Muddy Rainbow & Cocoa Rainbow

These conventions apply to any variant with a muddy rainbow suit (touched by every color clue and none of the rank clues) or a cocoa rainbow suit (touched by every color clue and none of the rank clues, with every card unique).

Inherited Conventions

• By default, muddy rainbow cards inherit all of the rainbow conventions and all of the brown conventions.
  • With that said, some of the conventions further down on this page will overwrite some rainbow/brown conventions, so read on.
• Similarly, by default, cocoa rainbow cards inherit all of the rainbow conventions, all of the brown conventions, and all of the black conventions.

Tempo Clues

• Similar to brown cards, if a player gives a Tempo Clue to a single muddy rainbow or cocoa rainbow card, it is never a Tempo Clue Chop Move. If a player gives a Tempo Clue that touches multiple muddy rainbow or cocoa rainbow cards, it means only that the right-most muddy rainbow or cocoa rainbow card is playable.
• This is because it is fairly valuable to get muddy rainbow and cocoa rainbow cards out of the hand as soon as possible in case blocking cards are drawn.

Muddy Rainbow Saves

• Since muddy rainbow 2 cannot be 2 Saved and muddy rainbow 5 cannot be 5 Saved, there needs to be a separate way to save these cards.
• Any red color clue (the left-most color) to a chop card is treated as a potential Muddy Rainbow Save on a muddy rainbow 2 or a muddy rainbow 5.
• Critical muddy rainbow 2s, 3s, and 4s can be saved with any color clue.
• Similar to brown saves, the Always Loaded Principle applies to muddy rainbow saves.
• In the special case of a variant where a one-of-each card color is available, the one-of-each card color should be used instead of red.

Cocoa Rainbow Saves

• Cocoa rainbow cards are always saved with red, the left-most color.
• In the special case of a variant where a one-of-each card color is available, the one-of-each card color should be used instead of red.

Mud Clues

• In variants with a pink suit, the Pink Choice Tempo Clue convention is "turned on", since players often have a Free Choice with how they can clue pink cards. Muddy rainbow and cocoa rainbow have a similar convention called a Mud Clue.
• When one or more muddy rainbow or cocoa rainbow cards are retouched with a color clue, and there are no "new" cards introduced (or, if the only "new" cards introduced are trash), then extra information can be conveyed by what color is chosen. The color chosen should correspond to the slot that they should play.
• This is called a Muddy Rainbow Choice Tempo Clue, or just a Mud Clue for short.
• The position of the muddy rainbow or cocoa rainbow card, counted from oldest to newest, corresponds to the ordering of the colors from right to left, skipping the cards that are not touched by the color clue (and the known unplayable cards). Furthermore, colors always "wrap around" to the oldest card.
• For example, in a 3-player game of the "Muddy Rainbow (6 Suits)" variant:
  • All of the 2's are played on the stacks.
  • Bob has two muddy rainbow cards clued in his hand on slot 3 and slot 4. He does not know the rank of either card.
  • Alice clues red to Bob, which re-touches both muddy rainbow cards and nothing else.
  • Bob knows that this must be a Tempo Clue on the muddy rainbow cards, so now he must figure out which slot Alice wants him to play. To start with, Bob knows that the colors available to clue in this variant are red, yellow, green, blue, and purple.
  • Starting from the final color, a purple clue would mean to play slot 4, a blue clue would mean to play slot 3, a green clue would mean to play slot 4 (wraparound), a yellow clue would mean to play slot 3, and a red clue would mean to play slot 4 (another wraparound).
  • Bob plays his slot 4 card as a muddy rainbow 3. It successfully plays on the stacks.
• Muddy Rainbow Choice Tempo Clues are only allowed to get muddy or cocoa rainbow cards.
  • An exception to this rule can be made for extremely difficult variants. If the team needs to get a non-muddy card for some specific purpose (e.g. to "unlock" another player), and there was not another good way to "get" the card, then it should be clear to everyone what is happening.

Mud Clues (Skipping Over Unplayable Cards)

• If known-unplayable cards are touched as part of a Mud Clue, then they should be skipped over.
• For example, in a 3-player game of the "Muddy Rainbow (6 Suits)" variant:
  • All of the 2's are played on the stacks.
  • Bob has two muddy rainbow cards clued in his hand on slot 2 and slot 4. He does not know the rank of either card. He also has a red 5 on slot 3 with a 5 clue on it.
  • Alice clues red to Bob, which re-touches both muddy rainbow cards and the red 5.
  • Bob knows that this must be a Tempo Clue on the muddy rainbow cards, so now he must figure out which slot Alice wants him to play. To start with, Bob knows that the colors available to clue in this variant are red, yellow, green, blue, and purple.
  • Starting from the final color, a purple clue would mean to play slot 4.
  • A blue clue would normally mean to play slot 3, but the red 5 is a known unplayable card, so Bob skips over that. Thus, a blue clue would mean to play slot 2.
  • A green clue would mean to play slot 4 (wraparound).
  • A yellow clue would mean to play slot 2 (skipping over the red 5 again).
  • A red clue would mean to play slot 4 (another wraparound).
  • Bob plays slot 4 as the muddy rainbow 3.

Positional Clues

• Any clue that looks like one of the following is instead considered to be a Muddy Positional Clue (that promises the slot number of the muddy rainbow card to play):
  • Double Play Ejection (re-cluing a playable card)
  • Known-Trash Ejection (re-cluing a known-trash card)
  • Trash Pushes (cluing a known-trash card on chop for the first time)
  • a rank clue that has no conventional interpretation
• Note that Trash Chop Moves are still "turned on".