GAMING POINT OF LOU – AN ENTERTAINING HYBRID
Welcome back everyone, I had a bit of a hiatus due to personal reasons, but I’m back with a vengeance and ready to tear into my latest game review.
Designed by Michael and Lisa Eskue, and published by Red Rook Games, (www.redrookgames.blogspot.com) “Trash Pandas” is a clever hybrid of dice rolling, card hoarding, and cutthroat strategy. It takes about 10 minutes to learn thanks to a well produced YouTube video created by the developers. But, despite its combining of several different gameplay types, it manages to carve out a very entertaining gameplay loop for itself.
It is at this point that I am going to try something different. In the place of where I would normally explain how the game is played, I am inserting my very first video. This is for two important reasons: 1) I really feel that in the case of this game, showing is way easier than writing and 2) I just spent a bunch of money on new equipment, and my wife told me that if I didn’t use the stuff she was going to kill me…….. so without further ado:
I hope you all enjoyed that, let me tell you, I now have a new appreciation for all those YouTube content creators. Making videos is waaaaaay more difficult than it looks, but it’s rewarding in it’s own right.
At full tilt, most games took between 10-15 minutes to complete. So, over the course of a couple of hours, my testing group was able to rapid fire games. This allowed me to test out a variety of strategies, and I found that the most effective way to play is ultra aggressive. This involves stashing as many cards as possible, as quickly as you can. With cards being finite resources, if you don’t hoard the points early on, by the time the deck begins to dwindle down you will find yourself on the outside looking in. As much as I normally enjoy having all the players at the table on different strategies and having to react to that, I have to admit, there is a certain charm to the madcap hoarding of points, and the cutthroat “screw over the other player” decisions the game forces you into. As that is normally not my style of play.
When all is said and done Trash Pandas is a rollicking good time, it’s the card game equivalent of “Hungry Hungry Hippos”. I highly recommend picking up a copy for yourself. You can find it on both Amazon and EBay, and for less than the cost of two movie tickets you can have hours of quality entertaiment the whole family can enjoy.
* In the interest of full disclosure, a copy was provided to Pint O’ Comics for review.
Until Next Time Everyone,
Be good to each other,
Lou
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