From Ian Brody, President, Griggling Games © 2013
In this article, I hope to give you a few ideas about how to play Celestial Rainbows, and how to get the most out of it!
Celestial Rainbows is meant to be light & fun, and can be combined with lots of other activities. The cards are so beautiful we thought about packaging them in a fancy box, but we wanted to keep them affordable and portable. So we stuck with the traditional “Tuck-Box”, so it could easily find its way into a backpack, pocket, or purse. You can play on an airplane or the top of a mountain — the diagram in the rules is for illustration purposes, the layout can easily be compressed by overlapping the cards.
You can also play with a lot of different aged people. Only one person needs to be able to read the magic power cards, and the game being cooperative means players aren’t trying to outsmart each other.
If you’ve played already, you might feel very challenged about getting all seven rainbows. It’s really nearly impossible. So don’t stress it. What you should do is celebrate each rainbow, when it happens, in whatever manner you believe appropriate! (Okay, if you really need to build seven rainbows, here’s the trick: change the rules. We’ve thought of a lot of house rules and so can you.)
Some of you have asked for a hard and fast lose/win. OK, if you must. I pretty much feel like I lost if I don’t get at least 3 rainbows. A game with just 3 rainbows seems almost like a tie. Getting 4 is definitely winning, and getting 5 is cause for real delight. No six or seven rainbow games have been recorded.
One of the common experiences playing the game is the tension created once the Magic Power cards come out. Of course, we all want to have magic powers but the worst thing to do is make a half-hearted attempt. When one of these cards comes out, the group needs to take a moment to decide if they can eliminate the magic power. A really important tactic is to save the Double Rainbow card for eliminating magic powers — with the added benefit that the Double Rainbow card gets shuffled back into the draw deck!
If you are not going to try to eliminate a magic power, do what you can when moving cards around to build rainbows to even out the colors next to the magic power, so when you lose the cards you’ll lose as few potential rainbows as possible.
If you can wait, don’t be too hasty to force the next player to build the rainbow, especially early in the game before a Magic Power card comes out. Spending a round rearranging cards can be quite beneficial, to make card play more efficient once Magic Powers come in.
I hope this article has shed a little light on this fun family game!
All the Best for this Holiday Season
Ian