Trendy, Circus Flohcati

I have never heard of Trendy before. We had just played Shadows Over Camelot and still had some time, so we asked Chong Sean to recommend some quick and simple games. So Trendy it was. It was so short and simple that we played another quick card game before leaving.

Trendy

In Trendy, all you do on turn is simple - play a card in front of you, and draw a card. Most cards just have a number. Colour is not important. Whenever there are the same number of cards as the number on those cards on the table, all players with those cards score them, by turning them face down. Then all other cards are discarded. E.g. if there are five "5" cards on the table, then all players with "5"s save them, and all other cards are discarded. This is interesting and tricky, and there is some cooperative element. Smaller cards are easier to score, but give fewer points. Bigger cards give high scores, but are risky because you may not get that number of cards before they are all thrown away. There are some special cards, like those that immediately discard all cards of a certain number, and those that count as 2 cards.

This is a very quick and simple card game, and very "Knizia" too. A filler.

I have heard of Circus Flohcati, which is another Reiner Knizia game. This one has a bit of a push-your-luck element. Players collect cards, and once someone has cards of all 10 colours, the game ends, and you count your scores. There are 3 ways of scoring. You score for cards in your hand, but can only score 1 card per colour. You score for triplets that you play onto the table. And you also score a bonus for being the one to end the game by collecting all 10 colours.

The gambling element comes from the mechanism for taking cards. There is a common pool of cards at the centre of the table. When it is your turn you can pick a card from it, or draw a card from the draw deck to add to it. If you are still not happy with the new card added, you can continue to draw. But don't go bust, or you won't get any card. You go bust when the new card drawn is of the same colour of another card already in the pool. The newly drawn card is discarded from the game.

There are also some action cards which allow you to take cards from other players, to spice up the game a bit. Sometimes you just grab a random card. Sometimes you can demand a colour.

Circus Flohcati

Simon and Stephen

I played these 2 triplets. It is more worthwhile to play smaller numbers as triplets. Triplets only score 10pts, so there is usually not much point to play 4's and above as triplets.

Circus Flohcati is slightly more complex than Trendy. There is a memory element, since you can see what cards the other players have been collecting. I like Circus Flohcati more. I don't need to own a copy, since I already have this type of card games, but I enjoy playing this.