We then decided to dip into this new card game by Michael Schacht. Don’t be fooled by the Coloretto link: It has very little to do with the original and is a much simpler game (even accepting that Coloretto itself is pretty simple).

The game is played with 90 cards, each card showing one of 18 different species of animal in one of four colours. Each player is trying to collect sets of cards in the four different colours. A set consists of between 4 and 7 different animals in a colour. Once you have completed a set, these cards are set aside for scoring at the end. In addition the first player to complete a set of a particular colour receives a bonus card worth 4 to 7 points. The game ends once a player has completed three columns or the deck of cards runs out.

Each player has a hand of three cards and on his turn he can either play a card for himself or offer it to an opponent. Playing a card for onesself merely involves adding it to one of the four colour sets you are collecting. However, duplicates of the same animal species cannot appear in your set. Playing a duplicate means both duplicated cards are discarded. A card offered to an opponent (often a duplicate of a card he has already played) can either be accepted or rejected. If accepted, he adds it to the relevant set or, if a duplicate exists, discards both the card offered and the duplicate. If rejected, the offered card is discarded together with a card of a set in an adjacent colour. (Card sets are laid in columns in a given colour order). If you do not have a card in the adjacent column, you have to accept the offered card. At the end of your turn you draw a new card to return your hand to three cards. At the end of the game, cards in your hand are discarded; uncompleted sets are scored based on the number of cards in the set ( 1 point for 1 card, 3 for 2, 6 for 3 etc.) Completed sets score using the same method, bonus cards are added and whoever has the highest total wins.

Our game took about 15-20 minutes. Nige complained of only picking up cards of one colour, which doesn’t help if you need to protect that colour by having an adjacent colour to allow you to reject offered duplicates. The choices all seemed farly obvious: Better to play a card for yourself than offer it but it is sometimes worth attack someone getting close to completing a set. Make sure you’ve got adjacent coloured cards to protect your more valuable sets. Try and win a bonus card. The game is clearly aimed as being a light family game and it is pleasent enough but it doesn’t have the gut-wrenching dilemnas of original Coloretto. I managed to grab the win once the deck had run out.