Trickadee is a trick-taking game about spotting the cool birds that visit your backyard feeder. Create flocks each round by collecting birds from every trick— win or lose. Use unique actions to cleverly build your flocks and win the title of best birder on the block. The player with the most points after three rounds wins the game.

Trickadee is not a standard trick-taking game. The strategy is not just about the cards in your hand but how you draft birds and use abilities.

Trickadee features asymmetric suits and a unique follow system. You’re not necessarily following the lead card, but instead you’re following any suit that has already been played. The game adds a new dimension to trick-taking games and flips the normal strategies on their head.

The goal of Trickadee is to score the most points by building flocks. The player with the most points after 3 rounds is the winner. In each round, players will play a series of tricks, determine player order, add birds to flocks, and use special abilities.

Each player will have a hand of bird cards. Bird cards come in 5 different suits and have numbers ranging from 1-15. There are 11 different species featured in Trickadee— all from the backyards of my home city of Seattle, Washington.

Unlike a typical trick-taker, the suits in Trickadee aren’t equal. There’s a cascading pattern of ranks going from Purple on the low end (ranks 1 through 11) to Red on the high end (ranks 5 through 15).

This structure creates an implicit hierarchy between suits which is used for ranking players at the end of each trick.

In clockwise order, all players will select one card from their hand and place it in front of them, face-up. This is the “Trick”. The starting player may select any Bird Card from their hand to play. Every other player must play a card that matches any suit already played, if possible. If a player doesn’t have a card in any matching suit, they may play any card.

The player that played the best card doesn’t win the whole trick! Instead, cards are ordered based on Lifer Species (trump), Most Common Suit, and card rank.

Now that we’ve ordered the players in the trick, each player, in this order, can select a bird to add to any of their flocks. You score points by building a variety of flocks. You can mix flock types together to score big points!

Coming in first place in the Trick isn’t necessarily the best strategic move. Sure, you get to pick a bird to add to a flock first, but you miss out on Sunflower Seed Tokens. These can be spent on special abilities that can really boost your points.

Trickadee is a unique spin on the trick-taking genre that newcomers will enjoy but is also exciting for trick-taking aficionados that are looking for a new challenge. Bonus points for the birders in your life!