The Brickdown
This is a strategy game for two to five players, using only ordinary playing cards. There was a time, and there may yet be a time, when there was/ will be a theme associated with the game, and the name "The Brickdown" would be relevant. Just pretend that the game is about stoneworkers trying to piece together walls out of bricks..

Setup and Materials

You will need an ordinary deck of playing cards (without jokers). If there are three players playing, remove the aces. In any case, shuffle the deck. Deal from that deck a random grid of cards, 6 rows deep and 6 columns wide. Deal the remaining cards evenly among the players. If any player ends up with more cards than any of the other players, or more than 5 cards, that excess should be randomly discarded face down.

Turn Structure

Players take turns swapping cards from their hand with cards on the grid. This swapping is performed to fulfill certain goals and is subject to certain restrictions. When any player cannot perform a swap on their turn, the game ends.

Goals: What motivates one swap over another?

Players exchange cards between their hand and the grid to reduce the number of points in their hand, and to form "straights" on the grid.

A straight is a row or column in the grid of cards that could be rearranged to form a sequence of consecutive cards without gaps. For example, the row of cards "5-8-9-6-4-7" is a straight, because it could be rearranged into "4-5-6-7-8-9", a sequence of consecutive cards (Notice that this rearrangement is not actually necessary; it is simply necessary that the correct numbers be present, not that they be arranged consecutively on the grid). The highest rank in the deck- usually aces, but kings in the case of the three player game- is considered consecutive with the lowest rank in the deck (twos).

As soon as a straight is formed, the player who performed the swap that was responsible for the formation of the straight collects all of the cards on the grid that are part of that straight, placing them face-down on the table in a pile separate from their hand. This may end up separating the grid into two halves; collapse the grid back together and join the halves.

This process of collapsing the grid may cause the formation of other straights. The player that performed the last swap also collects the cards from these straights.

Lastly, it is possible that a swap can cause the formation of a straight both in the row and in the column that the swap was performed in. The cards included in those straights are collected as normal, and the grid collapses as would be intuitive. Straights formed in a row and a column simultaneously are called "crosses"; the rules of the game treat them the same as any other straight.

Restrictions: What kinds of swaps are allowed?

Any card from your hand may be selected to swap with the grid. However, any such card may only be exchanged with certain places on the grid. Any target position on the grid that a card might be swapped with lies within both a row and a column. To be legal overall, a swap must be legal considering the row that it occurs in, AND be legal considering the column it occurs in.

For a swap to be legal considering its row (column), it must:

Victory

When a player cannot perform a swap during their turn, the game ends. For every player, add up the total value of the cards in their hand (each card being worth its number rank in points; all face cards and aces count as 11 points). Then, subtract from this the number of cards that player has collected in straights. The player with the fewest points wins.