The Rules:
We believe that house rules are official rules. By that, we mean you pick how you play the Flex Deck. Mix classic systems of fun with double-nine dominoes, word games and traditional card indices, all in one.
Below are rules we play by in our house. Here is a link to our YouTube channel with our growing list of how to videos . Please share how you play so we can with others. Check out how Martin from Omaha came up with to play Handheld Flex Deck Solitaire in the video below. Here is a link to other games he has created.
Flexdeck Family House Rules: Pick How You Play
Goal: Reach 200 points using a mix of rounds of *All Fives Dominoes and/or *Rummy.
Play a word game between each round of to determine what is played next.
One word game option: Deal 15 cards (up to 4 players) per player. Person to use the most cards in a crossword wins.
Harder to use letters are paired with the higher suited playing card symbols (King of Hearts, etc.). In the case of a tie, player to have made the hardest crossword wins.
Word Games:
Here's a list of word games on wikipedia.
A solo letter game we play is a variation of solitaire.
To set up: make 11 piles of 5 cards each, turn the top card of each pile face up so that you can see the letters.
The goal: work your way through the entire Flexdeck making words from the letter combinations shown face up.
To play: from the letters shown on the table, can you make a word? If so, you can discard those letters. Turn over the next card from each pile that you were able to use a letter. You win when all cards from all piles have been used to make words. Making more piles of fewer cards will make it easier to win. Vice versa, do fewer piles if you want more of a challenge. Pro tip: There is only 1 'Q' and 2 'U's in the deck so in this game, you may want to be very careful about when you use your 'U".
Dominoes:
History: With over 800+ years of history, folks have come up with a lot of different games you can with dominoes and the pips (dots) on them.
The Goal: Many games revolve around matching one side of a domino with another domino of the same pip count on it and running out of dominoes before the other player. First to discard all cards wins.
Game Play: Deal 7 cards per player. Player with the highest double is first to go and places that card in the center of table to start the game. Play cards if you have an end that matches an open end available. In the picture above, each card matches with the six. The next player to play a card would need to have a 0,5,2,or 1 domino count in order to go next. In classic dominoes, the first card is the only card that can be played off in four directions as shown. If player does not have any playable dominoes, they pull from the ‘boneyard’ of remaining dominoes not yet dealt. Player to discard all their cards first wins the hand and earns points by counting the remaining pips in the other players hand.
Add points throughout: for ‘all-fives’ the goal is play dominoes that add up to increments of the number 5 with the other end of the domino string. For example, in the image above, if the player played a 5-1 domino next to the 1-6 (7 of diamonds), they would score 10 points (5 on the domino they just played + 5 pip end on the card that is also the jack of hearts). If they played a 2-5 domino off next to the 2-6 (ace of hearts), they would score 5 points.
Here's a link to wikipedia with a lot of great info about dominoes to also help you get started!