Five Crowns is a rummy-style game where the goal is to get rid of all your cards. It adds a suit called “stars” to the usual clubs, diamonds, hearts, and spades. You have to get rid of all of your cards in a single go, instead of in batches, by forming “books” (x-of-a-kind) and “runs” (suited straights). Jokers are wild, and each round, the denomination matching your hand cound is also wild… so in the round where you’re dealt 6 cards, 6’s are wild.
Hi! It’s Ryan from Nights Around a Table. Here’s how to play Five Crowns.
Shuffle both decks together and deal three cards to each player, including yourself. You’re allowed to look at your cards. Put the rest of the deck in the middle of the table, and flip the top card next to it.
You’re trying to be the first player to lay your cards on the table to get rid of them, or “go out,” as the game puts it. Once you do that, everyone else has to score all the cards they got stuck with. After 11 rounds, whoever has the lowest score wins.
The catch is that in order to lay your cards on the table, you have to put your whole hand down at once. And you’re not allowed to do that unless your cards obey certain rules.
Your cards have to be configured in books and/or runs.
A book is just three or more cards with the same value on them. So these three 6’s are a book. These three Jacks are a book.
A run is three or more cards with the same suit in a sequence. 3-4-5 of diamonds is a run. 7-8-9-10 of spades is a run. 5-6-7 of whatever is not a run, because the suits are all mixed-up. They need to be the same. And just like regular playing cards, Five Crowns cards go in this order: 3 through 10, and then Jack which is lower than queen which is lower than king. But unlike a regular deck of playing cards which has 4 suits – clubs, hearts, spades, and diamonds – Five Crowns has five sui ts: clubs, hearts, spades, diamonds, and stars. The game has two of copies these complete decks, along with six joker cards that we’ll talk about later.
Play begins with the person to the left of the dealer and goes clockwise around the table.
On your turn, you always have to start by taking a card – even if you can go out with the cards you have in your hand right now. You can choose either the face-up card, or the card on top of the draw deck. You’re not allowed to dig through the face-up stack – if you choose to take from there, you have to grab the card that’s on top.
Then, you have to discard a card to the discard pile, so that you always have three cards. Now it’s the next player’s turn going clockwise.
If it gets to your turn and you draw a card, and now your hand has a book or a run in it, that means you can “go out” by slamming your three cards down on the table to end the round. Chuck your fourth card in the discard pile.
Everyone else gets one more turn to finish out the round – if any other player gets a book or a run, they can slam their three cards down too, and chuck the fourth card in the discard pile.
Once that’s done, you count up the cards remaining in everyone’s hand, if those players didn’t manage to go out: all the number cards are worth that many points, so an 8 counts as 8 points against you. Jacks are worth 11 points, Queens are worth 12, and if you hung on to any Kings, they’re worth 13 big points. Add it all up on a piece of paper, or a bill envelope for that utility charge you keep meaning to pay, and then start the next round with the person to the left of the dealer becoming the new dealer. That player scoops up all the cards in the game, shuffles them, and deals out one extra card to everyone: so in the next round, you get 4 cards. In the round after that, you get 5 cards, and so on, until you finish the final round where everyone gets a huge hand of 13 cards.l
In those higher rounds when you’ve got a big mitt full of cards, you don’t have to have one gigantic run or a single book. You can go out as long as your entire hand is a combination of runs and books. So you could have a run here, and a book here, and another book here, and another run here, for example. Just remember that you need at least 3 cards in a run or a book, so this hand doesn’t count as complete – this run is too small with only 2 cards in it.
If you’ve got it, slam down your hand to go out, discard the extra card, and watch everyone else absolutely panic as they finish out the round.
On their turns, those panicking players can lay down part of their hands by playing as many books or runs as they can make, and then discarding one card. But after that, any cards that don’t fit into a book or a run count against their score when the round is over!
If the draw deck ever runs out, just shuffle the discard pile to form a new draw deck.
The last thing to know about the game is that Jokers are wild. They can stand in for any other card. So if you had this hand, and you drew a joker, you could make a 6-7-8 run with the joker standing in for the 8. Slam down your hand, discard the extra card, and watch everyone else sweat.
Or later in the game, maybe you’ve got this going on. Here’s a book, with two jokers standing in for your 5’s. You draw a card at the beginning of your turn, and it’s another joker! Aren’t you lucky! Now you have a 10-jack-queen run, with the joker standing in for the jack. Slam your hand down and discard this 4 to go out.
Jokers are very valuable, but you don’t want to get stuck holding them. At the end of the round, any joker left in your hand counts as 50 points against you!
In addition to that, each round, another card is wild, and it’s the card that matches the number of cards you have in your hand. So in the first round, when you get dealt 3 cards, 3’s are wild. In the round after that, 3’s aren’t wild any more: you’ve got 4 cards in your hand, so 4’s are wild. And so on. So when 4’s are wild, this is a valid 6-7-8-9 run, because the wild 4 is standing in for the 7.
Just like jokers, you don’t want to get caught hanging on to any wild cards at the end of the round: each non-joker wild card you get stuck with counts for 20 points.
Play all the way to the 11th and final round, where it’s still anyone’s game because the scores can swing wildly. When it’s all over, count up everyone’s score: whoever has the fewest points, wins!
And now, you’re ready to play Five Crowns.
Walk and Chew Gum (and play cards) at the Same Time
Five Crowns is the kind of game you bust out at the cottage, or in prison. No one has to think too hard, there’s no grand strategy, and you don’t have to cook up multiple contingency plans like you do in many euros. Just chuck cards around and gab, likely for hours, as it’s not a short game (though you can house-rule it and start halfway through with an 8-card deal, for example).
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