When compared to big box games, it can be easy for avid gamers to overlook games that come in a small box. Fewer components, a thinner rulebook, and smaller table presence often leads to a lighter game, which can be seen as a negative by gamers who have large collections consisting of heavier games.
Thankfully, more and more small box games are offering increasingly varied, complex, and strategic experiences that are making them more appealing to gamers that traditionally look past them.
Trinket Trove, a ‘thinky’ bidding, set collection, and drafting game for 2-6 players from Rocco Privatera, Paul Solomon, and publisher Gamehead, makes a strong argument for the ‘small box, big game’ crowd.
Bidding For Your Burrow
In Trinket Trove, players collect various trinkets across 13 types, attempting to collect sets of different types to add to their character’s ‘burrow’ and earn points before the end of the game. Trinkets are collected and sets are built through the bidding and drafting process that makes up the core loop of the game.
Each round, players bid on available lots (groups of one or more trinkets), following the bidding order of the previous round (in the first round of the game, it’s randomized) to determine the drafting order during the next phase.
The bidding phase begins by drawing a number of cards, equal to the player count, from the top of the base deck to create ‘lots’ for the players to bid for and draft. An additional card is added to the first lot (two cards to the first two lots in a five to six player game) from the ‘timer deck’ which acts as the overall timer for the game. The timer deck runs out after six rounds in a one to four player game, and five rounds in a five to six player game.
Players, represented by adorable critters illustrated by Sandara Tang, place bids by choosing any numbers of cards from their hand to represent their bid. While this process sounds simple and easy—choose cards and place bid—the subtle nuances are where Trinket Trove’s ‘thinkiness’ really starts to shine through.
Nice Guys Finish Last
Bidding strength is first determined by the amount of cards used as a bid; a player bidding three cards will draft before a player bidding only one or two cards. However, if one or more players bid the same amount of cards, the tie is broken by using the values on the trinket cards. Each trinket has a value ranging from two to seven, which also represents the number of trinkets needed to acquire a full set of that particular trinket.
This ranking system that prioritizes amount first, then value, creates an impressive level playing field. Getting multiple low-value trinkets doesn’t mean you’re at a major disadvantage against players who receive a starting hand with more high-value cards. A player that bids three trinkets with a value of two each (a total of 6) would have higher priority and draft earlier than a player that bids two trinkets with a value of seven each (a total of 14).
To make the decision even trickier, each player’s bid is also added as an available lot for other players to select during the drafting process. This led to some interesting decisions across my five review plays. You wanna go big and earn an earlier drafting order? That’s fine, but you’ll give your opponents the chance to take more bidding ammunition or high-value trinkets.
This is partly because the only way to draft the same cards that you bid earlier in the round is if you select last, and your bid is one of the two remaining lots available. This happened only a handful of times during my playthroughs, and with less than desirable bids.
Adding one final wrinkle to the bidding process, players also have the ability to bid ‘0’ cards. To do this, players randomly draw a card from the top of the basic deck and are considered to have bid 0 cards with a value of 0. In each game I played, every player utilized the 0 bid option at least once. It was a popular choice when the lots that were currently available just didn’t fit a player’s current end-game scoring plan.
It was also popular due to the fact that bidding last was more appealing than it might initially seem. The last player to place their bid in each round was able to see more available lots since other players bid before them. This led to many rounds where players were actively trying to bid last so they could have more opportunities in the following round.
A Plethora of Points
After the surprisingly deep bidding process, drafting takes place. For all the bells and feathers (there are no whistles in Trinket Trove) in the bidding process, drafting is as simple as it gets. In bid strength order, each player selects two lots from those available before proceeding to the next round, or to the end of the game if the timer deck is depleted.
Despite how straightforward drafting is, set collection for the various trinkets has a few welcome surprises. In most games that utilize set collection as a scoring mechanism, the more of a certain type you collect, the more points you earn.
For the most part, Trinket Trove follows this same formula. However, the way in which points are accumulated for each trinket set creates an interesting twist.
Feathers and lures both have a bid strength of seven, and offer the highest point value if you’re able to complete a full set; 175 for lures and 145 for feathers. If you’re not able to complete a full set of either of these though, you run the risk of missing out on lots of points. For feathers, the point value goes from 50 if you have a set of four up to 110 if you have a set of six. Lures are even trickier as you gain 25 points for a set of five, 80 for a set of six, and 175 for a full set of seven.
Crayons, which come in a set of six, are arguably even trickier. Their end-game point values are as follows depending on having between one and six crayons: 20, 10, 0, 90, 100, 120.
Each trinket offers its own unique scoring quirk that makes the entire process–bidding, drafting, and collecting–a tricky puzzle to figure out. I was shocked in multiple games to see close scores between players with wildly different end-game sets. In one of these cases, one player had four sets for a total of 170, while another had eight sets for 180, a difference of just 10 points.
The 2-player mode deserves a special shout-out, given how thoroughly it annoyed my wife…in the best way possible. In a two-player game, a simulated third player, Nimbus, participates in the bidding and drafting process. While I normally don’t like simulated characters being added to mimic higher player counts, Nimbus was a tough, yet predictable road block..
Nimbus follows a basic formula of always bidding two cards randomly from the top of the deck and then selecting the two available lots with the highest value. More often than not, Nimbus was selecting first or second, which led to him grabbing some valuable trinkets along the way. This led to multiple exclamations from my wife of “I hate Nimbus! He’s too strong,” which inevitably led to some friendly laughter from me.
It’s worth noting that Trinket Trove’s publisher, Gamehead, uniquely specializes in small box games across three categories—casual, party, and thinky—that can be taught and set up in just 10 minutes. Trinket Trove fits in their ‘thinky’ series and it definitely shows.
While the big box behemoth games command lots of attention from avid gamers, the little guys deserve some spotlight too. Trinket Trove is a shiny example of a game that can have big decisions in a small package.
Trinket Trove details
- Designer: Rocco Privetera
- Artists: Sandara Tang
- Publishers: Arken Games, GameHead, Lucky Duck Games
- Release Date: 2025
- Player count : 2 - 6
- Age range : 10+
- Time range : 30 minutes
- Mechanism(s): Open Drafting, Set Collection, Turn Order: Auction
- BGG Geek Rating: 7.51535 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 4.0.
- More articles about Trinket Trove.
