The main objective of the game Conquian is to be the first player to be left with no cards in the hand. The player has to meld all the cards in his hand on forming different runs or sets. These melds are placed face up on the table.

The game is played using a Spanish style deck and hence invariably played by two players. In a case, if the Spanish style deck is not available it can be made from a standard deck on removing 8, 9 and 10 cards. As these cards are not involved in the game a meld of 6-7-J is legal.

A Run is a group of three or more successive cards of the same suit.

A Set is a group of three cards of the same rank but different suits.

The cards can be moved between and from the melds provided the meld from which the card is moved still makes a valid meld. The player to win the game has to form the melds out of all the 11 cards in hand. A player has to make at least two melds and hence no meld can contain more than eight cards. The Ace card has a low value, therefore the meld Q-K-A is not valid.

Initially the deck is shuffled and cut by a random player. To choose a dealer each player draws a card from the deck and the player with the lowest card (card value) is made the dealer. The dealer deals 10 cards to each player and places the remaining cards face down on the table forming a stock pile.

The Non-dealer has the first turn to play and he is traditionally referred as "Pone". The Non-dealer picks the top card of the stock pile and examines if he can meld the card with the cards in his hand, this meld can be run or a set. If the player cannot form a meld out of the card picked he can never retain the card and has to discard it in the same turn. In different versions of Rummy the player is allowed to retain the card he picked even if he can not form a meld out of the card but this is not a case in Conquian. The player in his turn should not hold more than 11 cards and once he ends his turn he should not hold more than 10 cards. Thus a card is always discarded at the end of each turn.

The discard is placed next to the stock pile and the other player can lift this discard or can go for the card from the stock pile. If he goes for a card from the stock then previous discard has to be placed aside face down to form a waste pile which is inaccessible to other player.

In this game the cards can be moved between the existing melds but the player has to be mindful to see that the meld, from which the card has been moved, still makes a valid meld. The players can add the cards to the existing melds only for the ones he has formed unlike the other Rummy games where any player can add his cards to any of the melds and melds need not be his.

The basic rules of Conquian involve a key strategic move. Consider a play with two players A and B. Let us think that, player A has discarded a card which can be used for the existing melds of the player B, in such a situation player A can force player B to use that discard and add to the existing melds there by making the player B use a card and also discard one thus grabing away a chance of player B to win.

For example, consider ‘B’ has eight of his cards down in two sets and has two cards in his hand, from this we can notice that the player B is on the verge of winning the game with just one card needed. The player ‘A’ now forces him to take up a card and discard one, thus breaking the combination which ‘B’ has retained his cards for and there fore takes away the chance of 'B' to win.

The game ends once a player melds all the cards in his hand. The player needs to meld till the last card, thus melding all the 11 cards in his hand without any discard.

In one of the cases the game can have no winner or no looser and such a game is said to be a "Draw". This type of a situation arises when the stock pile runs out before the players go out to win the game, i.e. before none of the player’s has completely melded. As the game is played with a Spanish style deck a hand can not have cards all from the same suit, since it is not possible to win without 11 cards in hand and an eleventh card can never be found in this case.