Cinco
Cinco Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Game Materials
- Gameboard
- 35 playing pieces in each of three colors
- 90 playing cards, showing numbers from 1 to 90
Set-up
Shuffle the cards and deal out four to each player, face down. Put the remaining cards aside as a face-down draw pile. Each player (or each team) gets the playing pieces of one color. Decide who starts the game, determining it in any way you like.
Course of the Game
Players play clockwise in turn. Usually, you have a choice between the following two options.
Either: draw a card from the face-down pile. However, you may never have more than four cards in your hand!
If you have four cards that all appear to be useless, you may discard them (all!) face up and draw four new cards. This also ends your turn.
Or: reveal one of your hand cards and then put one of your playing pieces on an unoccupied numbered space of the gameboard that shows the number on the card or a higher one.
For example, if you play the card "52", you may occupy any one of the spaces 52, 53, 54 and so on up to 90, provided, of course, it is still unoccupied.
Each player forms his own face-up pile from his played (and discarded) cards.
If you hold four cards in your hand (as you do at the beginning of the game, for instance), you have to play one of them and place a playing piece, or, alternatively, exchange all your cards.
If you don't have any cards left in your hand, you are required to draw one. It may happen that you cannot use a played card at all, e.g., if it shows "90" but the space with the number 90 is occupied already. In this case, you don't place a playing piece.
End of the Game
As soon as a player (or team) has played a piece that creates a continuous straight line of five (or more!) pieces of the same color, the game ends and that player (or team) wins. Such lines can be formed, for instance, using the spaces 12, 11, 30, 44 and 81, or 89, 38, 39, 40 and 41.
Theoretically, it is possible that a player uses up all his pieces before anybody has been able to form a line of five. In this case, the game ends as a stalemate.
On rare occasions, it may also occur that the draw pile has been depleted before any player could end the game. In this case, simply shuffle all the cards, face down, that the players have laid down so far, and use them to form a new draw pile.
Variant
If you can no longer use a played card because all matching spaces are occupied, you place a piece on any one unoccupied space as if you had played the "1" card.
Game with Six Players
You can also try CINCO with six players, by forming two or three teams.
Translation: Sybille and Bruce Whitehill, "Word for Wort"