Players: 3-5
Playing Time: 15-45 minutes
Complexity: 2 (of 10)

The Components

Coloretto comes with:

• 88 cards
• 1 rulebook

Cards: The cards are all medium-weight, printed full color on linen-textured cardstock with rounded corners.

11 of the cards are administrative: 5 summaries, which show how the cards score; 5 row cards, used to mark drafting rows; and 1 last round card, which is placed in the deck to mark the end of the round. They're all nicely illustrated, and particularly the inclusion of the scoring cards is a nice plus. There’s also a "blank" card which oddly depicts a hungry tower.

The remaining 76 cards are used in play. 66 are chameleon colors, 9 each in 7 colors, and another 3 multicolored wild cards. The colors are the "sets" that are being collected. Each one shows a chameleon against a colored background that's also uniquely textured to make the color clear. In very low lighting I've had some problems distinguishing some of the darker colors, but in the majority of situations the colors are great. There are also 10 cards clearly marked "+2" which add two to a player's score. Overall, these cards are all obvious and easy to use, exactly what's needed.

Rulebook: A small, folded up black and white rulebook. It has rules in English and French; They were simple and obvious.

The quality of the cards in Coloretto is great, the illustrations are all well-done, and all the components are well thought out and easy to use, earning the game a full "5" out of "5" for Style.

The Gameplay

The object of Coloretto is to collect large sets of no more than three colors.

Setup: The game starts with each player taking one color card in a color unique from the other players. The deck of color cards is then shuffled and the "last round" card placed 15 cards from the bottom.

Each player also takes a summary card to remind him of how scoring works, and a number of row cards are placed in the middle of the table equal to the number of players.

Order of Play: Each round each player may take one of two actions:

• Draw & Play a Card
• Take a Row

Draw & Play a Card: The player takes the top card from the deck, flips it face-up, and places it in one of the rows. A row may not have more than three cards in it.

Take a Row: Instead, a player may take one of the rows of cards (1-3 cards total). These cards will be color cards (in those 7 colors), wild cards, and/or "+2"s. Once he has taken a row, a player is out of the current round of play. The player actually takes the "row card" too; there are now less rows of cards for the rest of the players to choose between

Note that a player must take a row if every row out has 3 cards in it.

Ending a Round: Once each player has taken a row of cards a new round begins. The row cards are placed back in the center of the table and whoever took the last card now begins the new round.

Ending the Game: After the "last round" card is flipped up, play then continues until the end of that round. Scoring is now done.

Each color is scored based on the number of cards a player has in it: +1 for 1 card; +3 for 2; +6 for 3; +10 for 4; +15 for 5; and +21 for 6 or more. (Wild cards can be put in whichever set of cards the player desires.) Here's the catch: the player's best three colors score positive, and the others score negative! A player also gets +2 points for each "+2" card he has.

The rules suggest that a full game be played as a set of four games, with the player with the most points being the winner. That's an entierly arbitrary number; usually, I play Coloretto as a filler, and we play 1-4 rounds, depending on how long it takes for everyone to show up.

Relationships to Other Games

Coloretto (2003) is a set collection game with a card drafting mechanism. As a set collection game, it's similar to many other card games, including Rummy. However, Coloretto is a rare game that has a card drafting mechanism: meaning a public and interactive method by which players collect the cards that compose their hands. One of the few other games that mixes card drafting and set collection is Freight Train (1996) which I also reviewed this week. Coloretto is lighter and faster, while Freight Train is longer and more baroque.

The Game Design

Coloretto is a simple game with some good game design, including:

Great Tension: There's a lot of great tension as you draw cards to see if you're going to get cards that help your main suits or instead cards that help your penalty suits. There's also a strong press your luck element, as you decide whether to "improve" an already good set, and also whether to chance your neighbors taking a row that you want, but could be improved.

Good Interaction: There's really good interaction as you try and figure out which cards will help your opponents most, and arrange the drafts in such a way that they'll hurt your opponents instead.

Good Strategy: There's also some fair depth of strategy in the game. Deciding which colors to take depends heavily on what's still in the deck and what colors other players are holding (and which opponents they are, relative to your seating position).

Here's my one complaint:

High Random Element: The random element is high, even for a card game. In particular, the drawing of the wild cards can totally change the complexion of the game.

Overall, Coloretto is one of the best filler set-collection games I've played. It's admittedly very light and fluffy, but it got lots of plays when it was new, and still gets pulled out now and then. As such, I think it deserves a full "5" out of "5" for Substance: the gameplay works well and is well worth the price.

Conclusion

Coloretto is a very light, but also very well designed filler card game of set collection. If you don't already have it, and you occasionally feel the need for short 15-45 minute fillers, you should buy it.