A New Card Game for 2010

Daylilly Rummy is for rummy players and flower lovers alike -- especially those who enjoy Daylilies (Hemerocallis). The game plays well with two or three players (aged 10 to adults) in about an hour. If you have stumbled upon this website without owning the game, contact me for information on how to obtain your own deck: ccleaver@mindspring.com.

The objective of the game is to create melds (playable combinations of cards) to score points and be the first to present a "Daylily Festival" by melding your entire hand. The first player to reach 100 points wins the game! Read the complete game rules.

The Daylily Rummy deck consists of 45 unique cards. There are 15 different daylily flowers (cultivars) which serve as the "suits," with each flower pictured on three cards: one, two, and three blooms. The flowers are grouped into five Color Families (Purple, Pink, Red, Yellow, and Orange) plus Pandora's Box, which exists all by itself. Each Color Family contains three different flowers except for the Orange Family, which has only two flowers. Why? Because when I set out to create this game, I used only the daylilies in my own garden, and I have fewer orange flowers than other colors. As it happens, this provides an interesting twist of strategy. Players do not need any prior knowledge about daylilies in order to play the game, as the pertinent information is spelled out on the cards. The pictures are for your enjoyment.

If the reader is acquainted with other rummy-style card games - knock rummy, gin rummy - the basic play of the game will be familiar: organize the cards in your hand by shared elements that do, or might, create melds; draw new cards to improve your hand; discard unwanted cards until one player has melded all ten cards and "goes out." This game's mechanisms for creating melds, the types of melds, and how melds are scored, will provide a totally new experience!

Love Those Daylilies

Daylilies are beautiful flowers which come in hundreds of color combinations and forms - something to please every taste. The reason I'm so nuts about them is that any flower which says "Look at me today, for I will be gone tomorrow" commands my respect. Now that I have hundreds of blooms to admire every day during the growing season, this has become a huge, and delightful, responsibility!

As anyone who has tried to photograph flowers knows, they look different in the morning's warm light than in the afternoon's cooler light, and they look different depending on the weather. In photographing and describing the cultivars in my Daylily Rummy game, I have taken care to be accurate in their presentation and their attribution: each flower has a creator, a "hybridizer," who deserves credit for his or her aesthetic vision. The hybridizer names and dates are on the cards. More information may be found on the website of the American Hemerocallis Society. Caution: daylilies are addictive.

Credits

Thanks and credit go to: Jean Porter for getting me started with her mother-in-law's cultivars, three of which are included in the deck; Philip Sasse for encouragement and advice throughout game development and proofreading pre-publication; to Kristy Bonner, for refusing to play the game without large numbers and symbols in the upper left corners; to Michelle Corbin, Earl Bailey and Anne Churchill, for being the first serious gamers to play-test Daylily Rummy (and demonstrate that the game does play well for three); and to game-designer Kevin Nunn for his encouragement and generous help clarifying the rules. Thanks also to Steve and the friendly, professional crew at Quality Playing Cards, Inc. for going beyond their promise of great customer service.