Several years ago, Alan Moon was in the neighbourhood and I was invited to join the Clifford gathering. Out popped an early version of Knights of the Rainbow and we played several 5-player games of it. As far as I could tell (or can remember) it was 'ready for sale' and was one of those games that demanded an instant parting with some cash.

Along comes 1999, the game is published by FX Schmid USA and as a result of a recent visit to America I was able to acquire a copy. The early references on the net were more negative than I expected would be the case, but I thought that they must either be playing a different game or maybe that it had evolved for a non-adult market.

When I scanned the rules I saw a similar game to the one in my memory. Each player gets a choice on their turn to reveal one, two or three cards from a face-down deck. The cards are in several suits, this time in different colours. Yellow is gold, green is your strength, purple is your honour, red is your Force (attacking prowess) and blue is magic.

You choose which of these (up to) three cards to take and add it/them to your collection. Your collected cards are displayed face up, and in suits, in front of you. It is important to stack each suit with the most recently acquired card on the top, for some of the cards have a rainbow symbol and these are important when a misfortune card turns up. When this happens, all visible cards are examined for rainbows when the player with the most is safe and all others get penalised.

If you are the person (either solely or, in many cases, jointly with another) who has the most of a suit when you begin your turn you get the benefit of that colour. Some of these benefits are straightforward--yellow earns you gold, green adds more strength (defence) and red enables you to reduce the strength of others. Purple cards only give benefit when someone draws a King's Favour card but then the benefit is substantial. The player the with the most blue cards gets either to trade a card or to destroy a card of an opponent.

At this stage you might be thinking that this sounds pretty good. Each colour has something special and during play you have to decide on which colour and against which opponent to focus your efforts. But there is a weak point, which is "why you would draw anything but three cards?". Clearly, there is a pacing aspect--the game uses the familiar Wertung device in the form of a Long live the King card--but otherwise why limit your choice to less than 3 cards? You have been given a choice, but the choice you make always seems to be both obvious and the same.

Maybe there's something I've missed in the games we played, but the games so far do not recreate the enjoyment I got from the play test session years before. In an attempt to 'correct' this, I devised a variant to try to get back to the game I had played. When a player decides how many cards to take, they turn them one at a time. As each card is revealed, any player--not just the player whose turn it is--gains the benefit of that colour. This means that you need to consider how many you reveal as this could impact several other players. However, only turning up one card limits your choice of card. With this rule the game feels closer to the original version that I remember, but I have checked with Alan and he confirms that the game in the rule book is was what was intended. So much for my memory.

As it stands, I would not recommend Knights of the Rainbow, but somewhere in there is a game that is good and well worth parting with your money for.