Ligretto

Ligretto

Box of Ligretto 'Green Pack' playing cards
Players	2-12
Age range	5 and up
Setup time	< 1 minute
Playing time	Approximately 5-10 minutes per round
Random chance	Medium
Skill(s) required	Hand-eye coordination, speed, counting

Ligretto is a card game for two to twelve players. The aim of the game is to get rid of all your cards faster than all the other players by discarding them in the middle of the table. Instead of taking turns, all players play simultaneously. Play is fast and lively, and demands attention to the cards being played by others as well as one's own cards. It can be played and enjoyed equally by children from 8 years old to adult with youth being at no disadvantage.

The game, in its present form, was published in 1988 by Germany's Rosengarten Spiele (Rose Garden games) designed by Michael Michaels. An earlier form of the game was published at the start of the 1960s. Since the year 2000 the game has been published by Schmidt-Spiele of Berlin, Germany. In 2009, Playroom Entertainment began publishing the game for North America and other English-speaking countries.

The game is similar to Dutch Blitz, which is based upon the original 1960s Ligretto.

The game uses a special deck of cards: each face is red, green, yellow, or blue, and is numbered from 1 to 10. Each player gets 40 cards (ten of each color) which have a distinctive design on the reverse unique to that player.

Before starting a game, the players shuffle their cards, and put ten cards into a "stack" face down on the table. Three cards are laid out face up next to this stack; these are called the "row". The remaining cards are kept in the player's hand.

When the game starts, players simultaneously discard cards in the middle of the table, building colored piles in ascending numerical order according to color, and only starting new piles with a '1' card (placed anywhere near the middle of the table). New piles can be started anytime a '1' card becomes available to a player. Play is fast, and slow players will miss opportunities to place cards as faster players add to piles before others can react. Near-ties commonly occur among players discarding the same number card on a pile, but the person who was first is clearly the one whose card is underneath.

If players are unable to discard a card from the three "row" cards or from their "stack", they can look at every third card from the cards in their hand and play a card from the top of that pile if it goes on a pile on the table.

Once a player's hand has been completely passed through in this manner, it can be reshuffled by the player who then continues to play.

When one of the three "row" cards is placed in the middle, the space gets filled up with the top card from the "stack".

Play continues at a fast pace, with experienced players usually watching other players' rows and stacks as well as their own.