The Game
About the Game
Trickerion – Legends of Illusion is a competitive Euro-style strategy game set in a fictional city inspired by the late 19th century urban life and culture, where players take on the role of rival stage illusionists.
Players strive to become the city’s greatest Magician by acquiring the most Fame points. But there is much more at stake than prestige alone. The audience’s favourite wins the contest for the mighty Trickerion Stone, a relic that grants supernatural powers to its owner, making him a true Legend of Illusion.
Game Features
- Unique, engaging theme presented through beautiful, hand-drawn artwork
- Game time is 30 minutes per player, with minimal player downtime
- Plays equally well with two, three or four players
- All the upsides of the worker placement mechanism, spiced with an intuitive action point system and simultaneous action selection
- An innovative tile placement subtheme provides room for more player interaction and a chance for temporary cooperation
- Minimal luck factor – success depends solely on your decisions and your ability to plan ahead and react to other players’ moves
- Two optional rule modules can add further strategic depth to the game
Game Mechanism
Behind every great magician there is a team of helpers: a gorgeous Pretty Assistant, a cunning Manager, a resourceful Engineer and some diligent Apprentices. Using these characters and their resources, players will be able to sculpt their own repertoire of Tricks from 40 available magic illusions in 4 different categories, prepare and perfect them on their very own Workshop that can be expanded during the game, and finally perform them at the Theater. How these Performances shape up is entirely up to the players: they build them from the ground up with the tricks of their choice, and they can perform them alone, or choose to temporarily cooperate with others in a co-performance for mutual benefits.
On top of managing their team and trick repertoire, players can also improve their magician’s skills by collecting shards of the mighty Trickerion Stone and learning new abilities using its power. If they are willing to get their hands dirty, they can even visit the Dark Alley location to obtain some insidious extra actions, or change their fate by dabbling into the supernatural at the fortune teller.
Check out our latest rule book for further information!
Simultaneous Action Selection
The core mechanism of Trickerion is rooted in worker – or Character, as they are called in the game - placement, but we wanted to give it an extra layer of strategic planning. A quick turn phase is dedicated to planning the “who goes where” part of the character placement simultaneously in secret, using face-down cards. Since the effectiveness of the different characters vary, this is a very important part of the strategy. This phase typically takes about 3-5 minutes, but greatly reduces player downtime in the subsequent phase: when the cards are revealed, and players place their Characters, one at a time, they only have to choose the order in which they are placed.
Action Point system
In order to keep player downtime minimal and the planning decisions quick, we wanted to have a relatively low number of locations where characters can be placed. Each of these locations, however, has several different available Actions. Initially, players could choose freely from these Actions when placing their Characters, but after some tests we felt that some of them should be harder to take than others. This led to our Action point system. At every Location, each Action has an Action Point cost, while the Characters have different Action Point values. Furthermore, the character slots at the Locations themselves also have modifiers to these points – players who ‘arrive’ at a Location earlier have access to better spots, therefore more Action Points.
All in all, this system added an interesting new layer of decision to the character placement: players have to consider not only which character to place where, but also when to place them.
Design philosophy
In the early days of designing our game, one of the first things we’ve agreed upon, and the main source of inspiration all along, was its theme. We both love movies such as The Prestige or the Houdini films, and we felt that the mysterious world of the 19th century stage illusionists is unique and engaging enough to be the background of a board game. As we delved deeper into the topic, we learned that these magicians usually had a team, with well-defined roles, to work with. This realization led to choosing worker placement as the core mechanic of Trickerion – a decision we were happy to make, since we’re long-time fans of worker placement games and we feel that it is one of the best board game mechanics out there. That said, we felt that the classic formula could be improved in many ways, such as providing more room for player interaction, and more complex decisions.
With that in mind, after having gone through a few early concepts, our design goals slowly took shape. All in all, we tried to evolve the concept of worker placement with additional layers of strategy while keeping the gameplay intuitive, thematically flavourful and not overly complicated.
We wanted...
- a game that rewards planning ahead
- to minimize player downtime, which is often an issue with worker placement games
- a good amount of player interaction
- a game with minimal luck factor and high replayability
- to integrate as many elements of our theme into the game as possible, without it feeling forced
Characters
In a contest for fame and prestige, masters of four different fields of magic face off against each other. Which one of them will prevail, and win the mighty Trickerion Stone? It’s only up to you!
The mistress of spiritual phenomena will take you for a journey into the otherworld!
The priestess not only has a natural ability to communicate with ghosts, but she is also a gifted soothsayer. She is capable of altering the future by modyfing the Prophecy for the round.
Amabel Fae was the only daughter of a wealthy family. The furniture manufacture ran by her father used to prosper for decades, but eventually it has become but a money sink. An influential suitor would have solved the family’s problem, but Amabel’s heart belonged to someone else: the son of the local blacksmith. When she found out that her hand was secretly promised to a rich nobleman, she unwillingly agreed to marry him for the sake of her family’s well-being. But her lover simply could not cope with the thought of losing her: he showed up on horseback at the wedding, intending to elope the bride from the ceremony. The groom was furious: he took the handgun of one of the military guests and shot the insolent boy in the back.
Her family never saw Amabel again. The person she used to be died that day together with the blacksmith’s boy, but she never gave up getting in touch with the love of her heart again. She turned to spiritualism, delving into it deep beyond comprehension. Her power seemed to grow day by day. Some even accused her of cursing her ex-fiancé when the poor man came down with a mysterious disease that slowly consumed him. Nonetheless, people started visiting her, some asking her to bind them with their loved ones passed away, others to bring doom upon their enemies. Her fame grew with each satisfied visitor - the Priestess of Mysticism was born.
No restraint can hold the death defying escape artist for long!
Breaking free from seemingly impossible situations is the specialty of the Master of Chains. With his ability, he can freely sneak one of his tricks in another performance in the last minute before performing.
The talented escape artist was born as Frederic White. Escaping has always been in his blood as he never spent much time at the orphanage where he was raised. Once he was old enough to stay on the streets without getting caught, he joined the local mob as a courier. As promising as he was, his ‘career’ ended quickly one winter night: he saw something he was never supposed to, and was considered an acceptable loss. He received the common treatment in mafia circles: he was tied up and thrown into the river with a block of concrete. With incredible effort, he broke free of his fetter and reached the surface, but as he couldn’t swim, he was only wobbling desperately, sinking over and over.
To his great fortune, a burned out street magician who planned to drown himself in the river that day witnessed the scene from riverside, and helped the poor boy climb out of the freezing water. Saving the youngster gave him a new meaning in life: he offered the talented boy a job as his apprentice. Frederic quickly learned the profession of illusionists. He mastered the techniques of escaping any restraint, be it chain, padlock, straitjacket or coffin. Soon he became the Master of Chains, the incredible escape artist the world knows him as today.
Watch the magical machinery break the laws of physics!
Thanks to his incredible knowledge of state-of-the-art machinery, he could mechanically replicate his missing left arm – no wonder he has several inventions to enhance his Apprentices as well.
Gerhard von Liebenstein inherited the love for machines from his father, a rich nobleman from Germania, and an iconic person of the country’s industrial revolution. The Liebenstein family manufactured state-of-the-art industrial equipment for the largest corporations in peace time, and deadly war machines in war time. The proud Liebensteins also played their part in shaping the history of Germania: the Liebenstein boys all served in the army during the devastating continental war. While his brothers prevailed, the final battle changed Gerhard’s fate forever: he lost his left arm in an explosion and was discharged from the military.
Fuelled by anger and denial, he spent years working obsessively on a mechanical prosthesis that could replace his missing arm, and eventually, he succeeded. This incredible accomplishment quickly elevated Gerhard among the greatest inventors of his time, but his ambition was limitless. He kept on building intricate machines and honing his mechancal skills. First he took them to science exhibitions, where he met and learned from the greatest minds of physics. But soon, knowledge was not enough: he wanted prestige too, so the idea of a stage show was born. Keeping his Germanian identity, he started performing his scientific magic as „The Mechaniker” – something the world has never seen before.
Bear witness to the impossible - it’s guaranteed that you will not believe your eyes!
Visually misleading people is his profession, so don’t be surprised if the great Optico double-crosses you by imitating your own trickery.
The Sanderberg dynasty’s youngest talent, Leo Sanderberg was the fourth generation of magicians in his family. His father, his grandfather, and his great- grandfather were also masters of optical illusion, so following his lineage and becoming a magician himself was an obvious and seemingly easy path for him. The pressure, however, was great on him, and no matter how hard he tried, he never felt good enough for his family’s name. Sadly, his demanding father all but strengthened that feeling in him. His anxiety led to him failing his first standalone performance – a disappointment after which he decided to go into exile to find peace with himself. For years he was wandering, living off performing cheap tricks on the streets. His journey eventually took him to the Far East, where one day he heard of the monastery of the silent monks high up in the mountains. He decided to join them in tranquility.
Five years have passed in silence, contemplation and practice, until he felt ready to return to his life. He was filled with desire to show his great talent to his family and the world. So he returned to Magoria, only to find out that his father passed away in his absence. As he was standing stricken at his father’s grave, he promised him that he will honor his memory by becoming the most famous optical illusionist of all time. Leo proceeded to create his own circus of optical illusion and started performing as The Great Optico
The Lightning Tamer will give you a shockingly new experience!
Even as a child, Eleanor has always been a little...eccentric. She never cared much about dolls, games - or the company of others. There was but one thing that could excite the moody and silent girl: thunderstorms. When others hid behind locked doors and windows, she watched the raging storm without the slightest fear, fascinated by its sheer power. Her habit of „storm hunting” lasted till her adulthood. After witnessing a bolt of lightning utterly destroying old Turner’s rickety mill one night, she became obsessed with harnessing the unspeakable power of lightning. She dedicated her life to the research of the emerging, unexplored concept of electricity as she was convinced that with it, she can bend the power of lightning to her will. The people of Magoria both feared and admired her obsession, and as she learned to both control and tame the power at her disposal, she realized that she can turn the admiration into fame. Electricity was nothing short of magic at the time, and in Magoria, good Magicians have an easy way to success. While many illusionists in the city were more skilled, Electra’s lightning-enhanced performances were unmatched spectacles that left the audience breathless.
Let his magic charm you!
Jay Mac Shonzo, or „The Gentleman” as you may know him today, has always been an inscrutable type: you could never know what he was really up to. Ever since he ran away from home as a wayward teenager, he used that ability very well to fool people - first as an extremely talented card-sharper. He earned fortunes in various forms of gambling, only to spend them right away on his impetuous lifestyle. He traveled around the country to avoid suspicion and lived the life of his dreams built on other people’s misery. His journey in the world of fraud ended the day when a tradesman lost all his wealth to him on a bet and committed suicide in his desperation, leaving his wife and two children behind. Jay’s perfect world was destroyed in a blink of an eye by his guilt. He realized that all his life he left nothing but misery and sorrow in his wake. In an attempt to redeem himself, he decided to change his ways by giving people joy and happiness. As a talented card-sharper it wasn't hard for him to master the tricks of close-up magic, and he used them every day to give people a good time, wherever he went. It wasn't long until a manager discovered him and offered a contract to perform in the theaters of Magoria as The Gentleman.
Let yourself bedazzled by the wild flower of the orient!
Fleeing the harsh law enforcement of her home, the mysterious woman known as the Red Lotus arrived from the Orient hiding in the trade cargo of a Magorian nobleman in a rather unusual way: by folding herself into an unbelievably small vase. Once in Magoria, she quickly realized that her incredible flexibility makes her capable of escape stunts the city has never seen before, and she quickly became one of the city's most respected escape artists.
Control the soul the mind will obey!
Few Magorians know the true tale of the Spiritmaster, the city’s most renowned mentalist. He is of royal blood; prince of a mysterious country in the Far South. His father was a good man, but a weak king, merely a puppet of the country’s corrupt Advisor Council. Things started to change, however, as the young prince gradually discovered his gift: the ability to influence the thoughts and actions of others. Through bolstering his father’s soul, from the background he resisted the Council’s tyranny for months, but eventually his machinations were discovered. He barely escaped an assassination attempt, and fled the country. After a long journey, he settled in Magoria, where he could put his mentalist skills to good use. As much as he likes to amaze and entertain, his true goal is to gain enough fortune, fame and influence to eventually return to his homeland and claim the throne that’s rightfully his.
The Team
Artwork
