Players: 3-4
Time: 30 minutes
Difficulty: 2 (of 10)

The Components

Triump, Tricks, Game! comes with 52 playing cards and 1 rules manual in a small box.

Cards: The cards are all high-quality linen-textured cards, each printed full color with attractive, colorful artwork. 48 of the cards are animal cards, each labeled with a value from 1-12, a number of footprints from 0-3, and a matching suit and color (blue wolves, yellow deer, green boars, and red bears). These are all attractive and easy to use; the one thing missing is the value of each suit for the final round.

4 trump cards each depict one of the four colors and show the order of trumps through four rounds of the game.

Rules: An 8-page rulebook which has the fairly simply rules for the game.

Gamebox: A double-sized card box, but with a tray to keep the single stack of cards inside. Currently my favorite sized cardbox because it's large enough to get the publisher some attention, but not grossly oversized.

These cards are quality and feature nice illustrations, thus earning a full "5" out of "5" for Style. (The only thing I don't like about the presentation is the name of the game, which is awkward and unwieldy.)

The Gameplay

The object of Trump, Tricks, Game! is to track and capture four animals--which is to say collect valuable footprint tricks in the first three rounds and high-valued animals in the last round.

Setup: The four trump cards are shuffled and placed in a row, showing the trumps for the four rounds of play. (Each color is trump for one round.) The rest of the cards are shuffled and dealt out, 12 per player. (In a 3-player game some cards are taken out before the cards are shuffled.)

Playing a Round: In a round of play, TTG plays pretty much like any other trick-taking game. You have to follow leads, and the highest card takes any trick. If you have a void you can play another suit, and if it's trump, then you win the trick (or the highest trump does if several are played).

There are two catches to the game:

First, in the first three rounds of play each player can only take 12 cards. (That's 3 or 4 tricks depending on the number of players.) If you've taken your cards you continue playing into tricks, but your cards no longer "count".

Second, at the end of the round scoring is based on footprints, which appear on the 5-9 on each suit. Your final score in a round is equal to the total number of footprints you took times the number of different colors you took (1-4).

Playing Additional Rounds: After a round of play is done you now move on to the next round, and you play this with the 12 cards you took in the last round. This means two things: first you have to take cards that will not just score points but will also be useful in additional rounds of play; and second you have to think about what the trump will be in the next round.

Playing the Last Round: In the last round of play you move on from tracking beasts to capturing them. You can now take as many tricks as you want, and each animal has a different value: 4 for bears, 3 for boars, 2 for deer, and 1 for wolves (which I find a bit unintuitive since it's marked nowhere).

When you're done you add up the points for the four rounds of play, and the highest total wins.

Relationships to Other Games

Trump, Tricks, Game! is a simple Trick Taking game, comparable in complexity to last year's Farfalia.

I'd differentiate it from more complex trick-taking games like Four Dragons, Victory & Honor and Mu.

The Game Design

Thus far Trump, Tricks, Game is my favorite trick-taking game of recent years. It's fairly light, and thus fits into the complexity that I like to see in trick-taking games, which I'd like to be able to explain to people in a few minutes. Still, it has enough complexity to keep it interesting (and is different from the trick-taking aspects of Bridge, Hearts, or Spades). The idea of keeping your cards for the next round is entirely inspired, and well-worth the entry price. Also the balance of taking medium cards (for points), high cards (to win tricks next round), and next round's trumps can be agonizing.

I do have some small complaints about the game. The limit of taking 3-4 tricks is, unfortunately, inelegant. Likewise I find the scoring in the last round inelegant because there's no good way to mark it. Finally, I can't say if this game's innovations will get stale or if it'll continue to shine.

However, as of now, TTG ekes in a "5" out of "5" for Substance. It's very neat

Conclusion

Trump, Tricks, Game! is a well-designed, well-produced, and innovative trick-taking game. It's lighter than some of the stand-out trick-taking games of recent years, but should make for a really nice and original filler.