Episode 173: Trickerion

1) The Pegs discuss their recent game plays including Dead Reckoning, Undaunted: Normandy, a Harper’s Bazaar and many more;

2) All the Pegs review Trickerion; and

3) Look back at Gentes.

Join in the conversation for this episode over at our Board Game Geek guild.

Show Notes

00:01:50 – Trivia: Like a Rolling Stone

Banter

00:07:33 – Winner of the Boxtop Challenge: John Wolff and his Chronicles of Crime.

00:09:51 – Christina’s Cross-Country Road Trip

00:16:27 – The first hesitant steps back into game days

00:23:17 – Folded Space insert project

Plays

00:26:25 – Dead Reckoning * [Coming to Kickstarter] – Alderac Entertainment Group; Designer: John D. Clair; Art: Ian O’Toole;

00:35:18 – The Alpha * [Buy] – Bicycle; Designer: Ralph Rosario; Art: Andrew Hutchinson;

00:46:20 – Undaunted: Normandy * [Buy] – Osprey Games; Designer: Trevor Benjamin, David Thompson; Art: Roland MacDonald;

00:51:10 – A word from our sponsor: Queen Games

00:54:10 – Harper’s Bazaar: Cahoots [Buy] – Gamewright; Designer: Ken Gruhl; Art: Irina Pechenkina;

01:01:20 – Harper’s Bazaar: Big Dig * [Buy] – Tasty Minstrel Games; Designer: Shaun Graham, Scott Huntington; Art: Nate Call, Katie Welch;

01:15:00 – Harper’s Bazaar: Piña Pirata [Buy] – IELLO; Designer: Donald X. Vaccarino; Art: Sylvain Guinebaud;

01:10:34 – Dominations: Road to Civilization [Buy] – Holy Grail Games; Designer: Eric Dubus, Olivier Melison; Art: Loïc Muzy, Agathe Pitié, Amber Scharf, Florian Stitz;

News

01:18:29 – Where is Alice: The Silent RPG

01:23:58 – Ginkopolis is being reprinted!

01:26:22 – CMON: Master of the Universe!

01:30:40 – A word from our sponsor: Grand Gamer’s Guild

REVIEW: Trickerion [Buy]

01:32:31 – Rules Breakdown

Trickerion is a worker-placement style game designed by Richard Amann and Viktor Peter, with art by Villő Farkas and László Fejes, and published by Mindclash Games in 2015.  In Trickerion, players are rival stage magicians competing to master complicated illusions, and then perform those illusions for fame and riches.  Trickerion has a number of expansions and variations, but for purposes of this rules breakdown we’ll stick to the mechanics of the core game.

Players manage much of their game in their player area.  Here, they will house their workers and assign them locations to take actions, store their tricks and supporting components, and collect learned tricks.  Players also start with a deck of cards representing locations on the main board.  The exact number and distribution of cards in the deck will depend on what expansions the players are using.

Players will start the game with several workers: A Magician, their main worker, and an assistant.  They will also select one of three additional workers, each of which provides an additional benefit over the course of the game.  Additionally, players may obtain even more workers as the game progresses.  Each worker is represented by a wooden disk and will provide a number of action points based on the worker.

At the start of the round, each player will secretly select a location card from their hand and assign it, facedown, to each of their available workers.  When all players have selected they will reveal these cards simultaneously.  Then, in turn order, players will choose one worker and send it to the assigned location to take actions.

Each location has several actions available to it, with each action requiring a number of action points.  The number of actions a player can take will be determined by the action points of the worker sent to that location.  In some cases, additional points can be gained through the spending of resources or the use of cards.  Players will use actions largely to obtain new assistance, to buy components for tricks, to learn new tricks, build tricks in their workshop, and to perform on stage.

Most of the points in the game are gained through performance.  When taking this action players will make a number of choices: which trick they want to perform by moving tokens from their workshop to a venue card; which venue card they want to perform in, as venues provide varying amounts of points and/or money, and which day they want to perform on, as certain days will provide point bonuses or penalties.  In addition, tricks are assigned to venue cards via a sort of tile-laying puzzle, where the orientation of the trick tile may provide benefits of points or other resources depending on which face of the tile touches the face of adjacent tiles.  It’s worth noting that several players may assign tricks to the same venue, so when that performance occurs all players with tricks assigned there will score some number of points, regardless of who actually completes the performance.

The game plays over a number of rounds depending on the variation used, at which point some additional points may be scored via leftover resources and bonuses based on learned tricks, then the winner is declared.

01:35:32 – Review

02:08:14 – Ratings

ReRoll

02:19:49 – Gentes [Buy] – Tasty Minstrel Games; Designer: Stefan Risthaus; Art: Harald Lieske, Adam P. McIver;

Check out our original review for Gentes during Episode 147.

Gameplay Photos

* Disclosure: These titles were received free of charge by the publishers or distributors. If you are interested in submitting a title for review, please read our Review Policy.