Conveyor Rummy

Conveyor Rummy is a Rummy-style game designed for dominoes.

After having bought Mexican Train, a domino game with an absurd amount of dominoes, I started wondering what else I could use these dominoes for.

After some mulling, I came to the conclusion that since dominoes are double-sided, one side could be treated as the “suit” as if it were a playing card.

Essentially, a 🁼 (3:4 domino) could be seen as being a 3 in the suit of Fours, and a 4 in the suit of Threes simultaneously.

Working off of this basis, I created Conveyor Rummy.

At its most basic, like most Rummy games, it’s about drawing and discarding tiles and putting tiles into melds until your hand is devoid of loose tiles.

The first player to do so then declares that they’re finished and scoring can begin.

Where the game innovates, and where it gets is name, is in the conveyor mechanic.

In order to avoid the Rummikub thing of all the tiles just accumulating in your hand and the Mahjong thing of all the discards just laying all over in the middle of the table, Conveyor Rummy instead employs the use of designated columns of tiles, at which you can only draw and discard at the ends of the columns

Thus, while you have some information about what tiles are available, actually getting to them might become an issue.

The actual scoring rules are a bit more complex than I perhaps would’ve liked with my current day design sensibilities and I may give the game a once-over in the future, but as it stands it is what it is.

Materials

To play this game you need

  • Dominoes. If you can’t find the required tiles below, get a Mexican Train set, it’s almost guaranteed to have what you need.
    • 2 players: A “Double 9” set (highest tile is a 9:9)
    • 3-4 players: A “Double 12” set (highest tile is a 12:12)
  • A pen and paper for scoring.
  • The rules.

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