Publisher Oink Games has made a name for itself with its line of small box games. While they’ve been around for quite a while, their biggest hit has to be the excellent card game Scout. Besides that one, I’ve got a few other favorites: Deep Sea Adventure, Moving Wild, and A Fake Artist Goes to New York.
So naturally, their annual releases here in the US are always on my radar. Today, we are going to take a look at TRND. You are collecting vintage furniture and trying to figure out the best time to sell your collection. For the most part, like any Oink Game, that theme is pretty much pasted on, and you are here for the gameplay.
Gameplay Overview:
TRND features 90 cards of chairs. Each chair is one of three different types (Shell, Ant, or Sling) and three different colors (Black, Red, or White). So 9 types of cards, and 10 cards each. Math, right?
Each player will be dealt a hand of cards (8-10 depending on player count) with the goal of ending your turn with only 1 type of chair in your hand. Do so and you’ll score the square of how many cards you have (so finishing your turn with 5 Red Ant chairs will net you 25 points).
How do you do that? There is a market of 9 cards and a draw deck. On your turn, you can do one of two things.
1. Draw a card from the deck of cards, ending your turn.
2. Draw one of the face-up cards in the market, and discard a card that matches one of the qualities of the top card of the discard pile (either chair type or color). The bonus here is you can discard all cards you have of that type and color. So if you’ve got three White Sling chairs in your hand, you can dump all 3 of them on top of that White Ant chair in the discard pile.
As players go out, they collect their points. The round ends when there is only 1 player left, who scores nothing for the round. The game ends when a player hits the required number of points (64, 81, 100) based on player count.
Game Experience:
Oink Games are always interesting affairs for me. They always have clever mechanics and themes that no one ever cares about. I mean, Scout had you “collecting” things at a circus… or something. So with TRND, you are stocking up on chairs for your vintage store. The chairs do use their real names (according to my interior designer wife), so points for accuracy.
For the gameplay itself, TRND is pretty interesting. You start off with a hand of around 10 cards and need to quickly decide what chair(s) you will focus on. Sometimes that decision is easy, like when you are dealt 3 Red Ant chairs. Other times, you don’t even have a pair, so you just see what the market has to offer as that’s your main way to gain and shed cards.
And you’ll want to pay attention to what your opponents are doing as well. Because when two of you are going for the same exact chair, things can get rough. If I see my opponent pick up a Black Sling chair and not discard it, I know they’ve probably got more than one of them, so not only do I not want to fight them for that chair, but I need to be careful what I discard or leave in the market. It’s times like this when TRND is at its best.
Yet for me, the game tends to lose some of its luster near the endgame. It’s almost like games of TRND have an arc where they get really interesting and then taper off later. That’s because eventually, you’ll have a hand of 2-3 types of cards, and you are just trying to go out. But you are at the whim of what’s in the market and on top of the discard pile. There have been games where we just pick up a chair from the market and immediately discard it as we are trying to churn through the deck to find that matching chair to go out.
Which is too bad, because otherwise, TRND would have some really tense decisions to make. As the last player left in the round scores nothing, it could have a solid push-your-luck element. But aside from that, it more feels like who was lucky enough to have the card they needed in the market and on top of the discard to go out.
Final Thoughts:
TRND is a good game and is on the cusp of being another must-have OINK Games title. Yet it doesn’t quite make it for me. While the early game is exciting and fun with lots of choices to be made as you slowly develop your hand, the end game can sometimes turn into a grind with those getting the lucky cards they need at the right time doing well. This can also cause the issue of having the game outstay its welcome as one player goes out, and the other 2-3 players are just fishing for the card they need while the player who’s done plays around on their phone.
Final Score: 3 Stars – Collect trendy, vintage chairs in a game that starts off great and tapers down to something less so.
Hits:
• Simple and fun mechanics
• Unique theme as usual with Oink Games
• Early game decisions are interesting
Misses:
• Late game can be swingy or a grind
