Wyatt Earp (card Game) - Rule Summary

Rule Summary

The following is a partial summary of the rules of play.

Each player tries to earn reward money by participating in the capture of seven outlaws during multiple rounds of play. Outlaws are captured through the accumulation of capture points, awarded to players who play sets or melds of cards representing the outlaws, or who play cards which build on the melds of others. Cards almost always have reward amounts associated with them; playing a card adds to the reward for the outlaw associated with the play.

As in rummy or gin rummy, a meld is three or more matching cards. In Wyatt Earp, card matches are not determined by suits; instead, cards are matched based on a color marking associated with each of the seven outlaws.

A round starts with each player being dealt ten cards, with one of the remaining cards used to establish the discard pile (face up) and the rest of the deck serving as the card supply, face down.

Each player's turn consists of three steps:

1. drawing either the top card from the discard pile or two cards from the card supply;
2. optionally playing one or more cards from their hand; and
3. discarding a card.

A round usually ends when a player discards the last card from their hand. It can also end when the card supply is exhausted again (i.e. a second time) after having been restocked once from the discard pile. Or most rarely, it ends after a player discards a card as the third step of their turn and another player, as a result of play during that turn, is left with no cards.

Capture points are assessed and reward money is distributed at the end of a round. Players with the most capture points for a given outlaw get the largest share of the reward money for that outlaw; a player gets all of an outlaw's reward money if their capture point total for that outlaw is at least five points higher than any other player's total for that outlaw.

The game ends when one player has accumulated at least $25,000 in reward money.