Looking Behind the Curtain of TRICKERION

I was finally able to open, learn, and play my copy of Trickerion: Legends of Illusion. My wife and I played the basic game on Friday, and the "Dark Alley" expansion with the game on Sunday. After playing through it twice, my opinion stands as this: I did enjoy it, and I am excited to play it again. Join me on the stage as we pull back the curtain on this world of trickery and mystery, and uncover the deep dark secrets of Trickerion!

What is the overall experience like?

Trickerion happens to be a pretty hefty game, and by this I mean that there is a lot of stuff going on! The picture above came from when my wife and I played it the first time. Even without the "Dark Alley" expansion the game took up most of our table. We even adjusted things around to work better with the space ... the above picture was really the best we could do.

Even though there are a lot of different components, and the board and player boards take up a lot of space, the concept behind Trickerion is really quite simple and compelling: Players are magicians competing to be the top performer. They higher specialists, sending them around the town to higher other people, go to the bank to get money, learn new magic tricks, purchase components for the tricks, etc ... Once a trick is learned, or purchased, players can send their specialists or apprentices to their workshop to prepare the trick. If they have purchased the correct components to prepare it, that trick is ready to perform.

During the rounds you'll be collecting components, preparing tricks, and performing them. There are many other small details here, and other things you can do like obtaining special cards that effect the gameplay drastically ("Dark Alley" expansion), as well as other factors that have an effect on the different rounds. Despite all these un-noted things here, the goal of the game is to get fame points. This is mainly achieved by performing tricks. The more fame points you receive, the better the tricks you can learn as the game progresses.

Both times we played this game, we really enjoyed it. It took us some time (a few rounds) to familiarize ourselves enough with the game before we really knew what was going on. By the second game we understood what to do a lot better.

Some things we liked

• The art on the boards, cards, components ... it's all very well done and beautiful 
• It was really cool how they incorporated the score track to be seats in the theater
• Solid worker placement - there was just enough tension that it made things interesting
• The theme really pulled through for us (magicians ... who doesn't like that, right?)

Some things we didn't

• We usually have no problem with long games, but this one was pretty time consuming. There was a lot of AP (Analysis Paralysis), which played into the long play time
• I wish that this game was more focused around components for the tricks, that you don't need a certain number of fame points to learn better tricks. Don't get me wrong, by the second play through we had better strategies and got a ton more points! I just think it could be executed a little better. A part of me wishes that you didn't need more fame points to get better tricks because then there would be a lot of more performances during the game, but I realize this will probably change the more we play it, and the more players that we play it with. I just want to perform magic!

So there you go ...

Trickerion is good. It's great! We really do like it. Despite the few negatives (which will probably all change the more the game is played), this is a very solid game that we enjoyed. While at times it felt long, it also kept the fun going. This is definitely one to recommend, but not just to anyone. If you know someone who likes a good challenge, a board game, and has fun learning  (because this game has a lot going on), then this might be for that friend of yours, or even for you.