Vamanos

A speedy game for 2 or more players.

There's not really any strategy involved in this quick game.  I was just trying to make up something fun and simple that required fast thinking.

Overview

Players will race to make scoring sets of five cards by combining pictures and colors in different ways.  When a player finishes, the game stops.  Rows that don’t score and unused cards will penalize players.  The first player to 500 points wins.
 

The cards

Each player needs his own 36 card deck to play.  There are six icons in the deck (Hombres, Cactuses, Jalapeños, Haciendas, Sombreros and Burros) that each appear in six different colors.  If you have the Adobe Acrobat Reader (free from www.adobe.com) you can download the file below and print each deck of cards:

Playing a round

Each player takes a deck and shuffles it thoroughly.  Decks are then passed to the left, so that each player uses a different deck than he shuffled.  One player calls “Vamanos” and the game begins.

Players draw one card at a time and place each in one of three rows on the table in front of themselves.  There are no turns and each player only plays in his own three rows as fast as he can.

When a player has five cards in one of his rows, he quickly gathers them in a small stack and pushes them to the side for later scoring.  New cards may placed in the now empty row.

Important rules:


When a player places his last card on the table (and possibly clears off the row he just completed) that player must call “Alta” and the round stops immediately.  When playing the last card, the player may place it face down on the table instead of placing it in a row.  This way the last card will not be counted against the player as an unscored row (see scoring below).
 

Scoring the round

At the end of the round players may have cards in their hands, in unfinished rows on the table (i.e., rows with 1-4 cards) and also in the small stacks of five cards that were cleared from the rows.  All of these cards will affect a player’s score in some way.

First, a player gets –1 point for each card still left in his hand at the end of the round.

Next, players total the points of their completed stacks of five cards.  They are worth points depending on the colors or pictures (possibly a combination of both) on the cards.  Points are as follows:

Three of a kind 10 Points
All different 15 Points
Four of a Kind 20 Points
Five of a Kind (including all different) 40 Points
 
Set
Points
Three of a Kind
10
All different
15
Four of a Kind
20
Five of a Kind (including all different)
40

It is possible, for example, for a stack to have three pictures of Cactuses and three Yellow cards.  This would count as two Three of a Kinds and score 20 points.  Note that since a Five of a Kind of pictures or colors will automatically have all different of the other characteristic, it’s already accounted for in the scoring chart above.  In other words, don’t add an extra 15 points to a Five of a Kind when scoring.

Finally, any stacks that didn’t score points (because at least three pictures or colors didn’t match) and also any rows started, but left unfinished, count –2 points each.

Players scores are totaled and added to any of their points from previous rounds.  If no one has reached 500 points, the next round begins.  Players play until one player reaches a high score over 500 points, thus winning the game.

Return home.


This page was last updated November 25, 2001.