Description from the back of the box: Each player takes their pasture of sugar ponies and competes in a game of "whose-deck-is-bigger" where you try to outlast your friends so you can claim victory, and perhaps even more importantly, the bragging rights.
Your objective is to outlast your friends. You win by being the last Pony standing. If you run out of cards in your deck and your hand, you lose.
Sugar Ponies is played in a series of rounds and is a form of trick taking game. You win a round if you have the strongest Pony in play at the beginning of your next turn. You can play 1 card per turn and must play a card on your first turn. Every turn after that, you have the option to drop out of the round and not play any more cards. The winner of the round can take as many Ponies from the Playing Field as they can hold (max hand size is 5) and then the rest of the cards played in that round are discarded. The winner of that round then starts the next round.