Ladder Rummy — rules card

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Ladder Rummy 2 to 6 players · four colours, numbers 1 to 12, two packs, plus wilds — 104 cards THE IDEA • Ten cards each, and ten contracts. Each round has one you must lay down before you can start getting rid of cards. • Totals add up across all ten. Lowest wins. A TURN • Draw one — the pile or the top discard. Then you may go down, then lay off, then discard. • You may not throw a card that plays on the next player’s melds. At Sprout only, ⚙️ Settings can turn this off; at Scout and Ace it always applies. • There is no swap round and no stealing here. That is the difference from Aggravation. WHAT COUNTS AS A MELD • A SET is three or more of the same number. Colour is irrelevant. • A RUN is three or more consecutive numbers IN ANY COLOURS. This is the big difference from ordinary rummy, where a run must be one suit. • A COLOUR GROUP is three or more cards of one colour, numbers irrelevant. Ordinary cards cannot do this at all. • There is no wrap-around: 11-12-1 is not a run. One is always low. • Wilds may never outnumber real cards in a meld. • A Skip ⊘ is not part of any meld, ever. It has no number and no colour. SKIPS • The only thing you can do with a Skip ⊘ is throw it away — and when you do, you choose somebody, and they lose their next turn. • A Skip on the discard pile is dead. Nobody can pick it up. • Who you may hit is a ⚙️ Settings choice. "Anybody" lets you pick, which is how the published game plays it. "The next player" sends it to whoever plays after you, with nothing to choose. • When you may pick: not yourself, and not somebody who is already going to be skipped — unless there is nobody else left to choose. • A Skip left in your hand at the end of a round costs you 15. It is worth more than a 12 and you can never meld it, so do not sit on it too long. • Skips can be switched off in ⚙️ Settings. BURIAL • A discard covered by another discard is buried and can never be taken. With no stealing here, that simply means: take it now or lose it. SCORING • Cards left in hand score against you: 1 to 9 are worth 5 each, 10 to 12 are worth more, and a wild is worth most of all. • Fail a contract and you repeat it next round while everybody else moves up the ladder. WHERE THESE CAME FROM No external authority. This is our arrangement of a contract rummy on a numbered four-colour deck. There is no published rulebook for it and this card does not imply one. Its sibling on this shelf, Aggravation, is the same shape on ordinary playing cards. w.richardpringle.com/games/ladder-rummy/ ▲ FOLD ▼ ▲ FOLD ▼ ▲ FOLD ▼ FOLD & TEAR