ISOSAD- International Semi-Organized ScubUNO Association of Divers

[trucker girl]

ISOSAD is committed to excelence in ScubUNO and the spread of our love for underwater card playing to those who experience boredom on dives... we understand that by this admission we limit ourselves mainly to quarry and lake divers.

For anyone who doesn't know what ISOSAD is... read the title. We had a group effort recently to master the task of modifying the waterproof Uno cards (Uno H2O) for scuba purposes. We succeeded. There were many other methods suggested, but we did succeed with the ol' "hole punch in opposite corners and binder rings" technique. This was a scientific study, I tell you, complete with theoretical testing and calculations. And since I have no proof of this, you have to belive me.

Uno H2O cards can be purchased at Target or
KBToys-online only

Further links:

The Official ISOSAD/SOSAD website
ISOSAD t-shirts for sale (no markup on t-shirts)

Membership in ISOSAD is free. You don't even have to play Uno or own a deck. You just have to have an interest in the topic to join...

 

[trucker girl]

This is copied out of the Uno Results Are In thread:

For those who would like a detailed account of HOW we played Uno H2O "below" edition...

The Uno H2O cards are partially clear- you'll see what I mean when you pick up a set. If you're looking at the front of the cards, you'll see that the clear is at the top right and bottom left of each card. This is where I used a hole punch to punch holes- it wasn't perfect because they weren't all perfectly matched up, but it worked. You have to do both corners, though, because when you shuffle they don't all face the same direction.

We used 2 larger binder loops (office supply store/section) for the draw pile and discard pile- they were about 1.5 inches or so in diameter. And smaller binder loops for our hands- maybe 1 inch diameter. It was nice because if we needed to draw cards we could lay our hand down (upside down- unless you're me and then you just leave it sitting face up!) and do what we needed to do without worring about our cards floating away.

In a pool you may not need the binder loops but I still think it would make things easier. Sure, you could have fun chasing down any stray card that gets the urge to run for freedom, but, why?

I used a permanent marker to note the color of the card since I didn't know how deep we would be and I didn't know how dark it might get. You won't need to do this for a pool or if you are playing in decent lighting. We were at 28 feet and it was fairly murky but we could see all the colors well.

We weren't sure how to indicate what color we were choosing for a Draw Four/Wild or a Wild... but it worked well to simply point to the color on the wild card. The wilds show all four colors- when erparamedic came up with that (after all my complicated solutions to the problem), I was surprised she didn't look at me and say, "here's your sign."

If I think of more, I'll post it.

And:

I would suggest NOT writing the colors on the cards. Perhaps a smallish R, Y, G, or B in the top left/bottom right corners but definitely not across the center part of the card- they are slightly transparent and you can read what color it is. And I know scuba-people like to cheat... I have now officially lost 3 (THREE!) games of scubuno!

 

[trucker girl]

And (also from the Uno Results Are In Thread):

I was thinking to day that the Uno rules need to be modified slightly due to air consumption issues. To avoid long, dragged out games, I don't think you should have to draw until you "get" a card to discard. There are two ways to play: Your opponent lays down a blue 3. have neither a blue card nor a 3. You draw until you get a blue, a wild or a 3. OR you draw one card and that's that.

In the interests of shorter games, I say we switch to draw one card- especially if you have more than two players.

Also- what is the rule on a draw 2 or draw 4? Does the drawee just draw and then it's the next players turn? Or does the drawee draw and then discard? When I played with Notso_Ken, he drew and then said it was my turn (no discard). Thoughts? I lost my "rule" cards- I never hole punched them because they looked like they wouldn't stand up to it if you did.

Also- Uno H20 has 2 special "water" cards. They are "splash wild" cards. There is a draw 1 splash and a draw 2 splash. It means all the other players have to draw a card and you get to pick the color. I took those out because of potential underwater confusion and the lack of ability to explain verbally- it would be too hard to do on my little slate...

Another point to make: in a two-person game of ScubUNO it is wise to remove the "reverse" cards since they are pretty much non-players. I mean, if you reverse direction, the other person STILL goes next. Or you can use it as a skip. But I think it's just better to remove them.

 

[trucker girl]

And (also- again- from the Uno Results Are In thread):

Okay... the official Uno rules are that when a player lays down a draw two, the next player draws two and does not discard. Same goes for a draw four. Also, when a player does not have a card to lay down, he/she draws ONE card (vs. drawing until you have a playable card). This also works for time/air constraints.

You'd think the "underwater" stuff would have been the hard part!

Now we need Clay Jar to copy his post on his experience with ScubUNO and some of the old posts about other suggestions on how to play...

 

[eckybay]

Another option to the hole punch method of preparing the cards for play is the drill method. It may be less time consuming, but takes a little bit more to get it perfected.

The method that was found to work best was this:
Get a survey hub (If you don't work at a civil engineering firm, any piece of 2" wide wood should work). Rubber band the cards to the wood. Using smaller stacks of cards, first do a small hole, than the larger hole. This helps to eliminate the problem of warm debris sticking to the card and gets better looking holes. There was still a few warping/burrs around the holes using this method, but I at least felt that it was decent results.

 

[erparamedic]

Copied and pasted from the 1st ScubUNO thread...

We did it!!! We had the Underwater UNO Challenge!!

Trucker Girl and I met at Blue Springs this morning. She's very nice and funny! We got in 3 dives, 2 Underwater UNO Challenges, and one Connect Four game! I won both UNO games and Trucker Girl won the Connect Four game. Here's the details:

The first dive was kinda odd... we were just trying to look around find stuff and actually found nothing but a deep dark hole with, what seemed like, nothing above, below, or anywhere around... we thumbed that dive relatively quickly, as it was kinda spooky, waiting on the quarry monster to come visit us!

The 2nd dive, we decended onto the armored car. The top of it sits in 28 feet of water. The thermocline was at 20 feet, and the temp below the thermocline was ~70 degrees. This is where we played the first game of UNO! It was much easier than expected. There were no problems holding any of the cards, and the way Trucker Girl had them arranged, with a metal "ring" or "clip" of sorts, worked out quite well. There were no problems telling what any of the colors were. The only color that looked a little "off" was red... it kinda took on a brownish tint. We did see 2 other divers that swam by when we were getting everything ready to play. They new our plans... and I think they were just checking to see if we were serious!! LOL

The 3rd dive, we decended to a wood slat platform in 26 feet of water. This was a bit more challenging. I'm not sure if there is a spring right under the platform, or what, but we had a small "current" of sorts that kept us drifting upward and toward 1 side of the platform. And... the platform was a bit, ok, alot slimy! We played one game of Connect Four and Trucker Girl won really fast! She's really good at Connect Four! Then, we played UNO again. This game lasted a loooong time! The funny thing was that we were having issues with the wierd "current" and upward drift... we kept moving with it on the platform, then would have to circle around it and back to the middle. It was quite challenging and subsequently we were laughing most the time! The thermocline in this part of the quarry was at about 22-23 feet... so as we got cold, we would move to a verticle position when it wasn't our turn... this way, our body was in the warm water, and when it was our turn, we would decend back to a horizontal position. Funny thing... this made the current issue more challenging, cause we were constantly up then down, up then down! Of course... Trucker Girl really liked to hover a few feet over top of me... I think she was looking at my cards! Beware if you play underwater UNO with her!! She cheats! Hahaha! LOL Oh... and we came up with a few new hand signs too...most of which we had to clarify by writing on a slate or magnadoodle. Then, of course, laughter would follow. Are you catching the trend... lots of laughing going on! In the end, I won this game too! On the way back to the surface, we cruised by the coffin... the one thing that neither of us wanted to find! And, there was a skull in it too... I'm sure it was fake, but it looked pretty real!

All said and done, we had a great time! It was incredibly fun... and it's hard to convey just how much fun it was. We really seemed to "click" as friends too, as this was the first time that we had met (though we've sent each other a thousand emails, and talked on the phone a few times). Meeting was just a technicality. LOL TG and I decided that this was much more fun that cruising around the quarry today. It really broke the monotony of a "quarry dive". It was a BLAST!

 

[trucker girl]

I can't believe I killed the ScubUNO thread. What happened? We used to be so popular!



Official random chatter may now begin...

 

[eckybay]

I can't believe I killed the ScubUNO thread. What happened? We used to be so popular!



Official random chatter may now begin...

Well, I think everyone was afraid they would get ran over by a truck if they did the random chatter thing.....

RJ and my baseball jerseys arrived. They're pretty neat, although the logo colors seem a little dull or something on the shirts. But for something that you want a few shirts of, cafepress seems like an okay way to go. Glad I went with the long sleeves now that it's snowing and all that.....

 

[JahJahwarrior]

So, if I joined, then I could say

"I like to play uno underwater because ISOSAD."


well then I want to play spoons underwater instead, I'd rather be happy at the end of a dive!

 

[erparamedic]

LOL.... it's one of those (what do you call that???) things!!

Actually... it's quite fun. You should try it sometime. I can assure you, you won't be "sad" after a fun game of ScubUNO!