Trickerion
In Trickerion, players are rival stage illusionists facing off in a grand competition for fame and fortune hosted by Dahlgaard the Magnificent, the patron of Magoria. They will assemble a team of apprentices and specialists, learn intricate magic tricks, acquire necessary trick components, and schedule their tricks in the Theater to create breathtaking performances at the end of each week, represented by one game round. The competition ends after seven weeks, and only the most famous magician can win Dahlgaard’s heritage: the mysterious and powerful Trickerion Stone.
Mechanisms
WORKER PLACEMENT WITH CLEVER TWISTS
Trickerion’s worker placement system is a clever combination of multiple Worker types, action programming and action point allocation. Each of Magoria’s five Locations has multiple worker spaces and several actions to choose from, each with its own action point cost. There are many ways to earn extra Action points, such as visiting a Location earlier than your opponents, using a Specialist or your Magician worker, or spending shards of the Trickerion crystals. It is highly unlikely to get completely locked out of a Location, but the action point allocation system keeps the worker placement tense and interactive.
48 DIFFERENT MAGIC TRICKS
Magic tricks are at the center of Trickerion’s gameplay. The game features 48 uniquely illustrated tricks in three complexity tiers, most of which were inspired by the performances of famous real-life magicians. Each trick represents one of the four schools of illusion: Mechanical, Optical, Escape, and Spiritual.
Trickerion’s core game flow consists of learning the basics of the tricks at the Downtown, obtaining the components they require from the Market Row, preparing them in the Workshop, and finally setting them up in the Theater for breathtaking shows in the Performance phase.
CLIMATIC PERFORMANCES AT THE END OF EACH ROUND
Each round ends with the climatic Performance phase when each player with their magician on one of the stage slots can have one performance. Performances are prepared at the Theater location with a tile placement minigame and can consist of up to six individual tricks; it is even possible to participate in someone else’s performance as a guest performer. Well-prepared shows with quality Tricks can yield a huge amount of money, Fame and Trickerion shards to the performer. Pulling one off is a very satisfying experience!
How to Play
Expansions
Dahlgaard’s Academy
In Dahlgaard’s Academy, Trickerion’s first big box expansion, players compete to honor the great Dahlgaard’s last will by renovating the Magorian Academy of Magic, where players can perfect their Tricks or teach them to a new generation of illusionists. The Academy also hides many secrets waiting to be discovered by the new Specialist, the ambitious Protégé. The winner of this new competition becomes Rector Magnificus of the Academy and thus the Patron of Magoria, bringing about a new Golden Age of Illusion for the city.
Dahlgaard’s Academy introduces a new, customizable location; a new, customizable Specialist; four new Magicians; a solo mode with variable difficulty; and more!
Dawn of Technology
The Contraptions module allows magicians to modernize their workshop by building up to four Contraptions in it. Contraptions are unique to each workshop type (mechanical, optical, escape, and spiritual), and provide increasingly powerful benefits. Contraptions can only be used once per round, but they are automatically reactivated at the beginning of a new round if the player has enough Trickerion Shards to power them.
Signature tricks are more powerful variants of certain standard tricks in the base game. Each magician (including the four new ones introduced in Dahlgaard’s Academy) has one specific Signature trick from their favorite trick category, which they can choose to learn instead of its standard version. While Signature tricks are always better than their standard counterparts, preparing and perfecting them requires a modern workshop equipped with Contraptions.
Dahlgaard’s
Gifts
The Magician Powers module allows a deeper customization of the magicians by adding 90 unique Power cards to the game. Each player starts with a hand of eight Power cards, and they may play one of them during each round but only if their respective slots are unlocked with Trickerion Shards. Just like tricks, Power cards also have a Fame threshold that you have to reach to play them. We recommend this module to experienced players who would like to add more asymmetry and new strategic angles to their game.
Duel of the Magicians is a module designed specifically to make the two-player Trickerion games more dynamic, tense, and exciting. It introduces two new game elements: special performance cards with pre-printed neutral tricks that make linking easier, and turn setup cards that change the pattern of unavailable worker spaces at each location round-by-round. Duel of the Magicians is compatible with all Trickerion expansions, and we highly recommend trying it for your two-player games.
