Royalty (1959)

Overview

Royalty is a word card game that combines aspects of Scrabble and Rummy.

Players can build words from their hands as in Scrabble but may also steal other players' words to create different words by combining those letters with their own hand. The two 53 card decks are composed of red and black cards of equal frequency. The decks contain all the letters of the English alphabet (of varying frequency) and a Knave (wild card). A player scores every time they create a word or capture a word. There are bonus points for using all of your hand in one turn and for creating a word over four letters long of all one color. Players receive additional points at the end of the game for each card they managed to keep. And of course if any player manages to create the word 'ROYALTY' they can double their final score and tradition dictates that all players stand in tribute.

Selected as a Games 100 Best Game!