Pyramid Pick
Seasons
Published by Dust Bunny Games
Game Designed by Rob Martin
Graphic Design by Mark Sellmeyer & Rob Martin
Illustrations by Mark Sellmeyer
Game Development by Nancy Milligan, Mark Sellmeyer, Timothy Hunt, Don Betlach Full-color, 4 decks of 55 cards, score pad, & rules; $24.95
Seasons is subtitled "The Calendar Rummy Game." The object of the game is to score 365 points (366 in a leap year). You score points as you would in Rummy, by melding runs or sets, or by laying off existing runs or sets.
Where Seasons quickly differs from Rummy is the use of personal decks, one for each season. Each themed deck (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter) contains the same set of 55 cards. The suits (stars, planets, sun, moon) are 12 cards each, one for each month. There are also four holiday cards that can be fit into runs, a Happy Birthday! Card that can enhance a set, and two wild cards that can be used anywhere. From his draw pile, a player pulls a hand of 12, then turns over the top card to begin a discard pile.
Players can draw from their own draw pile or pick up the top discard from anyone's pile without penalty. You can also select a card deeper in a discard pile, but it must be played immediately and all the cards on top of it are taken into your hand. After scoring, all the cards in your hand and score area are shuffled into your deck, so decks change with each round as players steal each other's discards! As a result, after the first round, if your card . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: July 16, 2004
Copyright © 2004 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.