Matthew BaileyAs we reach the end of our Halloween Spooktacular (we have one more tomorrow that, yes, I realise is after Halloween, but otherwise I won’t be able to squeeze everything I want in), we are going to be looking at Trick’n Treat, another trick-taking card game, this time a Taiwanese import from Icerain Games.
In Trick’n Treat, you play a trick-taking game where you are trying to collect sweets while avoiding ghosts that can interfere with your plans. The game can be played cooperatively, with everyone working together to collect different colours of sweets, or competitively, where you split into two teams and try to score the most points. We’re going to focus on the competitive mode here.
To set up, shuffle the friend cards and candy cards separately and deal 11 of each to every player.
The player with the most candy cards in their hand becomes the starting player. They begin each trick by playing either a friend card or a candy card, which determines the suit for that trick. Going clockwise, everyone else must play a card of the same suit if they can. If you cannot follow suit, you can play a different card, including a ghost card.
Once everyone has played, the player who played the highest-numbered card of the leading suit wins the trick (very normal trick-taking rules). Ghost cards cannot win tricks, although they still count as following the suit when played. The winner then takes the cards and chooses the candy card with the lowest number from the trick to score, placing it in front of them. The remaining cards are discarded, and the winner leads the next trick.
Ghost cards also have special abilities that can change how a trick plays out. Depending on which ghost you use, you might reverse the strength of the numbers, score an additional candy card, exchange a card from your hand, take a previously played candy card into your hand, or exchange cards with another player. Once a ghost has been played, it joins the trick winner’s hand after the trick has been resolved.
The game continues until the next starting player has no friend cards or candy cards left, or there are no more cards left to play. At the end of the game, you check which team has collected the ghost cards. If all the ghost cards are held by players on one team, that team automatically loses. Otherwise, you add up the numbers on your team’s scored candy cards, with the highest-scoring team winning. If there’s a tie, the team with the highest-numbered ghost card wins.
It’s fine and we had a decent time playing it but its all very standard, and considering how many card games we have played this Halloween, this one is definitely not at the top of the pile. The use of the ghost cards can obviously mess up what you are doing, but in terms of moment-to-moment gameplay, Ghostbumpers, which we reviewed the other day, is a much better game.
I didn’t overly mention it but odd player counts require a dummy player and my heart always sinks a bit when a dummy player is needed.
The artwork is, however, absolutely wonderful, and everything looks lovely and, as with most East Asian imports, comes in a very appealing box size.
Maybe had I played this earlier in the season, I might have enjoyed it a little more, but having played a lot of card games and also trick-taking games in the last month, this one just doesn’t quite do enough to make it stand out from the pile.
