Twisted Trumpets
- Andrew Milne
- 3 hours ago
- 2 min read
The theme of Twisted Trumpets just seemed instantly appealing. The idea of competing to be the ‘Royal Bugler’ by creating the longest, whackiest and most contorted trumpet out there had the potential to be both strategic and beautifully silly. And it was!
In Matthew Rodela's game, from Play to Z, you lay trumpet tiles on a 4x4 grid, choosing between your regular everyday bits of trumpet or upgraded ‘premium’ trumpet pieces you have purchased at a cost. To maximise scoring opportunities, you have to lay these trumpet pieces to trigger bonuses and satisfy numerous different scoring options.
Twisted Trumpets is a family-friendly game for 2-4 players, and it's definitely a game where there is more than one way to win. You might lay tiles as quickly as you can to trigger the game end before your opponents have had time to score their more intricate and multifaceted trumpets. You could go for flags: points rapidly increasing the more-of-the-same-colour flag you have attached to your trumpet. You could cunningly place a tile with a bird perched on the trumpet, then score all of the musical note symbols on all adjacent tiles. You could go for the objectives on your personal ‘Queen’s Plans’ cards (such as making sure that all corners of your board are filled in with trumpet pieces). Finally, you could race to finish the three ‘Royal Decrees’ that all players have access to and score generously if you complete the challenge first. Of course, with careful planning you could simultaneously succeed in a number of these scoring possibilities...
Each tile you lay (or tile you spend to upgrade to premium) needs to be thought through carefully and what the game slightly lacks in player interaction is made up for in interesting decisions on every turn. It could be argued that Twisted Trumpets does lack a little in originality in its mechanics. Tile laying is nothing new, and most of the points scoring options – such as racing to complete a shared objective or points increasing for collecting multiple tiles of the same set - have been seen before. On the other hand, these mechanics are proven to be fun, and Twisted Trumpets connects them all together in an interesting and amusing way. And it's a game you can play in a filler-length 20-30 minutes.
(Review by Andrew Milne)