Mining in Space!
Feb. 19th, 2019 12:52 pmLast night, we met up with a couple of friends for dinner and they introduced us to a fun little game called Troika.
The premise is that the players are mining asteroids for gemstones and you have to collect both gems and fuel to get back to Earth.
The mechanic is very simple in that there are numbered tiles face down on the table, and your turn is to flip one over, then take either a face up or face down token, or return one of your existing tokens to the pot.
Gems have to be a set of three consecutive numbers, and fuel has to be a set of three of the same number. So you have to build a hand that contains both types of sets before the game runs out of turns. The scoring is tricky because you only score the last digit of your gem set - so, if you have 8-9-10 you score zero as the last digit of 10 is zero.
So, while it's simple to explain, it's tricky to play well, especially with other players watching what you're collecting and trying to thwart your plans.
I really enjoyed it and it definitely makes for a good after-dinner short game that's very portable.
The premise is that the players are mining asteroids for gemstones and you have to collect both gems and fuel to get back to Earth.
The mechanic is very simple in that there are numbered tiles face down on the table, and your turn is to flip one over, then take either a face up or face down token, or return one of your existing tokens to the pot.
Gems have to be a set of three consecutive numbers, and fuel has to be a set of three of the same number. So you have to build a hand that contains both types of sets before the game runs out of turns. The scoring is tricky because you only score the last digit of your gem set - so, if you have 8-9-10 you score zero as the last digit of 10 is zero.
So, while it's simple to explain, it's tricky to play well, especially with other players watching what you're collecting and trying to thwart your plans.
I really enjoyed it and it definitely makes for a good after-dinner short game that's very portable.