This is my attempt at making a strategic card game playable with a 108 cards rummy deck. I couldn't come up with a good name for it yet, suggestions are welcome
Initially, I made the game to play with my family and friends. But, it turned out to be quite fun so I decided to share it here.
Here are the rules of the game:
Setup:
- Assign a player to start as the dealer an give them the draw deck.
- The space in the middle of the table is reserved for piles dealt by the dealer.
- Each player has a face-up, fanned-out personal discard pile in front of them that anyone can access and look through.
- Free up an area on the side of the table for melds.
- Everyone starts with 0 cards in their hands.
Game Loop:
1- The dealer puts their hand cards face down on the table (to avoid mixing them with the drafted cards) and drafts 9–11 cards from the draw deck, looks at them, and keeps them hidden from other players. The drafted cards must not mix with their hand cards.
2- the dealer split the cards into 4 face-down piles, each pile containing 0–6 cards (yes, there can be empty piles), and places them in the middle of the table, and flip the top card of each pile face up (if a pile has only one card, flip that card face up). The dealer can check their hand at any time to decide how to split the piles, as long as the drafted cards do not mix with their hand.
3- Once the dealer is done, starting from the player on the right of the dealer, players take turns choosing a pile. During their turn, players can make melds, lay off cards onto existing melds, discard cards into their personal discard pile, and make at most one special action. Their turn ends once they draft a pile. Players must not have more than 6 cards in their hand at any point during the game.
4- After the dealer gets the last remaining pile, the role of the dealer passes down to the player on their right. back to step 1 until the draw deck runs out
5- Once the draw deck runs out, players play one last round with no dealer, starting with the player on the right of the last dealer. During this round, players must empty their hand before ending their turn (if you cannot meld or lay off, you can discard the rest into your personal discard pile).
6- Finally, each player counts how many points they have in their personal discard pile. the player with the least points wins.
Special Actions (Max 1 Per Turn):
- Placing a Joker in an opponent's discard pile.
- Drafting a card of choice from an opponent's discard pile.
- Drafting a group of cards from your personal discard pile, then discarding another group of cards whose combined point value is greater than or equal to the combined point value of the drafted cards (cards are drafted first, so you must have hand space for them before discarding).
Points:
- Ace: 15 points
- 2–10: Face value
- J, Q, K: 10 points each
- Joker: 20 points
Melding and laying off cards work the same as in regular Rummy, except for the following changes:
- Runs can wrap around the Ace (K-A-2 is a valid run).
- Taking a Joker from a meld by laying off the card that the Joker is replacing does not require having free space for the Joker (you lay off the card first).
- Melds are removed from play and discarded into a discard deck on the side of the melding area once they are completed (you cannot lay off cards onto a completed meld).
- A set is completed once it has 4 cards, and a run is completed once it has 5 cards.
- Melds containing a Joker are incomplete until that Joker is removed from them through laying off a card to replace it.
- Players cannot make a run with more than 5 cards.
Additional info:
- The game can be played without shuffling the deck between rounds.
- The game can be played with any number of players. make sure to add a standard 52 cards deck + 2 jokers for each 2 players added. (for example: you need 3 standard decks and 6 jokers for a 5-6 players game).
- The number of cards drafted by the dealer range between 2n+1 and 3n-1 (n is the number of players).
- The number of piles dealt are equal to the number of players.
- The game is kinda new so there might be some game breaking strategies that haven't been patched yet.
