Every hobby

Rainbow

Also written: Rainbow run · Master set

A complete set of every colour parallel of one card — the collecting goal, not a card type.

ConceptVocabulary rather than a finish

A rainbow is not a kind of card — it is a collecting goal. Completing a rainbow means owning every colour parallel of one specific card in one specific set: the base version, every colour on the ladder, and the one-of-one at the top.

It is the purest expression of what parallels are for. A set of forty different players is a checklist; a set of one player in fourteen finishes is a demonstration that you chased something to the end.

What makes one achievable

The ladder length. Some products have half a dozen colours; others have twenty-plus across hobby and retail channels. Count before you start.
The one-of-one. Every rainbow ends at a card that exactly one person can own. If somebody already has it and will not sell, the rainbow cannot be completed at any price — this is the reason most rainbows stay unfinished.
Retail-only tiers. Colours exclusive to a channel you were not buying are the ones that quietly stall a run years later.