Card Games

TRND Game Review

“I’d give a finger for that black ANT chair”

Oink Games has the market cornered on clever, small box games that pack a punch. Check out our review of TRND, their newest card game and showcase your inner vintage collector.

Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.

Oink Games has a cachet about them…other than a plain old deck of cards there’s few other companies that can cram as much fun or enjoyment into a small box as they can: SCOUT, Deep Sea Adventure, or Nine Tiles Panic, and now TRND. I won’t say they’ve cornered the market on small box games, but given that most of their titles can be easily fit into a pocket (and a front pocket no less), I think they’re in the lead.

TRND Setters

TRND is a simple card game with a simple premise: collect as many vintage chairs of a specific type as you can, then “sell” all of them at once to earn lots of points. The catch is that all the other players are trying to corner the market just like you…oh, and there’s only 3 types of chair, and 3 different colors of each–and 10 cards of each combination—for the math inclined that’s 90 cards. TRND offers a marketplace of 8 face up cards, a draw pile and a discard pile.

On your turn you can either draw from the deck, or pick up one of the marketplace cards and offload any number of exactly matching cards to the discard pile—these are chairs just not worthy of your time and energy. The catch being that the cards you casually throw away must match either the color, or type, of the chair on the top of the discard pile. Eventually all but one of the players are going to have a hand composed solely of the exact same card (color and type). They then dump the entire lot, earning a square of the number of cards in points (3 x 3, 4 x 4, 6 x 6, etc.). The last player with cards earns zero points.

TRND Lines

Mechanically TRND is simple: draw a card from the marketplace, then discard any number of cards (even including one you just drew). Or you can draw an unknown card from the deck. The goal being to curate the remaining cards in your hand such that you have as many of the same exact card as possible. But while it’s easy to describe, it’s tougher to accomplish than you might think at first blush. Because of the nature of randomization (and other player’s decisions), the very cards you desire might never show up, or might even get discarded like so much trash by people who just don’t understand the treasure they have.

Add to the decision space that you’re in a bit of a race…all but the last player will earn points for what they lay down, while the last player gets a big fat goose egg. In a 3 player game you’re going to 100 points, which sounds like a lot, but if you can go out with 6 cards, you’re earning a fat 36 points! I don’t think TRND is going to wind up as one of Oink’s classic games, but the packaging, graphic design, clever gameplay, and relatively low price point make TRND definitely worth your consideration.

AUTHOR RATING
  • Good - Enjoy playing.

TRND details

  • Designer: Jun Sasaki
  • Artists: N/A
  • Publishers: Oink Games
  • Release Date: 2024
  • Player count : 3 - 5
  • Age range : 8+
  • Time range : 30 minutes
  • Mechanism(s): Set Collection
  • BGG Geek Rating: 6.58649 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 3.5.
  • More articles about TRND.

About the author

Andy Matthews

Founder of Meeple Mountain, editor in chief of MeepleMountain.com, and software engineer. Father of 4, husband to 1, lover of games, books, and movies, and all around nice guy. I also run Nashville Tabletop Day.

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