Five Crowns (card game)

Last updated
Five Crowns
The Five-Suited Rummy-Style Card Game
Publishers Set Enterprises
Publication1996 (28 years ago)
Genres Card Game
Players1-7
Setup time<1 Minute
Playing time45 Minutes
ChanceMedium
Age range8+

Five Crowns is a card game created by Set Enterprises. [1] (SET - PlayMonster) Players compete by trying to obtain the lowest number of points after playing all eleven hands of the game and making sets of "books and runs." The game ends when the eleventh round has concluded. As the slogan of Five Crowns [2] [3] states: "The Game Isn't Over 'Til the Kings Go Wild!" The game combines aspects of Rummy and Phase 10.

Contents

Play and scoring

Game play

Before play starts, all the cards are shuffled. A game of Five Crowns [4] [5] consists of eleven rounds; the first round has a three-card hand, the second round has a four-card hand, and so on until the eleventh round which everyone plays with thirteen cards.

In the first round, the dealer deals out three cards to each player. [6] The remaining cards form a draw pile. The top card is turned over to start a discard pile. The player to the dealer's left goes first. The player may choose the top card from either the draw pile (card is face down) or the discard pile (card is face up). The player adds this card to their hand. The player ends their turn by discarding one card from their hand so that the player ends up with the same number of cards as were dealt. (In this case, three cards)

A player can go out if the cards in his/her hand can form a set or multiple sets of books or runs. See "Books and Runs" below for an in-depth definition and examples for both. After the player who has completed the set(s) of books or runs, they may lay down their cards face up so that all players many see the completed sequence(s). After this move, all players many get one more turn to try to complete their books or runs. Players now count up all their excess points that can not fall into their books or runs. All players that can go out in the last turn (including the player who went out first), takes 0 points against them. All points that players receive, count against that player. At the end of all eleven rounds, the player with the least amount of points wins the game, in case of a tie, tied players share the victory.

Card values and wilds

Each number card is worth its face value. i.e., the number "4 card" is worth four points. The Jacks are worth 11 points, Queens are worth 12 points, Kings are worth 13 points, Jokers are worth 50 points, and the current wild card is 20 points. The wild card changes from hand to hand depending on which round it is. For a round with three cards dealt to each player, the number three card is wild. When four cards are dealt to each player, fours are wild. The game progresses until the last hand when the Kings are wild. (In that hand, people are dealt thirteen cards a piece) Jokers are always wild no matter which round it is.

Books and Runs

Books

A book consists of three or more cards of the same value regardless of suit. i.e., 10★, 10★, 10♣, and 10♦. Any card in a book can be replaced by the wild card of the round or a Joker. i.e., if nines are wild, your book could consist of the following: 5♦, 5★, 9♣, 5♣. You may have as many wild cards or Jokers as you wish (and they may be adjacent to each other).

Runs

A run consists of a sequence (meaning the cards are in value order) of three or more cards of the same suit. i.e., 4♦, 5♦, 6♦, 7♦, 8♦, or 10♣, J♣, Q♣, K♣. Any card in a run can be replaced by the wild card of the round or a Joker. i.e., if tens are wild, your run could consist of the following: 3★, 4★, 10♣, 5★. You may have as many wild cards or Jokers as you wish (and they may be adjacent to each other).

Deck

The game consists of two 58-card decks (116 cards in all). Each deck contains five suits: stars, hearts, spades, clubs, and diamonds. Each suit has eleven cards: 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, a Jack, Queen, and King. The game contains six Jokers. Each game contains six Jokers.

Round NumberCards Dealt to Each PlayerWild Card Number
133
244
355
466
577
688
799
81010
911Jack
1012Queen
1113King

Note: Jokers are always wilds.

Five Crowns solitaire instructions

In Five CrownsSolitaire Edition, [7] use your regular deck of Five Crowns cards and play a solo version.

Setup (solitaire version)

Deal out 11 piles with 3 cards in the first pile, 4 in the second, 5 in the third, etc. with the eleventh pile containing 13 cards. Each pile represents a hand in the regular game of Five Crowns. Lay out all the piles of cards face up so you can easily view every card. The first pile is the 3-card hand, in which 3s are wild; the second is the 4-card hand, in which 4s are wild, etc. Jokers are always wild. You may not move cards between hands. From the remaining cards in the deck, form a draw pile and turn the top card face up to reveal a discard pile.

Game play (solitaire version)

When play begins, you may choose the face up card in the discard pile, or the face down card on top of the draw pile. Looking at all the hands, play the card in whichever hand you feel will benefit most, and discard one card from that hand. The hand should have the amount of cards that it was dealt in the beginning of the game. From this point on, no card in the discard pile may be used again in play. When a hand is able to go out, (according to the normal Five Crowns rules) turn it over and you are finished with that hand. You do not have to complete hands in order of regular Five Crowns. i.e., 3-card hand first, 4-card hand second, 5-card hand third, etc. When a hand is completed, do not shuffle it back into the draw deck. Continue to draw cards from the deck, until either all hands have been turned over (you win), or the stack is depleted before you close all the hands (you lose).

Other Five Crowns variants

Reception

Janet Simons for the Rocky Mountain News said that "Advantages: If you enjoy rummy, you can enjoy it with as many as seven players. Disadvantages: It's still rummy." [9]

David Holmstrom for The Christian Science Monitor described Five Crowns as "A fast-paced card game with a wild card that changes with every hand. Just when it looks like a player will lose, the last hand can turn her into a winner." [10]

Linda Cobb for Bristol Herald Courier said that "The problem is that the decks do not have aces or deuces. That doesn't sound practical for poker, but if you want to give it a try, Five Crowns is made by Set Enterprises." [11]

Joy Tipping for The Dallas Morning News said that "This is a great family card game, a bit like rummy, in which kids can compete with adults and have a chance of winning, even if the adults aren't "helping" them. It's simple enough for younger kids, but also plenty challenging to keep teens and adults interested. A worthy opponent can come from behind and win even during the last hand." [12]

Jackie Burrell for Mercury News said that "Out of all the games we played last week — and we played a LOT — this award-winning five-suited riff on the rummy is our hands-down favorite. It's not new by any means, just new to us, and we have since made up for lost time. Like gin rummy, the goal is to collect sets of cards and fling down a final discard before your partner does. Unlike traditional rummy, this game uses a double deck with a fifth suit: stars. There are no aces or twos. The ethnically diverse royals are a handsome bunch. And there are wild cards out the wazoo." [13]

See also (More games by SET)

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">500 (card game)</span> Trick-taking card game

500 or Five Hundred is a trick-taking game developed in the United States from Euchre. Euchre was extended to a 10 card game with bidding and a Misère contract similar to Russian Preference, producing a cutthroat three-player game like Preference and a four-player game played in partnerships like Whist which is the most popular modern form, although with special packs it can be played by up to six players.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gin rummy</span> Card game

Gin rummy, or simply gin, is a two-player card game variant of rummy. It has enjoyed widespread popularity as both a social and a gambling game, especially during the mid twentieth century, and remains today one of the most widely played two-player card games.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Canasta</span> Card game

Canasta is a card game of the rummy family of games believed to be a variant of 500 rum. Although many variations exist for two, three, five or six players, it is most commonly played by four in two partnerships with two standard decks of cards. Players attempt to make melds of seven cards of the same rank and "go out" by playing all cards in their hands. It is "the most recent card game to have achieved worldwide status as a classic".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robbers' rummy</span> Card game

Robbers' rummy is a card game for two or more players. It is a variant of German Rummy dating to the early 20th century. Being derived from normal rummy, it emphasises arrangement of cards based on card matching rules, while abandoning the notions of card discards and scoring entirely.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">500 rum</span> Card game

500 rum, also called pinochle rummy, Michigan rummy, Persian rummy, rummy 500 or 500 rummy, is a popular variant of rummy. The game of canasta and several other games are believed to have developed from this popular form of rummy. The distinctive feature of 500 rum is that each player scores the value of the sets or cards they meld. It may be played by 2 to 8 players, but it is best for 3 to 5.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rummy</span> Group of matching-card games

Rummy is a group of games related by the feature of matching cards of the same rank or sequence and same suit. The basic goal in any form of rummy is to build melds which can be either sets or runs and either be first to go out or to amass more points than the opposition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sheng ji</span> Card game

Sheng ji is a family of point-based, trick-taking card games played in China and in Chinese immigrant communities. They have a dynamic trump, i.e., which cards are trump changes every round. As these games are played over a wide area with no standardization, rules vary widely from region to region.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Desmoche</span> Rummy card game

Desmoche is a popular rummy card game usually played for small stakes which closely resembles other games in the rummy family, like Conquian and gin rummy, more than poker. It was probably devised in Nicaragua in the first half of the 20th century.

Tonk, or tunk, is a matching card game, which combines features of knock rummy and conquian. Tonk is a relatively fast-paced game that can be played by 2-4 players. It can be played for just points or for money wagered.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Liverpool rummy</span> Card game

Liverpool rummy is a multi-player, multi-round card game similar to other variants of rummy that adds features like buying and going out. It is played the same as Contract rummy, except that if a player manages to cut the exact number of cards required to deal the hand and leave a face-up card, then the cutting player's score is reduced by 50 points.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Switch (card game)</span> Card game

Switch is a shedding-type card game for two or more players that is popular in the United Kingdom, Ireland and as alternative incarnations in other regions. The sole aim of Switch is to discard all of the cards in one's hand; the first player to play their final card, and ergo have no cards left, wins the game. Switch is very similar to the games Crazy Eights, UNO, Flaps, Mau Mau or Whot! belonging to the Shedding family of card games.

Three thirteen is a variation of the card game Rummy. It is an eleven-round game played with two or more players. It requires two decks of cards with the jokers removed. Like other Rummy games, once the hands are dealt, the remainder of the cards are placed face down on the table. The top card from the deck is flipped face up and put beside the deck to start the discard pile.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Continental Rummy</span> Rummy card game

Continental Rummy is a progressive partnership Rummy card game related to Rumino. It is considered the forerunner of the whole family of rummy games using two packs of cards as one. Its name derives from the fact that it is played throughout the continental Europe, the United States, Mexico, Canada, and also in South America. According to Albert Morehead, it was "at one time the most popular form of Rummy in women's afternoon games, until in 1950 it lost out to Canasta."

Zioncheck is a card game. It is similar to shanghai rummy, contract rummy, or phase 10. Hoyle's book of common card games describes several games as being based upon it, and Contract Rummy is believed to have originated from it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carioca (card game)</span> Chilean card game

Carioca is a Chilean card game similar to Rummy style card games with many variations. The variation described below is Perla's Cariocas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Khanhoo</span> Chinese card game

Khanhoo or kanhu is a non-partnership Chinese card game of the draw-and-discard structure. It was first recorded during the late Ming dynasty as a multi-trick taking game, a type of game that may be as old as T'ienkiu, revised in its rules and published in an authorized edition by Emperor Kao Tsung in 1130 AD for the information of his subjects. Meaning "watch the pot", it is very possibly the ancestor of all rummy games.

Indian Cherokee Rummy is a card game in India with little variation from original rummy. It may be considered a cross between Rummy 500 and gin rummy. Indian Rummy is a variant of the rummy game popular in India that involves making valid sets out of 13 cards that are distributed among every player on the table. Each player is dealt 13 cards initially; if the number of players is 2, then a 52 cards deck is chosen for the game and if there are 6 players, two decks of 52 cards each is combined for the game. Each player has to draw and discard cards by turns till one player melds their cards with valid sets that meet the Rummy validation rules. It could be that Indian Rummy evolved from a version of Rummy in South Asia, Celebes Rummy, also called Rhuk.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indian Marriage (card game)</span> Card game

Marriage is a Rummy card game widely played in India. It uses three or more packs of playing cards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marriage (card game)</span> Nepalese Matching card game

Marriage is a matching card game played with three decks of cards in Nepal, Bhutan, Banthara and by the Nepali diaspora. It is based on making sets of three matching cards of the same rank (trials), the same rank and suit (tunnels), or three consecutive cards of the same suit (sequences).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">German Rummy</span> Card game

German Rummy or Rommé is the most popular form of the worldwide game, Rummy, played in Austria and Germany. It is a game for 2 to 6 players and is played with two packs of French playing cards, each comprising 52 cards and 3 jokers. There are no partnerships. In Germany, the Germany Rummy Association is the umbrella organisation for local rummy clubs and organises national competitions. The game is often just known as Rommé in Germany and Rummy in Austria.

References

  1. ↑ "SET". PlayMonster.
  2. ↑ "PlayMonster Five Crowns". www.amazon.com.
  3. ↑ Lyles, Wesley (11 December 2019). "Five Crowns Card Game: An Overview (Rules, Tips, Scoring, Printables) - Board Games". Ludologists.
  4. ↑ How to play Five Crowns, 3 August 2022, retrieved 2024-02-11
  5. ↑ Perfect, Pixel (23 October 2021). "How To Play Five Crowns Card Game | Official Rules". Bar Games 101.
  6. ↑ French, Janet Beighle (1997-02-24). "New games help pass winter's waning hours" (pages 1 and 2). The Plain Dealer . Archived from the original (pages 1 and 2) on 2024-08-27. Retrieved 2024-08-27 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. ↑ How to play Five Crowns Solitaire, 27 August 2022, retrieved 2024-02-11
  8. ↑ "Amazon.com: Five Crowns Mini Round Card Game : Toys & Games". www.amazon.com. Retrieved 2024-02-12.
  9. ↑ Simons, Janet (1997-11-02). "Board Room Snowbound? Hunker down With a Great New Game". Rocky Mountain News . Archived from the original on 2024-08-27. Retrieved 2024-08-27.
  10. ↑ Holmstrom, David (1997-12-12). "Replacing Toy Guns With Soft and Squishies". The Christian Science Monitor . ProQuest   405619784. Archived from the original on 2024-08-27. Retrieved 2024-08-27.
  11. ↑ Cobb, Linda (2002-09-18). "Floor yellowing might be permanent". Bristol Herald Courier . Archived from the original on 2024-08-27. Retrieved 2024-08-27– via Newspapers.com.
  12. ↑ Tipping, Joy (2012-06-01). "Staying In". The Dallas Morning News . Archived from the original on 2024-08-27. Retrieved 2024-08-27.
  13. ↑ Burrell, Jackie (2020-07-24). "Life at home: 4 card games to play on hot summer days". The News Tribune . Mercury News. Archived from the original on 2024-08-27. Retrieved 2024-08-27– via Newspapers.com.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.