There are two ways to find happiness in this small town: money (♢) or love (♡). You will need to build a good network at the local clubs to win hearts, and you will have to have the highest-quality spades to mine for diamonds. Arrange your affairs carefully, or your competitor may step in and co-opt your network.
Carbondale is a game for two to four players played with standard decks of cards. It is not a "casual" card game like many standard-deck games, though by word count the rules are about as long as those for Canasta. Play time for players familiar with the rules is twenty to thirty minutes for two players, plus about fifteen minutes per additional player.
Keywords: tile laying, resource building, friendly thievery, hand management
Each player will be building their own personal Carbondale, a grid of cards. The objective is to build a network with at least 7 ♡s and at least 3 ♢ cards, or at least 7 ♢s and at least 3 ♡s. The game ends as soon as a player reaches one of these goals.
You will need two standard decks of cards for two players, three decks for three players, or four decks for four players. Tip (click me)
The decks preferably have the same backs, though this is not required unless you have a card-counting pro in your group. We used a ball-point pen to draw an unobtrusive line between the rank and suit of every card in one deck, above the rank and suit in another, and below the rank and suit in another. The marks are ignored for play, but make it easy to separate the decks after the game, and to play other multi-deck games. How about trying five-suit bridge?
Please note: Throughout the game, Ace=1.
Each player gets two starting cards to lay on the table, one next to the other. At random, give each player either an A♠ and 2♣, or an A♣ and 2♠. This is the beginning of your network. Put a Lincoln penny (or any other token) on these two cards to mark them as starting cards.
After setup:
As the game progresses, two piles will develop:
Players take turns, going clockwise around the table. In your turn, you may try to claim a card from an opponent, then you may add a card to your network. Or, you can discard any number of cards. At the end of your turn you will draw to replenish your hand.
You may attempt to take a vulnerable card from an opponent's network and put that card in your hand. The general idea is that a card is vulnerable until it is integrated into the network by being built upon. To define this precisely, a card is vulnerable to being claimed unless:
In the example tableau, the 3♢ is built from the 3♠ (we know because they overlap), but its space is not shared with another red card, so it is vulnerable. Similarly for the 4♡ and the 6♢. The 3♢ was not built off of the 5♠, and if the 5♠ has nothing built off of it, then it is vulnerable.
Click here to see the example tableau again.
Here is the process of attempting to claim a card in an opponent's network:
If your first challenge failed, you may try a second challenge.
Tip (click me)
Do you have the deck of 5-7 cards waiting to be played?
The face-down discards will be shuffled into that deck, so if table space is limited, you can discard face-down cards onto that deck.
Similarly with the 8-10 cards when they are the next to be played.
In this phase, select any card from your hand, possibly including one you just claimed from your opponent, and place it in your network following Carbondale's zoning regulations, then contribute to the common weal.
As a buisnessperson in a small town, you will join clubs of increasingly high rank and use those to win hearts, and buy a chain of spades for the purpose of mining for diamonds. Hearts and diamonds themselves do not produce anything, but are how you will find pockets of happiness in Carbondale and win the game.
Each player's personal Carbondale must follow the zoning regulations:
Tip (click me)
Slightly overlapping a red card with source card will help to record which card was built from where. When building East or West, lay the newly-built red card sideways.
In the example tableau, the player's town started with the 2♠ and A♣. The town is already five black cards wide, but three tall, leaving some room to expand North or South.
The player could, for example, build a 4♠ South of the 2♠. The player built a 2♡ North from the 2♠, and a 2♢ West from the 3♣, which we can tell because the 2♢ builds out sideways from the 3♣.
The 2♡ and the 2♢ occupy the same single spot in the grid; similarly for the 5♡ and 3♡.
Click here to see the example tableau again.
Here are your build options:
When building, give back to the community: contribute one card from your hand to the communal face-up stock.
Climbing one club to one higher, or buying a spade one bigger than the one you already have is normal course of business. If you build ♣ → ♣ or ♠ → ♠ only up to one rank higher, draw one extra card when you draw at the end of your turn.
A few things you can do using the example tableau:Click here to see the example tableau again.
Here is a summary of the possible builds, where the card built from has rank N:
| suits | rank |
|---|---|
|
♣ → ♣ ♠ → ♠ | N+2 |
|
♣ → ♠ ♠ → ♣ | ≤N+1 |
|
♣ → ♡ ♠ → ♢ | ≤N |
If you did not build a new card in your network, you may discard any number of cards from your hand. You may discard them face-down.
Draw until you have four cards in hand, with these modifiers:
You may draw cards from the draw deck or the common weal in any order. You may not draw cards discarded face-down or a card you put down this turn.
At the moment a player wants to draw from the draw pile but the pile is empty (and no sooner), form a new draw pile. At setup, you formed two piles of extra cards, each an opportunity to build your network further. Form the next draw pile by shuffling together the next of these spare piles (if any), the common weal, and face-down discards.
| suits | rank |
|---|---|
|
♣ → ♣ ♠ → ♠ | N+2 |
|
♣ → ♠ ♠ → ♣ | ≤N+1 |
|
♣ → ♡ ♠ → ♢ | ≤N |