Welcome to Five Cucumbers: The Tricky Card Game!

Hey there! I’m excited to introduce you to Five Cucumbers, a super fun card game that you can play with 2 to 6 players! The goal of the game is simple – you want to avoid being eliminated. Are you ready to learn how to play?

Let’s Get Set Up!

First things first, we need to set up the game. To begin, choose one player to be the dealer for this round. The dealer will take the deck of cards and give each player 7 cards. Make sure to deal them facedown. The remaining cards are not needed for this round, so just set them aside. Oh, and don’t forget about the cucumbers! Keep them stacked in the middle of all the players.

Understanding Card Ranking and Special Rules

The deck contains a total of 60 cards. Each card in the deck is assigned a rank from 1 (lowest) to 15 (highest). There are four cards for each rank. Now, here’s where it gets interesting – each card also has a number of cucumbers printed on it. If the rank of a card is the winning card for the last trick of a round, the player who played that card must take the number of cucumbers shown on the card. Pretty cool, right?

Did you know that 1s in the game of Five Cucumbers are really special? Each 1 has a 2x printed on it, and here’s why: whenever a player plays a 1 to the last trick, it doubles the number of cucumbers the losing player has to take.

GAMEPLAY

Playing Five Cucumbers involves multiple rounds. To kick off the game, the youngest player gets to start the first trick. After that, the winner of each trick will lead the next one.

When it’s your turn to play a trick in Five Cucumbers, you can begin with any card you want. As for the other players, they have to follow the rules: either play a card of the same or higher rank, or if they can’t, they must play their lowest-ranking card. The player who has the highest-ranked card or the last card played wins the trick.

The goal in Five Cucumbers is to avoid winning the last trick, specifically the 7th trick, in each round. Why? Because the player who wins the final trick gets penalized.

SCORING

So, here’s how the scoring works: when I win the last trick of the round, I get penalized. I receive a score that’s equal to the rank of the card I won the trick with.

And here’s the interesting part: if the card is a 1, its rank is doubled, but it doesn’t give me any cucumbers. If the card is ranked 2 through 5, it takes away 1 cucumber from me. If it’s ranked 6 through 9, I lose 2 cucumbers. For cards ranked 10 through 11, I have to surrender 3 cucumbers. As for cards ranked 12 through 14, they make me give away 4 cucumbers. And finally, if the card is ranked 15, it takes away 5 cucumbers from me automatically.

Now, to spice things up, if I have 5 or more cucumbers, I’m eliminated. Yep, that’s the rule.

Oh, and don’t forget, starting a new round is all up to the player who won the last trick. But if that player has been eliminated, then the player on their left gets to do the honors. Keep this in mind!

END OF GAME

And now, the end of the game. It happens when there’s only one player left standing, the ultimate survivor who hasn’t been eliminated. This player is crowned the winner!

Just so you know, Amber (They/Them) is this awesome writer from Austin. They’re a true gaming connoisseur, and they’re all about dogs, plants, and D&D. How cool is that?