Alright, I said we were going to come back to it. But we’re talking about thinning out my game collection. I’ve actually started going through and pulled out some games where I’m like, that’s good but I’m not going to play it over other games. Today we’re going to be talking about Trick-Taking Games. The nice thing with trick-taking games is that they are small. For that reason I expect to keep most of them. But I want to ask the question, do I need to keep them all?

And if you want to know the criteria that I’m using, or the conversation starting point, you can read that article here.

My Trick-Taking Games

Let’s start out by just listing off the games. And these are the ones that I own and I maybe have played.

Played:
The Crew: Mission Deep Sea
The Fox in the Forest
Cat in the Box
The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game
For Northwood! A Solo Trick-Taking Game
The Fox in the Forest Duet
Scahdenfreude
9 Lives
Rebel Princess
Pumafiosi
Matcha

Unplayed:
Jekyll & Hyde vs Scotland Yard
Ghosts of Christmas
Jalape-NO
Lunar
Pies
FORK
The Six of VIII
No Loose Ends
Tricky Kids

The Unplayed Games

To start off with, the unplayed ones are staying. In particular Ghosts of Christmas, Tricky Kids, No Loose Ends, and The Six of VIII are ones that I really want to get played. I could say that maybe FORK, Lunar, Pies, some of those might be redundant to the other trick-taking games that I have in the played section. But the thing is, I want to get these played to know for sure. And the good think about trick-taking is that most of the time they are easy to get played.

The Played Games

Now let’s talk about the played games. And I think that I might mainly disappoint myself. But I think I’m going to be keeping most of them if not all of them. Because while a few of them do duplicate things, like cooperative play, I think they are different enough and fit different reasons to keep them in my collection.

Cooperative Trick-Taking

For the cooperative ones let’s talk about the difference. Firstly Fox in the Forest Duet is two player only. And it is not about winning certain objectives to advance. The other two are both about objectives. But with the Fellowship of the Ring Trick-Taking Game, that one is a “campaign” of sorts. Or at least it feels like it has more story to it. The Crew is a campaign as well in that you can ramp up the difficulty, but it is easier to jump into a higher level without feeling like you missed some of the game.

Bidding Trick-Taking

Now this is where a few things could maybe move over time. The bidding trick-taking games might feel a bit more the same. Right now I just think of two that are in the played section with 9 Lives and Cat in the Box. And Cat in the Box does something different completely where you can short suit yourself whenever you want because nothing has a suit. That is a step more than 9 Lives. But, as I play others that have that bidding for how many tricks you take, I could see 9 Lives leaving.

Two Player Trick-Taking

Finally, let’s talk two player trick-taking. And this is where I think I maybe should get rid of a game. I’m not sure that I need Matcha and Fox in the Forest and Fox in the Forest Duet. Now, the question is which one is going to stay. I think that Matcha is really interesting but it’s maybe a bit harder to teach. For that reason that is probably the trick-taking game that should leave.

Final Thoughts on my Trick-Taking Games

This is obviously not ideal. I want to clear out more games. Though this isn’t because I don’t want to keep all the games around. It is more a situation where I need more space for games and culling and going through my collection helps with that a lot. But smaller games are easier to justify. But with trick-taking, I want to go through this list again after I knock off a handful more of the games on the list. Because I think that a number of them might get culled.

Why will they get culled then versus now? Because I want to come up with what my favorite five to eight of them are. Some I know will always stick around, Rebel Princess for example, but others are good but I’m not 100% sold that they’ll stick around like Cat in the Box. But I want to spend more time with my trick-taking games, and then I’ll revisit them.

Next time I want to look at my drafting games.

Send an Email
Message me on X at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here
Support us on Patreon here