Description

A straight-forward adaptation of the card game Canasta into a word game. Instead of clustering traditional cards into melds of identical rank, lettered cards are melded into words.

The Alphanasta deck consists of two packs of 54 cards, which combined include: 40 vowels, 48 consonants, 8 doubles (e.g. J/K or W/X, where you can use it as either letter), 8 pairs (e.g. ER or ED, where both letters are used in the printed order, and 4 triples (ING). Vowels are worth 5 points each, consonants 10, doubles and pairs 20, and triples 50.

Each player is dealt 13 cards each, or 11 in partnership games. In a turn a player:
1. Draws: either A) the top of the draw pile, or B) the entire discard pile. B) can only be done if the top discard is used to extend an existing word, or meld a new word of 4+ letters using cards from the hand.
2. May do this as much as they wish: A) meld new words from the hand of 4+ letters; B) add cards to either end of an tabled word of theirs, making it a new word.
3. Discards a card from the hand, unless they are going out.

Doubles, pairs, and triples are considered Wild cards for the purposes of impure words (it's impure if it ends in a Wild); and of freezing the discard pile (which cannot be drawn unless the top card is used for a new word of 5+ letters rather than 4+).

A player or team may go out if they have at least two Word Canastas (words of 7+ letters), or one Alphanasta (a word of 10+ letters played from the hand). At this point all players score the sum of the letter values in the words they have on the table, plus these bonuses:
100 points for going out
300 an impure Word Canasta
500 a pure Words Canasta
1000 an Alphanasta
100 for each letter over 7 in a Word Canasta.

The first player to reach 3000 points over several hands, or 5000 for partnership games, wins.

—user summary