Fives Review – A High-Stakes Game of Chicken That Rewards Flying Too Close to the Sun

Disclaimer: Fives was provided for free by CMYK, although the writing and opinions of this article are my own.

Fives turns trick-taking magenta! The last of the first four games in the Magenta collection also happens to be the most serious—and the most board game-y. It throws you straight into the deep end of trick-taking, a genre of card game that can take a minute (or several) to wrap your head around. Especially when everyone’s casually throwing around words like ‘followers’ and ‘trumps.’.

Luckily, I’ve got your back with a quick guide to trick-taking basics, so you won’t be left staring blankly while someone says, “You had to follow suit.”

Once you’ve got the basics down, though, Fives isn’t that intimidating… and it’s well worth pushing past the learning curve as it might just be my personal favourite of the Magenta collection so far.

How to Play

Fives plays like your standard trick-taking game put through the washing machine. Not only is it a clean and crisp take on the genre, but it shakes it up, turns it upside down and brings some unexpected elements to keep it fresh.

When it comes to the trick-taking, you’ve got your usual coloured suits, and tricks play out more or less as expected. Everybody takes a turn playing a card that follows the lead suit, and the player with the highest valued card matching the suit wins. No surprises there.

Where it gets interesting is, under certain conditions, any card can be played face down as a 5 from the magenta suit. So no matter what you have in your hand, high or low cards, you can almost always pull out a magenta five and change the outcome of the round. Letting you sneak wins you had no business winning… or gracefully duck out of tricks you’d otherwise be forced to take.

This flexibility is crucial, because the second rule that will raise your eyebrows, is that your winning card from every trick you win is added to your running total. At the end of every round, if you’re the closest player to 25 (without going over) you win the round and snag two victory point tokens. Nail it exactly? You get a bonus token on top.

Second place gets a sympathy token. But if your total exceeds 25, you’ve busted. Prepared to get mocked by your fellow players for flying too close to the sun, but more importantly say goodbye to one of your precious point tokens as you must hand it over to the rounds’ winner.

After four rounds, players count their tokens, and whoever has the most takes the win.

Dancing on the Edge of 25

These days, I won’t enjoy a trick-taking game unless it gives me reasons to win hands, and reasons to lose them. Having both options available (and having to choose between them) adds a whole new layer of strategy, letting you put thought into the cards you play instead of just playing high cards and hoping for the best.

When it comes to those winning and losing options, Fives plays its trump card. On the one hand, it dangles the golden carrot of awarding the player closest to 25, encouraging you to win hands and collect cards. But go over, and it hits you with the stick instead, forcing you to give up a victory token. Given the cards go all the way up to 13, you’ll rarely win more than a couple before tipping into danger.

You’ve got to be choosy about which hands you win. But not too choosy. Play it too safe, and everyone else might hit the 20s while you’re still puttering around in single digits. The trick is to stay just behind the front-runners: close enough to pounce, but not so close that an unexpected win sends you crashing past 25. Fives is at its best when it becomes this low-stakes game of chicken, with players nudging each other toward disaster one trick at a time.

With so many variables each round. What you drew, what they drew, how aggressive everyone’s playing. Every hand demands a fresh approach. It’s dynamic, thinky, and honestly, the kind of card game I’d happily lose an afternoon to.

And that’s before we even mention the fantastic magenta 5 mechanic.

Being able to flip any card face down and play it as a magenta 5 gives you an escape hatch that most trick-taking games don’t offer. It’s a way to ditch high-value cards without taking the trick, or sneak a win when you’ve only got junk left.

The clever side effect of these flipped cards is that, being face down, they mess with your reads. Normally, trick-taking games reward deduction, with played cards acting like little spies—feeding you intel about what cards are left in people’s hands. But magenta 5’s? They’re double agents. Suddenly, your intel is suspect, and Fives becomes more about feel than certainty. And that unpredictability only adds to the fun the rest of the game provides.

That all said, one thing to watch out for in Fives is what I call the trick-taking death spiral. It usually happens late in a round, when the lead player, no matter what they play, can’t stop winning tricks. They’re stuck racking up cards they desperately didn’t want. This death spiral is part of the genre’s DNA, but because Fives lets you (and other players) get out of tight spots with the magenta 5’s, it’s definitely more noticeable.

Still, as long as you can avoid the death spiral (and even if you can’t), Fives is a fantastic trick-taking game, and just a great card game in general. So if you’re after something with a bit more crunch than your usual card game, then it’s worth picking up. Although, if you’d prefer something lighter, be sure to check out the rest of the Magenta Collection, as there are some gems in there no matter what you’re after.