Gameweave

Conquian

Conquian is the two-player Mexican game that every modern rummy descends from. It is played with forty cards and won by showing exactly eleven melded cards on the table. There is no scoring, no going out on points and no second chance: a deal is won outright or it is a tie.

The pack

Take a standard 52-card pack and remove all the 8s, 9s and 10s. Forty cards remain, ranking A 2 3 4 5 6 7 J Q K.
Because the 8, 9 and 10 are gone, a 7 is next to a Jack. So 6-7-J-Q of one suit is a legal sequence, exactly as 4-5-6 is. The Ace is always low — A-2-3 is a sequence, Q-K-A is not.

The deal

Each player gets ten cards, dealt one at a time. The remaining twenty go face-down in the centre as the stock. No card is turned up to start a discard pile — the pile only begins when a card is refused by both players.
The non-dealer plays first. The first player alternates between games: Player 1 opens the first game, Player 2 the next, and so on.

Melds

A meld is laid face up on the table where both players can see it.
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Set — three or four cards of the same rank (three 4s, four Kings).
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Sequence — three or more consecutive cards of one suit (2-3-4 of hearts, 6-7-J of spades).

The turn

A card you take is never added to your hand. It goes straight onto the table in a meld, or it does not come to you at all. That single rule is what makes Conquian what it is.
On your turn you source one card:
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Turn the stock. The top card of the stock is flipped face up in the centre. You may meld it — starting a new meld with cards from your hand, or adding it to a meld you already have on the table — or you may refuse it.
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Take the discard. You may lift the top card of the discard pile instead, but only if you can meld it immediately. Buried cards are dead.
Having melded a card, you then throw one card from your hand face up onto the discard pile, and your turn ends.

Refusing a turned card

If you do not want the card you turned, you offer it to your opponent. They may meld it — and then they must throw a card of their own — after which the turn comes back to you. If they refuse it too, the card goes dead on the discard pile and the turn passes to them.

Forcing

This is Conquian's signature, and its sharpest weapon.
If a card you are letting go — one you turned and refused, or one you have just thrown — can legally be added to a meld your opponent already has on the table, you may force them to take it.
They must add it to the named meld and then throw a card from their own hand. The point is rarely the card: it is the throw. Forcing is how you make an opponent break a pair they were holding for a set, or shed the card that was going to finish a sequence.
Be careful: a forced card still counts towards your opponent's eleven. Forcing someone who already has ten on the table hands them the game.

Winning

The first player to show eleven melded cards wins.
Since you are dealt ten, eleven can only be reached by melding a card you have just taken together with every card left in your hand — leaving you with nothing to throw. The hand ends there and then.
If the stock runs out and neither player has eleven, the deal is a tie, called tablas.

This version

The digital table keeps the rules above and differs only where a physical table relies on you handling the cards:
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When you take a card, the game offers you the sets and sequences it can actually make, as buttons, rather than asking you to push cards around.
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Taking a set of three when you hold four of that rank uses the first two your hand offers; you do not choose which suit to hold back.
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Cards already on the table cannot be shuffled between melds.
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A player who refuses a card they could have used is not bound by that refusal later in the deal.