Tinco

• Designers: Gustavo Barreto, Alessandro de Oliveira
• Publisher: Devir
• Players: 3-6
• Age: 10+
• Time: 20 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Tinco is a less than Zen party game of frantic action and superior kung fu for 3 to 6 players. 

To start the game, agree on one of the challenges to play:

• Xing – a Tinco is a set of five cards that share the same animal
• Hong – a Tinco is a set of five cards that each have a shard of metal of the same color

Each player gets a scoring card and a plastic clip that is used to mark the score on that card (it starts at 0). Depending on the challenge chosen for the game and the player count, assemble the deck needed to play based on the chart in the rules.  There will be a bunch of sets of cards and the single Trinco card. Additionally the appropriate number of shards of the Medal of Accord are placed on the table. The deck is shuffled and then dealt out completely – it might end up that some players end up with more cards than others.  Everyone can look at the hand they were dealt. 

There are no turns in Tinco. Everyone is trying to gather cards to make a Tinco by trading cards with the other players.  You call out the number of cards you wish to trade and if you find someone else willing to trade the same number, cards are exchanged between those players.  While you’re trying to form a Tinco, you are also trying to make sure that you don’t have the Trinco card.  

Once someone has accumulated the five cards needed to form a Tinco, they grab a Medal of Accord shard from the table.  They are not obligated to announce anything, and in fact, it can be quite amusing to do this secretively.  Once a player has taken the first shard, all the other players should try to grab one as quickly as possible.  Only the first person needs to have a completed Tinco – everyone else is free to grab one after the first shard is taken.   Then the round is scored.

• If you made a Tinco and got a shard – +1 on the score card
• If you got a shard (but no Tinco) – no movement
• If you didn’t get a shard (and it doesn’t matter if you have a Tinco or not) – minus 1 on the score card

If you have the Trinco in your hand, you lose one point for having it, in addition to the scoring rules above

Keep playing until someone either reaches the top or the bottom of the scorecard.  At that time, the game ends, and the player with the highest position on their scorecard wins. There is no tiebreaker.

My thoughts on the game

So if the rules sound familiar, the card play here feels a lot like the classic game Pit.  There is a lot of yelling and furious trading, with players trying to move cards from their hands to eventually collect the right things.  Sure, the games aren’t identical, but they are close.  The Trinco is essentially the same as the Bear card – it’s just a penalty card that you don’t want, though there is no wild card in Tinco (i.e. the Bull).  There also isn’t a bell to smack to trigger the end of the round…  

In fact, once someone has taken a shard, the round doesn’t necessarily have to end… The game only ends when the other players realize that someone has triggered the round end.  If you have the Trinco, you might want to keep trying to trade to get rid of the penalty card before making a grab for a shard!

I suppose you could try to track what people are giving away and then hope that they will keep giving away those things if you’re trying to collect them.  The two different objectives in the game are essentially the same – it just depends whether you want to play with criteria that are easy to see or those which are a bit hidden in the art.  If anything, you might be more likely to make a mistaken trade with the Hong challenge because it’s not always obvious what color shard is on a card…

If you like Pit, this one will appeal to you for those same reasons – there is still furious trading and lots of yelling and whatnot.  If, like me, you find that the game of Pit lasts too long to wait for someone to get to 500 points… well – waiting for someone to get to the top or bottom of the scorecard here will feel the same – though possibly much much longer as people’s scores can bounce up and down instead of inexorably heading towards the finish line. For me, I’d be happier playing to +3 or -3 as opposed to +5 or -5.  Especially because unlike Pit (where people only add to their score), scores here can oscillate as a player can get positive scores one round and then negative scores in the next.  FWIW, some in my group would have been happy playing to +1 or -1.  Of course, YMMV, and the folks I know who love Pit would have been more than happy to play this all night.

Until your next appointment

The Gaming Doctor