Ligretto Green

When one of our gaming friends introduced us to Ligretto, almost two years ago not only was it an instant hit all round, it also became one of the few games almost guaranteed to draw my teen out of his ‘pit’ to enjoy some family time, even if only briefly. Hard to believe that this little corker has been flying around for over 30 years but only recently did I discover its tiny boxed brilliance.

Not a game for those who are precious about their games, Ligretto is a fast paced card shedding game where the cards will end up flying everywhere and at the very least suffer the odd crease as you’re bound to clash hands with opponents at some point. Luckily the odd scuff or bend does not affect gameplay in the slightest and (in my humble opinion) only builds character.

Little bit party game, little bit hand eye coordination, little bit quick reaction but a lot of frustration and even more (almost) swear words muttered.

The Fast And The Furious!

A single Ligretto game is for 2 to 4 people, you can of course combine with other Ligrettos to cater for more people, but more on that bonkersness later. Each person will have their own set of 40 cards split over 4 colours numbered 1 to 10. You’ll be trawling though your cards trying to get rid of as many as possible by creating communal piles of colours starting with the lowest number first. To set up you’ll start by dealing 10 of your cards in a pile face up – this is your Ligretto pile. Then you will deal a further 3 single cards (or possibly up to 5 dependent on player numbers) face up to create your row next to the Ligretto pile leaving the remaining cards face down as a sort of draw pile for yourself.

Firstly everyone will be looking out for those numbers ones to get those central piles started. Everyone will be playing at the same time, looking at their cards and seeing what’s available to play to the centre. You may shed cards either from the top of your Ligretto pile, from your row or by turning over the top three cards of your draw pile. If you use a card from your row, you may replace it with the top card from your Ligretto pile. There will be multiple piles of cards in the centre of the table and you can play to any so long as you match the colour and the value of the card you play is 1 more than the one you choose to play onto.

You’ll continue (frantically) looking for playable cards, if there is none on your Ligretto pile or row then you’ll keep turning over the top three cards from your draw pile to look for more to play. When the draw pile is exhausted you simply flip it over and go through it again. The game ends when a player places the last card from their Ligretto pile in the centre at which point they shout LIGRETTO! Normally frantically whilst out of breath!!

You Can Score If You Want To…

Ever fallen into the trap of ‘knowing’ with absolute certainty how to play a game that you never read the actual rules too? No just me then! For a long time we played Ligretto, with the winner just being the first person to clear their Ligretto pile. It wasn’t until we bought our own copy and I played a 2 player game with my daughter and we came to a stalemate where neither of us could clear the Ligretto pile. It was only then that we discovered that in fact, there is a scoring system.

On checking the rules (when I say checking I may mean, reading for the first time… ahem) we learnt that if a stalemate occured we should count the points earned up until that point. This was a revelation as we didn’t know we should’ve been scoring points!

To score you need to tally all the cards in the centre that belong to you, these are worth 1 point. However you must minus 2 points for every card still in your Ligretto pile. So while it’s definitely a benefit to have finished your Ligretto pile it does not guarantee victory as there are plenty of points to be earnt by playing from your draw pile. We once had a rather cunning player just sit waiting for the right cards to come up to shed there Ligretto pile instead of also frantically looking through their draw pile. Theres none of that underhandedness when you’ve got points to score!

For a quicker game you can absolutely play it as a house rule just to get rid of your Ligretto pile and that person takes the win.

Should that not be enough for you, theres also a game variation suggestion in the rules – oh how we love an extra variation! If you wish you can use your row to also discard cards in descending rather than the ascending order that you use in the centre. It does say this is for ‘real Ligretto experts’ however. Weirdly we’ve never used this variation…

Four Enough?

You may have noticed there are 3 different colours of box for Ligretto, Green, Red and Blue. What’s the difference I hear you ask? Well nothing much really and that’s the brilliance! The other Ligrettos only feature different coloured card backs, that way you can combine 2 boxes to make an 8 player game (or three to make a 12 player) and still know whose cards are whose.

As our friends own the red copy so as a group we can play with eight, but I think the most we’ve actually played at is seven and that was crazy, bonkers, awesome! The cards stretched so far over the table you almost forgot how many piles there were and multiple opportunities were missed, which caused much frustration! I can’t even comprehend how manic a 12 player game would be!

The more players you have the more you have to embrace the fun aspect of the game as it gets increasingly impossible to keep track of what’s going on, but oh boy it’s good! Ligretto is a cracking little quick party game, it’s so easy to pick up and play even if you get the rules wrong! Do you actually need more than one copy? In my opinion, probably not unless you have a super large family, but having said that I think you should absolutely encourage your friends to get a coordinating copy (or just get one for them) to maximise the fun!