are the two sources the maker points you to.

Rule two is the one that makes the game. Speed card games forgive nothing. You blink, the three cards move on, and the card you wanted is buried until the pile comes around again.

June read the FAQ entry about negative scores and asked if a negative round carries over to her allowance. It does not. She's still looking for the clause.

Original deck or expansion pack

This is the most useful thing the maker's pages explain, and the listings mostly don't.

• Original deck (green box): four decks with carriage, bucket, pump and plow symbols, for up to 4 players.
• Blue Expansion Pack: the maker calls it a reinvention of the classic green box, with the colors of the four deck designs switched so more people can play.
• Purple Expansion Pack: four new colors and four new symbols, made so each player's deck stands out when more than 4 people play with the green or blue decks.

The FAQ adds one more fact: you don't need the original game to use an expansion. Any one pack, green, blue or purple, is a full game for up to 4 on its own. You need two packs together only when your table goes past 4.

My one opinion for this page: buy for your usual group size, not the biggest number on a box. If your game night is four people, one deck of any color is the whole purchase. If it's six on a holiday and three the rest of the year, buy one deck now and add a second when the holiday comes around. The 15-minute play time on the combo listing is for one game. More players means more decks on the table, and more cards to sort back into decks afterward.

Dutch Blitz on Amazon US right now

Our data for this page lists 5 listings on Amazon US as of October 2026. Four are Dutch Blitz boxes. One is a different game, Nertz, for big groups. The table above shows what each listing states, and a dash means the listing left that field out.

Dutch Blitz Original

From Dutch Blitz. The listing says ages 8+, 2 to 4 players, 160 cards and matching/speed. This is the green-box game the maker describes as playing up to 4. For most families, this is the one.

Dutch Blitz Expansion Pack (two listings)

Two expansion-pack listings from Dutch Blitz are in our data. One lists 160 cards. The other lists only the game type. Neither listing says whether it's the Blue or the Purple pack, and the maker sells both. Since the maker says each pack plays on its own, either one works as a first deck. If you're buying it to seat more than 4 next to an original you already own, check the listing photos for the color before you order.

Dutch Blitz Original and Expansion Combo

From Dutch Blitz. The listing says ages 8+ and 15 minutes, and it's the only Dutch Blitz listing in our data with a play time. It doesn't give a player count. An original plus an expansion is the maker's route to tables bigger than 4.

Nertz Card Game 12 Decks

From Brybelly. This is not Dutch Blitz, and the listing doesn't claim to be. It's listed under playing cards, with 12 decks and 2 to 12 players. If your group is regularly bigger than 8, it's the only listing on this page that goes that high. The listing doesn't describe the rules or give an age, so I won't.

Which box fits your table

• Up to 4 players: Dutch Blitz Original, or any single expansion pack
• 5 to 8 players: the Original and Expansion Combo, or an Original plus one expansion pack
• Adding players to a deck you already own: an expansion pack, after you check its color
• More than 8 players: Nertz Card Game 12 Decks, a different game with its own rules

Sorting the decks after a game

Every multi-deck card game ends the same way: a table covered in cards from every deck at once. Dutch Blitz plans for this. Each deck carries its own symbol, and the maker says the Purple pack's new symbols exist so each player's deck stands out at a big table. So the cleanup is a sort by symbol. Carriage cards to one player, buckets to the next, and so on around the table.

A suggestion, not a Dutch Blitz rule: whoever won the round sorts the decks. It keeps the winner humble and the box complete. The maker's FAQ says missing cards are rare and offers free replacements if you report them within 7 days of delivery, which tells me the company has also seen a card or two slide under a couch.

Who should skip Dutch Blitz

Skip it if your group likes to take turns and think. Speed card games reward quick eyes and quick hands, and a careful player can spend a whole round watching faster hands go by. That's not a flaw. It's just not everyone's evening.

Skip it if one player at your table is a lot faster than everyone else. In a speed game, that gap shows up every round, and the scores can say so in negative numbers.

And skip it for now if your youngest is under 8, the age on both listings that state one. The cards need fast color and number matching with other players racing alongside.

If you like Dutch Blitz, look at these

Pages chosen by what they share with Dutch Blitz: a card game, a fast pace, a 2-to-4 table that can stretch.

• Spot It: another speed game built on spotting a match
• Card games: the wider shelf of family card games
• Skip-Bo: another numbered-card game for a family table
• Best family card games: our list, built by age and play time
• UNO: colors and numbers, one turn at a time

Flip three, don't look back, and keep score in pencil.