Unboxing Trickerion: Dahlgaard’s Gifts

Hi! It’s Ryan from Nights Around a Table, and this is a tiny little game. It’s an expansion called Dahlgaard’s Gifts, an expansion to the Kickstarted game about magicians competing for the love of a retiring magician, Dahlgaard, called Trickerion. But you probably know all of that, if you clicked on something that said “Unboxing Dahlgaard’s Gifts.” If you didn’t know that, Dahlgaard is a creepy old magician in Trickerion, and the whole plot of Trickerion is that he’s retiring, and you and your fellow magicians are competing to win his favour, and eventually get all the stuff that he has, um, when he… croaks? When he retires? i dunno what he’s doing. i guess he’s retiring? He’ll die some day. (Unless he’s THAT magical!) If you haven’t seen my Trickerion How to Play video, i busted hump on that thing, and i’d love for you to watch it. i’ll put the description down below. Check it out! This – meanwhile – Dahlgaard’s Gifts. i think the deal was if you were a Kickstarter backer of Trickerion, you got all kinds of nice tchotchkes, like a… a box sleeve? You know how everybody… raves… after box sleeves … (?) Uh, and uh, a few other things, and i think they did was they parceled them out, and made them available separately for purchase. So if you were a top-tier Kickstarter backer, you got all the stuff that’s already in here, and if you’re just a schmo like me who caught on too late, and still wanted the thing, then you pay extra! So i did! And here it is, and we’re gonna unbox it. For most unboxings, i have no idea what’s actually gonna be in the box, and for this one, i have a pretty good idea. They list it pretty clearly on the back. And i’m familiar with Trickerion. i like the artwork, i like the theme… it’s a very heavy game! Uh, the very first thing you see is a little placard that says “Magician Powers.” And it lists the additional game components. Um, now the interesting thing is because it was all put together in the Kickstarter package, if you get Trickerion, uh you’re gonna notice that on the flip side of your player mats, on the Dark Alley expansion side – Dark Alley was an “expansion” in the original box – there are little slots for cards that go along the side of the board, but there… you don’t have any cards to put there! These are gonna be the cards to put there in those slots. They’re different magician powers, and the other thing that’s in this little box is a separate set of rules for “Duel of the Magicians,” which makes it, uh, a better 2-player game? A different 2-player game? i’m not too sure…. hwhaat. But i’ll find out when i play it. What else is in here? Ah, yes. i was excited about this. It – ah – it’s the little things. i dunno if you guys upgrade the components (snap) in your… Ugggghhhh. i hate that. Am i the only one who HATES that? When you – ahhh! – you go to unlock a little Ziploc® baggie and you tear it? i have a million Ziploc® baggies, i just… it’s more of a… here. You gotta give it, like a… (rubbing) Delicious silica gel pack for good eating tonight… And THESE cute little dudes – look at this! Now everybody gets a little … a little mmagician… meeple… These are cool! They got little… you know. They’re the four colours. No extra player tokens or anything, because the game’s really, uh, structured, tuned, around 4 players, and i don’t even know if you COULD add a fifth player to Trickerion. As a designer, i don’t… think… i don’t think – everything’s structured around 4 players. i think it’d be too tough for them to do. So it’s still a 4-player game. These are the four player colours, little magician tokens… but if you’ve played the game, you know that these aren’t actually the magician tokens that you’re moving, uh, around the board to do anything interesting. You can either, i guess, put these on the, uh, score chart in the theatre, or you can put them on the, uh, initiative track on the left. So you’re not actually moving these around, you’re moving around your little player discs Uh… Dahlgaard. Dahlgaard, i dunno. i dunno if we’re supposed to trust, or like, Dahlgaard? He’s teaching you his tricks. He’s got a pile of tricks for you to learn, and … (laughs) … It sounds creepier the more i explain it. He’s got a pile of tricks for you to learn, and, uh, in order to learn them from him, you “go Downtown,” as the game puts it. Deck of cards here… Dahlgaard. Show me on the rabbit-in-a-hat where Dahlgaard… taught you a trick. Uh, so this uh, little deck of cards, uhhh… if i were to estimate, i would say there’d be about… uh… i dunno, like… ten thousand cards in this deck? And they are… looks like some of them are … are those Special Assignment cards that we saw from the Dark Alley expansion, and then some of them are… oh, yeah! Look at this: so these are the ones that go, i presume, at the side of your board. So you can spend Trickerion shards, uh, i’ve read, to put these at the side of your little, uh, magician’s board, uh, to gain cool abilities. What’s this one? “When you learn this Magician Power, immediately advance on the Fame Track until you are 6 steps behind the player directly ahead of you.” Oh my God! What?? (laugh) Hold on… whaaaat? “You may only learn this Magician Power once per game,” (i daresay), “and you have to pay 5 money to learn it.” “Immediately advance on the Fame Track until you’re 6 steps behind the player…” Oh, the player directly ahead of you. So… so… if you’re second, you can be a closer second, i guess? And if you’re last, you can be less last, i guess? It’s not… when i first read that, i was like, “Whoa, that’s like a major rubber-banding, blue shell kind of thing.” Lemmie read, uh… lemmie read one more: “Night Shift. You may place a character token first at the beginning of the ‘Place Characters’ phase, before anyone else places theirs.” Oh! So it’s like a bonus/advance/go first kinda thing. “Then proceed with the placement normally.” Is that every…. turn? That’s pretty cool, though. That’s a good power. Yeah! So, cool. Good powers in the, uh, in the magician abilities… and there’s a second deck of cards here… i like it when they put these little – i find this makes cards easier to open, when they put the little rip-strip. Again, like the first deck, if i were to estimate, there’d be probably, like, i dunno. It’s hard. i’m not very good at estimating. Like 5, 10 thousand cards. Something like that. Um… oh, these are just more magician powers that go on the lower pegs on your board, so maybe these aren’t as good as the other ones? Let’s see: oh, and they’ve got the, the … Fame thresholds, just like the tricks do… 1 Fame, 16 Fame… “Fair Player. If haven’t used and Special Assignment cards during this turn, you receive 1 Trickerion shard and 1 Fame at the end of the ‘Place Characters’ phase.” Hmm. So that almost dissuades you from going to the Dark Alley. And this makes me think that you can’t play this expansion unless you’re playing on the Dark Alley side of the board, which makes the game a lot longer, and it’s already a really, uh, it’s a really long game, like that’s not a light game at all. i’m only allowed to play it once a year, and it’s a special request. And today is actually my birthday. i might not get the video up ON my birthday, but i’m shooting it on my birthday, and it’s possible that if i play my cards right, and i’m very well-behaved, that uh my wife will deign to play Trickerion with me. So i’m… i’m pretty jazzed about that. Uh… more of these, uh, Trickerion shards. i think that’s because they’re a more important currency with this expansion. You gotta use them to get Magician Powers we just looked at. And then they give you a rully big one, to replace the round marker. So that was nice. It’s not as big as i thought it would be, but uh… nice to have. It’ll look nice than the flat cardboard token, that’s for sure. Finally, what else do we have? Coupla more little decks… these ones…. agggh. Not as easy to open. They’re going to require either teeth, or a knife, but there’s a little bubble… there’s a couple little bubbles in here. i don’t like this. i don’t like risking damaging cards… agggh… okay. Did i get away with that? This looks like more theatre cards… Heh! If you listen carefully to the Trickerion video, i call the Grand Magorian cards “Grand MagoriUM,” cause i wasn’t paying attention, but uh… i put “Magorian” in the subtitles. i’m sneaky! Uh… most of these have the black cat/Dark Alley logo on them, but they also have… i’m pretty sure that this would be the Duel of Magicians icon, so i’m assuming that these are 2-player theatre cards. There’s something a little bit different, i’m noticing already, that – oh, they have fewer trick link… no, no no… oh, i see! Okay, okay. So one… i guess.. one of things they’ve done, and this is all without knowing anything about the expansion or reading the instruction… it looks like they’ve already planted, like, a ghost or dummy trick down there, so that you can already… it’s easier to make trick links already, off the top. That’s probably what those are about, and that’s why you use them for two players, because that… doesn’t exist in a 2-player game… somebody has to play, and then you have to … you know. You know! If you know the game, then you know. If you don’t… if you’re just watching me talk, then you have no idea what’s going on. Uh, great! And then, this looks like another… i would say, like, a 5-10 thousand card deck? Something like that. Give or take? This is… oh, look: again, we have theeeee Duel of Magicians logo on the back. These are all gonna be Duel of Magicians cards, and it looks like they are pattern cards to show you, at a first glance, i’m just guessing, that they uh tell you to block off various spaces… i dunno if this is gonna be a per-round thing, but in the base game of Trickerion, when you’re only playing with 2 players, you have to take, uh, your character discs… or OTHER players’ character discs – the people who aren’t playing – and block off spots, and it’s very… it’s static. It’s the same for the entire game. You block off these ones, and they’re done for the entire game. But this looks like it makes it a little more, uh, dynamic and unpredictable in a 2-player game. If i know Trickerion at all, i know the designers tend towards complexity, so i would bet dollars to donuts that you go through these during a 2-player Duel of Magicians game, and the blocked-off spots are constantly changing. So if there wasn’t already enough to think about in Trickerion… uh heh-heh… that’ll do ya! Uh, so yeah! That’s uh… that’s everything. Let me just bring it all back into frame…. everything that is included wiiith… the expansion – the FIRST expansion – to Trickerion, for they have announced a second expansion to Trickerion, a larger one – Dahlgaard’s Academy – i dunno WHAT you’re gonna have to do in Dahlgaard’s Academy to earn marks. (deep, suggestive sigh) But! That is it. i’m gonna play it. i’ll do a little video, as requested by a few of you, and i’ll show you how it goes and tell you what i think! Did you just watch that whole thing? Oh – hey! To 100% this video, click the badge to subscribe. Then click the bell to get notifications when i’ve got new stuff!