Gold Trio: Leprechaun's Luck Slot by Playtech

Three Coloured Coins carry this feature, and each does a different job. The blue EXPAND coin stretches the reels taller. The red MULTIPLY coin doubles the value on every coin in view, x2 across the board at once. And the green COLLECT coin sweeps up all the cash prizes on screen and pays their combined total in a single hit. None of them touch the base game, though. They only come alive inside the Gold Trio Respins, each coin tied to its own pot.

Land one, two or all three Coloured Coins on a main-game spin and the respins can start. Five coins lock to open the round, and locking more of them buys extra respins, so a busy board runs longer. Skip the wait if you like: the Buy Feature drops you straight in with one, two or three Coloured Coins already active, so you pick how loaded the round begins. Either way, once you're inside, only three things drop: cash prizes, Mystery Prize coins and more Coloured Coins. Cash Prize coins are worth up to 5x your bet apiece. Mystery coins pay a fixed jackpot, Mini at 10x, Minor at 20x or Major at 50x. Flood every position with coins and that's the Grand at 1,000x, the top prize here. None of the jackpots are progressive, so those numbers never move.

The leprechaun is the wildcard, and in one sense literally. On a base spin he might toss extra Wilds onto the reels or drop in Coloured Coins, his way of nudging you toward a trigger. Once the respins are running he switches to upgrades: bumping a Cash Prize coin to a higher value, promoting it to a Mystery coin, or turning it into one of the active Coloured Coins. The Wild itself, a ginger-bearded fellow in a green coat and gold-buckled hat, stands in for everything except the coins.

It all sits under a sunny Irish meadow, a double rainbow arcing over emerald hills, with four-leaf clovers, a leprechaun's pipe, a green top hat, a foaming beer mug and a red-haired lass filling out the reels. The honest knock is that the base game does very little on its own. It's a holding pattern, spinning and waiting for a Coloured Coin to show, and every bit of the real action lives in the respins.