Confetti

Plays: 4Px1, 3Px1, facilitated a 7P game, 2Px1

The Game

Confetti is a real-time pattern-recognition game. It is played over three rounds, each lasting only one minute. A big stack of cards is spread across the table, and players have one minute to claim cards to score points. Each card has three shapes of three different colours and three different sizes. To score one point, you need one set of three shapes of the same colour in large, medium and small sizes. They will occur on different cards. What's tricky is trying to make use of all three shapes on every card to form sets. A shape cannot be reused. If you have six cards, the most ideal situation is being able to make six sets, thus scoring 6pts. There is a penalty for taking cards which are unnecessary, i.e. are not used to make any set - 1pt per excess card.

The review copy I received from Right Games was the Russian version. If I hadn't looked up BoardGameGeek I would have read this as Kohpettu.

Each game starts with a mess of cards spread across the table. No need to shuffle.

In this example, you score 5pts, 1pt each for sets of red, yellow, green, blue and purple. The surplus are one large green circle, one medium green circle, and one small orange circle.

Cards are double sided and either side can be used.

In the first two rounds, you use each half of the deck, and you are allowed to collect up to six cards. In the third round, you use all remaining cards, and you can claim up to nine cards. For recording your score at the end of every round, you claim the appropriate number of cards, flip them over, and keep them aside. That means the card pool will reduce. Highest total score at game end wins the game.

The Play

This is a fast and furious game. You have to really focus to try to maximise your score. It is very difficult to get a perfect score within such a short time. You are allowed to release already-claimed cards back into the pool in order to take another card, but you don't really have a lot of time. You don't want to blindly claim cards when time is running out, hoping to be lucky, because for every card not used to make any set, there's a 1pt penalty.

Scoring a round probably takes longer than playing a round, until you develop a systematic way to count scores. We had a few moments of "Have I counted green?". I recommend counting according to the colours of the rainbow (and the number of corners for the black side), i.e. red - orange - yellow - green - blue - purple, or circle - triangle - square - star - hexagon - explosion.

I played this with my children (7 and 5). Surprisingly Chen Rui (5) did quite well, even tying for the win in the second game and asking to play again. Was she just lucky? Or has she really developed a technique for picking the right cards? The 7-player game (max number) I observed was very hectic. In the first two rounds there were barely enough cards for everyone, which made competition fierce. In the third round, there were nowhere near enough cards to let everyone claim nine, so the tension was even higher. Afterwards, I found out that I had made a big mistake. When playing with 5 or more players, there should only be two rounds, the first using half the cards and allowing 6 cards to be claimed, and the second using all remaining cards and allowing 9 cards to be claimed. No wonder the players struggled so badly. Oops.

This is what it's like when seven players are playing.

The game comes with a one-minute hourglass.

Game in progress. Left hand to hold down and protect your cards, two fingers on the right hand to claim cards. The rule says if you are not holding down your card properly, another player can take it.

The Thoughts

Confetti is a speed game, but it is a thinky speed game and not a reflex speed game. There is not a lot of strategy. It's mainly about pattern recognition. You can probably quickly develop a technique or two to help you play reasonably well. I have not thought a lot about it yet though. The game is suitable for casual gamers and for children. It can be a family game and a party game. A filler too. And a drinking game as well. It seems to be more fun and more challenging with a bigger group.