Nebular Colors

Inspired by classic two-player card games such as Gin Rummy and Koi-Koi, Nebular Colors has players melding three or more cards into sets and runs, aiming to pass the thresholds for each suit in order to score points. On each turn a player either draws two cards from a shared deck and then discards one card to one of two discard piles OR takes all the cards from one of the discard piles, melds those they can into sets and then keeps the rest as penalty cards.

Players score points once they have melded cards, with the number of cards required depending on the suit. Each suit in the game planet, moon, comet and star has a different make-up of ranks based on a pyramid, and the card thresholds are worth different numbers of points.

Each hand is a race to 5 points. A player who reaches 5 points can stop the current hand and collect a star fragment OR call Nova and push their luck to reach 10 points before the opponent reaches 5 points. If the Nova succeeds, they collect two star fragments; if not, the opponent collects a star fragment instead.

The first player to collect four star fragments wins.