What Is Five Crowns?
Five Crowns is a rummy-style game published by SET Enterprises. It is played with a special deck that has five suits instead of four. Over 11 rounds, you try to arrange every card in your hand into sets, then go out before your opponents. The player with the lowest total score after the final round wins.
What You Need
- A Five Crowns deck. It contains two copies of a 58-card pack: five suits (commonly clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades and stars), cards from 3 through King in each suit, and jokers.
- Pen and paper for scoring, or the score pad included in the box.
How Many People Can Play?
The box describes the game as playable by a range of group sizes, commonly cited as 1 to 7 players. In practice the game works best when there are at least two or three people. Larger groups simply mean more cards are in circulation and longer turns.
The Goal
Each round, form all your cards into valid groups, then go out. Whoever scores the fewest points over all 11 rounds wins.
Setup and Dealing
The game has 11 rounds. In round one, each player is dealt three cards. Each following round adds one card, so round two uses four cards, and the last round uses thirteen. The dealer deals one card at a time, turns one card face up to start the discard pile, and places the rest face down as the draw pile. The deal rotates each round.
Wild Cards
Two kinds of wild card are in play:
- Jokers are always wild.
- The round’s wild card. The number of cards dealt tells you which rank is wild. In the three-card round, 3s are wild; in the four-card round, 4s are wild; and so on through Jacks, Queens and Kings in the later rounds.
Books and Runs
You can form two kinds of groups:
- A book is three or more cards of the same rank, regardless of suit.
- A run is three or more cards of the same suit in consecutive order.
Wild cards can stand in for any card. A group needs at least three cards, so in the earliest rounds all your cards may need to be in a single group.
A Turn
- Draw the top card of the draw pile or the top card of the discard pile.
- Try to arrange your hand into books and runs.
- Discard one card face up.
Going Out
A player goes out when every card in their hand can be arranged into valid groups, with one card left over to discard. The player lays down their groups face up. Every other player then gets one final turn to improve their hand and lay down whatever groups they have.
Scoring
Unmatched cards left in your hand count against you:
| Card | Points |
|---|---|
| 3 through 10 | Face value |
| Jack | 11 |
| Queen | 12 |
| King | 13 |
| Joker | 50 |
Wild cards that are not used in a group still count their normal value, with the exception that jokers count 50. Add the scores each round. After round 11, the lowest total wins. Ties can be broken by an agreed house rule.
Tips for Beginners
- Keep the round’s wild card in mind, since it is easy to forget as the rounds change.
- Avoid holding on to high cards for too long when your hand is not coming together.
- Watch what opponents pick up from the discard pile to guess their groups.
- Do not wait for a perfect hand. Going out earlier can limit what opponents can lay down.
Games Similar to Five Crowns
If you like the draw-meld-discard rhythm, other rummy-style options include classic rummy, Hand and Foot for teams, and Thirty-One for something much faster and simpler.