After the unbroken killstreak of Spots, Lacuna, Daybreak, and Wilmot’s Warehouse, I was as surprised as anyone by CMYK’s announcement that their next big release would be Magenta, a series of four garish reissues of older card games. Although in the case of the first entry, “older” only hearkens back to 2022.

That first title, Fives, is a remake of trick-taking wunderkind Taiki Shinzawa’s The Green Fivura. We’ve looked at a number of Shinzawa’s trick-takers in the past, including (deep breath) American Bookshop, 9 Lives and Ghosts of Christmas, and Inflation! and Charms. Also in the non-card category, Tower Chess.

Compared to some of those offerings, Fives plays things relatively straight. You know. Relatively.

Magenta cards! Silver cards! Other colors of cards!

Looking at the cards, you might think that Fives is as boilerplate a trick-taker as they come. There are four suits. One of them, silver, functions as the triumph. Drawing inspiration from Blackjack, your goal is to hold winning cards that reach or hit 25 without busting over. The closer you get, the more points you walk away with. Bust and you’re forced to hand a point token over to the winner. It’s incredibly simple.

We all know there’s a “but” coming. In this case, that but is also a butt. Forgive me: on the backside of every card is a magenta five. So while every card holds the suit and rank printed on its face, it is also a duplicate of the game’s title and CMYK’s descriptor of their new product line.

The rules for when and how to play these alternate faces are initially hard to recall, although before too long they come together nicely. The gist is that only a single magenta five can inhabit any given trick, you can use them to wriggle out of some (but not all!) forced plays, and, being assigned a low rank, they’re great for ensuring you don’t take a trick.

That last point is important because Fives makes it rather easy to bust out of a hand. While it’s tempting to take an early twelve or thirteen, putting you halfway to your ultimate target, even a few mid-range cards can lead to catastrophe. Magenta fives, then, become a great way to slough any high-value cards. As a bonus, it’s impossible to count cards. Since you never know what a particular magenta five is hiding, it isn’t possible to know whether someone at the table is still holding onto, say, the silver thirteen. There’s nothing perfunctory about the last trick or two, as in some exemplars of the genre.

Uh oh.

It’s clever. It feels good. It’s clearly the work of somebody who intimately understands what makes trick-takers tick. Which makes sense, given that Taiki Shinzawa is one of the form’s modern masters.

But Fives is also a minor Shinzawa. In one sense this is a good thing. Unlike some of his more complicated offerings — Ghosts of Christmas, I’m speaking to you from the future — it doesn’t feel too tangled to introduce to your mother-in-law. It sets the tone for Magenta as a whole. These are games for people on the edge, those who know Hearts and want to explore a bit, as opposed to those who’ve been so inundated in the hobby that they’re relentlessly seeking novelty just so they can feel some thrill again.

For my part, Fives is pleasant enough, although it’s the least intriguing of these four releases. Its Blackjack scoring and duplicate cards are undeniably clever, but don’t crack my brain like Ghosts of Christmas or 9 Lives. In the coming weeks we’ll look at the others. For now, this is a fine start.

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A complimentary copy of Fives was provided by the publisher.