Mountainside Math Medley: A solitaire card and dice game

Creator: Timon Bestebreur (timonbestebreur@pm.me)

Mountainside Math Medley is a math-based card/dice game in which you have to find the perfect combination of numbers and mathmatical operations to reach a target. This can be compared to the way a song is composed of a combination of tones that are repeated a certain number of times, so in a way this game is about composing songs!

Needed supplies

• 1 standard 52-card deck of playing cards (including 2 Joker cards)
• 2 six-sided dice

Setup

• Shuffle the cards.
• Place one joker at 1/3 of the pile, the other joker at 2/3 of the pile.
• Place 9 cards from the pile face-up in a 3x3 grid. Then put that pile face down on the table. This is the draw pile.
• Roll the two dice.

Rules

Card values

• The cards have the following values:
  • Ace = 1
  • Jack = 2
  • Queen = 3
  • King = 4
  • 2 through 10 = equal to face value

Capacity

• The two dice form your target:
  • If the dice are equal, one of the dice is multiplied by 10, and one by 1. The target is the sum of these values. Example: 4 and 4 becomes 44.
  • If the dice are unequal, the highest number is multiplied by 10 and the lowest by 1. The target is the sum of these values. Example:
    • 5 and 3 becomes 53
    • 2 and 6 becomes 62

Combination rules

• You can combine cards by multiplying as many times as you want and add or subtract once. The general calculation order applies here: First multiply, then add/subtract. Thus, if the target is 45, the following combinations are valid and exactly add up to the target:
  • 8 * 5 + 10
  • J * 4 * 5 + 10
  • 2 * 10 + 5 * 5
  • Q * K * 5 - 10
• The following combinations are invalid:
  • 10 + 10 * 2 + 3 * 5 (You may only use + once)
  • 4 * 5 + 6 * 5 - 5 (You may only use + or - once)

Joker cards

• If you encounter a joker card during gameplay, place the joker card in the grid just like a normal card. Then re-throw the dice to form a new target.
• The joker can take any value from 1-10 and acts like a normal card: When it is used in a combination, the joker card is moved to the discard pile along with the other cards in the combination.

Corner cards

• If you can not find a suitable combination that ends up at the target, draw a card from the draw pile and place it on one of the corners of the grid.
• Corner cards are special cards that may be used as a + or - card, on top of the + or - that is allowed in normal play. Thus, if K is a corner card, the following combinations are valid:
  • K + 5 + 10
  • K + 3 * 6 * 7 + 4
  • K * 3 * 5
  • 4 + 3 * 4 + 7
• Every time you use a corner card in a combination, you do not remove it, but you turn it face-down instead. This indicates that the corner card has been used, and that that corner card spot is occupied.
• You can place up to 4 corner cards, one per corner.

How to win the game

• You win when all the cards of the draw deck have been drawn. You don't have to use up all the cards in a combination, you just need to empty the draw deck.
• You lose the game when you cannot find a valid combination, and all corner card spots are occupied.

Gameplay

1. Set up the board as described in 'Setup'
2. Try to find a valid combination of cards. If you found one, remove the cards you used in the combination and place them on a discard pile. Then fill up the empty spaces with new cards from the draw pile.
3. If you can find no combination, place a corner card on one of the corners and use them as specified in 'Corner cards'.
4. If you encounter a Joker card during play, handle it as described in 'Joker cards'.
5. Go to 2

Additional notes

How to increase or decrease the difficulty of the game

You can make the game harder by:

• Reducing the amount of corner cards that may be used.
• Setting a timer with a maximum time limit: If the time runs out before all cards are drawn, you lose the game.

You can make the game easier by:

• Making Aces special cards that may be used like a corner card (add or subtract the Ace on top of the usual + or -) –> This helps to fix one-off errors where you are one point shy of the target.
• Changing the value of the Ace to be both 1 and 11, whatever suits the player in each scenario. This means that the Ace can be used as a card with value 1 or with value 11.
• Increasing the number of corner cards that may be used.

How to change the duration of the game

While using up a whole deck of cards is convenient, during playtesting this game I noticed that the playtime with a whole deck of cards is just a bit too long. To decrease the amount of time that a game takes, simply reduce the amount of cards in the draw pile.

Want to sell this game?

If you want to make this into a custom designed printed game, please take note of the following:

I created this game for others to enjoy, for free. If you want to make money off this design, please don't pay me for it, but donate a part of the profit to some charity. This way, you can both make money and make the world a better place.

The idea behind the name

I came up with this game while sitting in a vacation home with a view of a mountain. At the background a calm medley of slow country songs was playing, and I enjoyed the view. This environment stimulated my creativity, which led me to experiment and playtest this game to the game it has become!

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Ramon Huiskamp for creating the game Joker Jailbreak. He and his game inspired me to start playing around with cards and dice to see what game I could some up with! I really like Joker Jailbreak, although the math was not challenging enough for me. Thus, I created this game, which is kind of like Joker Jailbreak on steroids.

Have fun playing, and shoot me an email if you have suggestions for improvements!