CONTACK
Drawn tiles must be placed face up in front of you (as opposed to hidden information dominoes) so you can use this information in planning your next play. Each player gets 5 tiles. Lowest total scoring tile plays that low tile first, then play progresses clockwise. Colors must match, and numbers must also match in one of two ways. "Matching Contack" is when 2 adjacent tiles have the same number (1:1, 3:3, 4:4, etc.) "Counting Contack" is when 2 adjacent tiles have totals divisible by 5, which are the scoring Contacks (5:10, 3:7, 2:3, etc.) You can obviously have a few that are both (5:5, 10:10). You *must* play on the last tile played unless you can make an "opportunity play" - an opportunity to play a tile where 2 or 3 sides match. After such an opportunity play, the next player must play off of the opportunity tile, or to another opportunity situation. If the opportunity is enclosed on all three sides, and there are no more playable opportunities, the game ends (otherwise play continues) A player *must* always play if possible, even if it forces them to set up the next player for a win/good score. If you cannot play, you must draw from the bonepile (up to restoring your beginning hand of 5 tiles) one at a time. If one of the drawn tiles is playable, it must be played at once, and drawing stops. If none are playable, play passes to the next player. When all tiles are exhausted from bonepile, play continues until no-one can play or play is stopped via the opportunity play rule above. 3 hands constitute a game. (This stinks if you're forced to set a player up to score big during the last hand. Other winning criteria work as well.)
The chips are used only in the variant called "Club Contack". They refer to the chips as "counters". "The preparation for this game is the same as in regular Contack except that the counters are divided equally among all the players. Each counter [regardless of color] has a value of 5 points.
Note: If many are playing, it may be well to assign a value of 5 to the white counters, 10 to the red, and 20 or 25 to the blue ones.
Rules of the game are the same except for scoring. In Club Contack, a player making a "Counting Contack" [scoring play] receives from *each* other player counters equal to the total of the score of his [play.] For example, if a player makes a scoring play of 15, he immediately receives 3 chips (5 points each) from each other player in the game. Winner is the player who has the most counters at the end of 3 hands. So much for the official version. I would think that with 3 colors of chips, some interesting scoring methods might be devised taking color into account as well as numerical score. If you happen to come up with any, please shoot me a note!
About this file
My friend Emily found an old game "Contack" in some used furniture in the fall of 2001. The game appeared complete but lacked rules.
I did an Internet search on "rules of contack" and did not find any direct hits, but I found a reference to a discussion by others who were looking for the same thing. I emailed those people and they emailed back the above rules (actually just one guy did, Dave Bernazzani of South Shore Gamers http://www.gis.net/~dber/). I am placing them online in hopes that they will be useful to others.