Gameplay: The game has dice rolling, set collection, push-your-luck, action cards, and take-that elements. On your turn, you roll the die. Then you collect a matching token on the die face. There are 6 tokens. You can choose to roll again or stop. You can roll and potentially collect up to 6 tokens, but if you roll and it’s a side that matches a token you already have, you bust! If you don’t bust, you spend the tokens you collected which give you different actions. When you finish taking actions then you pass the dice to the next player. The goal is to collect/stash cards which count for points. If you don't stash the card, you can play a card from your hand. Each card type has a unique action. Good for kids? Good for adults? Decision making occurs when you decide to stop rolling, when to use action cards versus stash them, and observing other players actions. I can imagine kids could play this without an adult after they are comfortable with the rules and cards. It would help if they can read the cards. For adults, this could be a light game. I played this with my husband. I'm not so keen on playing it again - see below. Similar games: This game reminds me of the card game Arboretum where you have to decide to keep or use a card. This game is also easy to play, but harder because you have to think and plan more. Cover Your Kingdom also comes to mind because it is also very colorful, quirky, has set collection, and cards with actions - though you don't have to choose between stashing and playing cards. I prefer Cover Your Kingdom and Arboretum over Trash Pandas, though Cover Your Kingdom is better suited for kids. PROS: Game is easy to play. I liked the art and theme so for $5 it was a good deal. The art is by Kwanchai Moriya and is very colorful and cute. The cards are good quality and nice to shuffle. The tokens are wooden and good quality. All the graphics and words are easy to see. The icons are clear and pleasing to look at. The CONS: In the game is that there are some rules that sort of complicate the game. For example, you cannot use a card gained that turn after you started cashing in your tokens/you stopped rolling. But you can if you have not cashed in a token yet. So what we did, is while in the Rolling Phase (there are no names to the phases but that would have been helpful) cards gained that turn - i.e. by using cards - are added to a second hand. That way, in the Action Phase (after the player has decided to stop rolling) the player can only use cards from the original hand. Often players will need to consult both hands though so they know what cards they have and it's just a mess. Note: I am making a very big assumption that you can play cards while still rolling dice. The rules describe cards but never say when you can use them. Um, what? Also there is a recycle token that lets you exchange itself for a token not acquired that turn. I get it, but it would have been helpful to include an example or guidance since I think there is possibility for confusion. There is no guidance in the rulebook, but what we did is after a person has decided to stop rolling and want to start spending their tokens, they spend the token to a separate "spent" pile. The rules say to return to the center. If you had returned the tokens to the center you could forget which token you already acquired that turn and be confused when trying to use a Recycle token. We could have been interpreting the rules completely wrong. Which would be very sad on our part with our shared number of post graduate degrees and high school GPAs and honors classes, etc. etc. etc. But what can I say, we're sleep-deprived adults and that puts us in with the majority of Americans. But seriously, this is a game for families with kids. It shouldn't be hard or complex to play. A family should be able to whip this sucker out and start playing in 30 seconds. I would prefer a chaotic, broken game that was streamlined and simple. I would suggest (which is 100% untested) that families simplify the game to: 1. Rolling phase (gain tokens or bust + play cards) 2. Action Phase (spend tokens + play cards) Players can play cards in either phase, but cannot play cards gained that turn. This removes the fun of using cards during the rolling phase, but oh well. Or you can play Cover Your Kingdom instead! I would rate Cover Your Kingdom 8/10 and Trash Pandas 6/10, with 10 being 100% satisfaction.
