I quite like Michael Schacht's little card games. Coloretto is his latest addition and although very simple, it presents a constant "do I cash in now or wait a bit longer" element. We played a Shrewsbury Club variant, as I didn't study the rules closely enough, and we played with one more column of cards than number of players whereas the columns should equal the player number. With four players, four column cards (or five in our game) are placed in the middle of the table. The rest of the cards are placed in a draw pile and these consist of 63 colour cards (9 each of 7 different colours), 3 jokers which count as any colour, 10 "+2" cards, which give 2 VPs at the end of the game, and a last round card which is placed on top of the last 15 cards in the draw pile. On your turn you either draw a card and add it to one of the columns or you draw all the cards already played on a column. If you do the latter, you then drop out of the current round. Each column can only contain a maximum of 3 cards but you can draw a column with fewer than 3. Once everyone has taken a card column, a new round begins with the remaining cards and once the last round card is revealed the current round is completed and the game ends. Scoring is based on the number of cards in each colour you take. In your three longest suits you score positive points (1 card gives 1 point, 2 cards 3 points, up to 6 or more cards giving 21 points). In any other colours you score negative points using the same formula. Add 2 points for each +2 card, and the person with the highest total wins.

The game is very quick although it allows a fair degree of thought as to where to place a drawn card (do you help yourself but risk someone else pinching the column you had your eye on, or do you spoil a column that currently looks attractive to one of the other players); and when to call it quits and take a column. Our variant also gave scope for a last player standing having a choice of two remaining columns whereas in the official rules, the last player just gets what's left. Nige got lucky in gathering pink cards a plenty, but came unstuck by having too many colours. I managed to grab a joker and some +2 cards early and kept to only four different colours. This enabled me to claim victory, much to Nige's disgust. He sees victories in these lighter games as much less fulfilling than in meatier affairs, but I am happy to add naother victory wherever it comes from. He'll just have to concentrate a bit more on the 15-30 minute end a bit more.