Five Crowns is a rummy-like game made by SET enterprises. I don’t particularly love rummy games, but that is due (at least in part) to my ineptitude with them. It isn’t the most exciting thing to sit down and lose a game every time you play it. My wife doesn’t really care about my fragile ego, and insists we play 5 Crowns from time to time.
Regardless of my personal feelings about the game, I will proceed with the rules of the game.
Five Crown Card Game Rules
Your goal in Five Crowns is to obtain the lowest score in the match, and you avoid scoring points by being able to go out first, or in the same round that someone else plays their hand. There are no Aces in the decks, but Jokers are included.
Dealing
Shuffle all the cards together. You should have two 58 card decks for a total of 116 cards.
Deal three cards in the first round, and increase the hand size by one each additional round until the final round of 13 cards. Place the remaining cards in the center of the table and flip over the top card to form a discard pile. If necessary, you may reshuffle the discard pile to reform the draw pile, but this will rarely be needed.
Wild Cards
Jokers are always wild, and cards that share the same number as the round are wild. For instance, in the first round wherein all players receive three cards, threes are wild. Likewise on through the deck. Jacks are wild when 11 cards are dealt, Queens when 12 are dealt, and in the final round the Kings go wild when 13 cards are dealt.
Game-play
Begin play to the left of the dealer. On your turn, you must draw one card and discard one card, and you cannot go out until you can play all of your cards and fulfill the discard requirement. You can draw from either the top of the discard pile or the top of the deck. Form “Runs” and “Books” or a combination of both to go out. Runs consist of three or more cards of the same suit in sequential order. Books are three or more cards of the same number or type (3,3,3, or K,K,K etc). Books do not have to be the same suit. Any number of Jokers and wild cards can be used in any position in a Book or Run.
Going Out
When you can play all of the cards in your hand and fulfill the discard requirement, you can go out. All remaining players have one turn to also go out or play as many cards as possible from their hand. Other players can play Runs and Books. If they also go out, they get zero points, but if they still have cards remaining in their hand after making all legal plays and discarding, they acquire points.
Scoring
Each card is worth its face value, with Jacks being 11, Queens 12, and Kings 13. The current wild card is not worth face value, but is instead worth 20 points, and Jokers are always worth 50 points.
Winning
After the 13th round, the player with the lowest score wins. And if you were playing with me, congratulation, you are the winner!
