Five Crowns – A Terrific Card Game for Tweens and Teens

Our family loves to play games.

And the fun thing is that our oldest grandchild is ‘discovering’ the games in our game closet. He has 2 favorites: Yatzee and Flash.

Instead of heading to the toys when he comes, he now heads for the games. And he wants to play them over, and over, and over.

With me.

Which I don’t mind. Because I like those games! And I like playing with him!

One game that I recently discovered is the card game Five Crowns. It’s super easy to learn how to play yet it provides a challenge.

This game is just a little bit hard for him. I think that he will be able to understand it better when he gets a tad older. So, I think that this game is best for older tweens and teens.

In a nutshell, here’s how you play.

The object is to have the lowest score by the end of the game.

There are thirteen rounds. On the first round you deal 3 cards. The second round you deal 4 cards. Each succeeding round you deal one more card.

Players try to get either runs of cards that are all in one suit or a ‘book’ which is a set of 3 cards that are all of the same number.

There are jokers in the deck and they are wild cards and can be used to complete a book or the run.

Here’s an example of a run — the seven, six, five, four, and three of diamonds. You can see that the joker is completing a book of nines.

There are other wild cards. If it is the round with only three cards, then the number three is wild. Any card that has a three can be used like a joker.

When you have four cards, any card with the number four on it is wild. Each new round will have a new wild card depending on how many cards were dealt.

When someone can lay down all of their cards (in any combination of runs and books), the other playesr gets one more chance to play. Then, that is the end of play for that round.

Everyone counts up the points according to the cards they have left in their hand and adds that to their score.

Once you have played thirteen rounds (where the king is the wild card), that is the end of the game. The one with the lowest score is the winner.

Of course you get more complete instructions with the game. This is just the Reader’s Digest condensed version.

You can get Five Crowns on Amazon for $11 on Amazon. (I am not an Amazon affiliate so I do not make any money if you purchase this game. I just want to make it easy for you, Dear Reader, to find the game!) You might be able to find it at box stores that sell games.

There is also a junior version of this game that costs a little bit over $9. It is WAY different than the adult version. Just so you know.