Traveluencer

• Designer: Ryo Nakamura (中村 良), Zhonghao Yang, Kai Zu 
• Publisher: Broadway Games
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: 
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In Traveluencer, players must try to make their posts go viral and become the most popular travel influencers! Trending topics change daily – only by staying on top of the latest buzz can you succeed as a KOL(key opinion leader)! Traveluencer is a trick-taking game. Players play any number of cards in an attempt to win tricks and boost engagement. They must manage their resources carefully,or they risk losing followers due to inactivity.

Shuffle the deck – made up of Stamp cards (3 suits of 2-3 copies of ranks 1-9) and Post cards (4 unsuited cards of rank 0). Each player is dealt a hand of 14 cards and then also gets a Souvenir card (unsuited, rank 00).  Place the World Map on the table and place 3 random Unexpected Event cards on the designated spaces.  Also deal 7 cards from the deck face-down around the World Map.

This trick taking game will be played in 3 rounds, each with 3 tricks.  To start each round, players will simultaneously pass 3 cards to the player on their left.  Then, the seven face down cards around the World Map are revealed – these cards determine the trending topic (i.e. trump) for that trick.

Starting with the first player, each player will take turns playing cards – thematically making a post on their blog.  THere is no limit to the number of cards that can be played, but they must all be of the same type.  The cards are arranged in ascending order to form a single number.  For instance, if I play the “8”, “2” and “6” – I will arrange them to make the single number “268”.

A Souvenir card can only be played with the first player in a trick, and when it is played, it is placed at the right end of the number.  A Stamp card cannot be played by the final player in turn order.  When it is played, it is always placed at the right end of the number.  It is possible for the first player to play both a Souvenir and a Stamp.

Players must follow suit if possible.  When all players have played, the highest number in trump wins the trick, and if no trump, the highest number in the lead suit wins.  If there is an exact tie, the earlier played combination wins.   The winning player flips their card(s) over and then puts buzz tokens on top of that stack (3 tokens for 1-2 cards played, 4 tokens for 3-4 cards played, and 5 tokens for 5+ cards played).  Keep each won trick separate to make it easier to count how many tricks were won.  All losing players simply discard their cards.

The winner of the previous trick leads the next.  As you go around the World Map board, you will encounter Unexpected Event cards before the 2nd, 4th and 6th trick in each round.  Reveal the card and then enact the rule on it.

If you run out of cards too soon, you must pay a penalty of 2 Buzz tokens for each trick where you cannot play a card.

At the end of the round (after 7 tricks), players must discard a Buzz token for each card they have not played.  Then record both the number of tricks won as well as the total number of Buzz Tokens collected on the score sheet.  

After 3 rounds, the player who has collected the most Buzz Tokens wins the game. Ties broken in favor of the player who won the most tricks.

My thoughts on the game

So, the gamers in my group have played a LOT of trick taking games in the past few years.  It is definitely one of the genres that seems to have the most interest/production in that time.  Many of the games have a novel idea that helps set it apart from the hundreds of other TTs released in that year.

Traveluencer offers an interesting bit of hand management as well as a bit of card crafting as its twist.  First, you do get an interesting challenge of how to best use your 15 card hand over the course of the 7 tricks. Of course, you’ll want to play combinations that hopefully win you a trick or two over during the round.  But, you’ll have to remember that you’ll be forced to follow the lead suit when possible, and that you can’t play the 0 if you are last in turn order, and you can ONLY play the 00 when you’re leading.  (I will admit that I found it weird that the 00 can only be played when leading as this often leads to a pattern where the winner of a trick then has a huge advantage into the next trick – i would have thought the 0 would have been a better choice for this restriction).

That being said, you are not obligated to get your hand down to exactly zero.  While you do take penalties for cards left over as well as not having enough cards – there are plenty of reasons why it might be better to suffer those penalties.  For instance, if you have a single color left for the 6th trick, and you have to play them all to win a trick – it might be worth the -2 Buzz penalty if you gain 5 Buzz for the win.  That’s still +3 Buzz which is definitely better than 0 Buzz if you end up losing both tricks #6 and #7.

So those are the parts of the game that I love. What I’m less enthralled with are the random unexpected events.  Some of them are interesting such as inverting the order of cards this trick so that they go high to low, each player passes one card to their left hand opponent or shuffling the remaining trending topic cards to put in a new order.  But, when you start getting to cards that cause you to pass your whole hand to the left – umm, that’s getting out of my comfort zone.  FWIW, I’ve secretly taken that card and put it under the box insert so we’ll not be seeing that one in the future.  TBH, I feel like the game is interesting enough without the event cards – i’m not sure I need this injection of random events in this otherwise solid game.

In a market filled with new trick taking games, Traveluencer gives the player a number of interesting choices each hand, and this would be one to definitely check out if you’re inclined towards these sorts of card games.

Until your next appointment,

The Gaming Doctor