Published card games
Ligretto
Be the first to empty your Ligretto pile by playing as many cards as possible to the middle of the table, everyone at once, with no turns.
- players
- 2–12
- minutes
- 15
You’ll need the game box. Marquoir sums up the rules and keeps score.
Setup
- One box holds four decks of 40 cards: by combining several boxes of different colours, 2 to 12 people can play.
- Each player takes a deck, shuffles it, and lays out a row of 3 face-up cards in front of them (5 with two players, 4 with three).
- Next to it goes a face-up pile of 10 cards: the Ligretto pile.
- The rest of the deck is held in hand, face down.
How to play
- Everyone plays at the same time, in no particular order.
- A 1 is played to the middle and starts a pile; it is built up with cards of the same colour, in order, up to 10. Several piles of the same colour can exist at once.
- You may play a card from your row, the top card of your Ligretto pile or the top card of your discard pile.
- A gap in the row is filled at once from the Ligretto pile.
- To cycle through your hand, turn over 3 cards at a time onto your discard pile; when your hand runs out, pick up the discard pile, shuffle it and start again.
Scoring
- Each card played to the middle scores 1 point for its owner (sort them again by the colour of their backs).
- Each card left in your Ligretto pile costs 2 points.
- Cards in your row and in your hand do not count.
End of the game
- As soon as a player has played the last card of their Ligretto pile, they call out "Ligretto stop!" and the round stops dead.
- If nobody can play anything more, the round also ends and scores are counted.
- In a single round, the highest score wins; over several rounds agreed in advance, the total counts.
House rules and pitfalls
- Expert variant: you may store cards from your hand or your Ligretto pile in your row, in descending order and alternating colours.
Frequently asked questions
Do you have to wait for your turn?
Never. It is a race: the first card played on a pile takes the spot.
Can a round end with cards left in your Ligretto pile?
Yes, in fact that is the case for everyone but one player; each remaining card costs two points at scoring.
The box
- Released
- 1988
- Age
- Ages 8+
- Designer
- Michael Michaels
- Publisher
- Schmidt Spiele
- Mechanics
- Real-TimeDiscardingSpeed
- Contents
- 160 cards in 4 decks of 40, one per player, told apart by their backs