Twisted Trumpets

The sound of a trumpet heralding royalty has echoed throughout the centuries. However, someone had to make those trumpets.

In Twisted Trumpets, two to four players ages 8 and up compete to create the most twisted and decorated trumpet to earn the title of Royal Bugler of Fanfaria. Twisted Trumpets is a tile-laying game that plays in 30 minutes, from designer Matthew Rodela of Muse & Mettle Games and published by Play To Z Games.

Setup

Separate the tiles by type: Starting, Basic, and Premium, and remove some tiles based on player count. Shuffle the Basic and Premium tiles separately and form draw piles. Then place four Premium tiles face-up into the market on the main board. Then randomly select three Royal Decree cards to place on the board and return the rest to the box.

Shuffle the Queen’s Plan objective cards. Deal one face-down to each player and set the rest aside as a face-down deck.

Each player takes their own player board with three matching Player discs, five matching Starter tiles, and three King’s Favor tokens.

The first player (who most recently played a musical instrument) takes the First Player token.

Gameplay

Players take two actions on their turn, choosing from these four actions:

• Draw a Basic tile – and add it to hand
• Buy a Premium tile, by discarding Basic tiles from hand. Add it to hand.
• Place a tile from hand
• Pass

When a player places their first tile, it must connect to the trumpeter on their board. After that, placed tiles must connect to an open pipe on the trumpet.

After a player finishes their second action, they should consult the public King’s Decrees to see if they’ve fulfilled any of the objectives. If they have, they will take one of their colored discs and place it on the Decree in the furthest left open space.

There are five spots on each player’s board with a closed scroll. These spaces correspond to the King’s Favor tokens that each player took during setup. When a player places a tile on a scroll space, they immediately use one of the tokens to perform a powerful bonus action.

Each King’s Favor token has a specific benefit. Flip over the token after using the first time.

• Lightning bolt – Extra action for each bolt
• Queen’s Plans – Draw more Queen’s Plan cards
• Premium Tile discount – Purchase a Premium tile at the displayed discount

Anatomy Of A Tile

In Twisted Trumpets, players will come across a wide variety of tiles representing pieces of their trumpets. There are simple straight pipes, curves, and bells (the end piece of the trumpet). There are also special split pieces and even pipes that have a bell in the middle of them. Players will also encounter special twisted pieces that are worth extra points at the end.

Sometimes pipes have extras like colored flags, birds, or notes. These all help with end-game scoring.

Endgame and Scoring

Players take turns building out their twisted trumpet creations until one player has only three open spaces left on their board. At that point, finish the current round and play one additional round. Then it’s time to score.

There are plenty of ways for players to gain points in Twisted Trumpets.

• Length of the trumpet pipe – Starting at each bell, players will count back the number of tiles to the starting spot. If a player created multiple paths between the starting spot and a single bell, they have to use the shorter path. Corkscrew “twist” tiles are worth an extra point.
• Flags – Players will get a bonus for how many flags of each color they have, increasing in value. Players do this for all four colors, representing the houses of the royal court.
• Birds and notes – When players place a bird, they want to surround it with as many musical notes as possible. For each bird a player places, they will count the number of music notes on all adjacent tiles, including diagonally. If a tile with notes is in contact with multiple bird tiles, it will count for all birds.
• Royal Decrees – Players gain points based on the value of any completed objectives on the public King’s Decrees.
• Queen’s Plans – If players completed any of their hidden objectives, gain the corresponding number of points.
• Unfinished pipes – If a player has failed to close any pipes with bells, they will lose three points for each unfinished section.

Impressions

Twisted Trumpets is a cute, whimsical tile-laying game. At its core, it’s quite simple: gain tiles, place tiles. It truly works for 8-year-olds and up. The only reading required is on the Queen’s Plan cards and on the King’s Decree cards. Otherwise, everything else is strictly visual.

You can play this game as simply as you want, just focusing on connecting lengths of trumpet pipes in whatever fashion you want. Most younger players will enjoy that, seeing which way their twisted trumpet goes. They will also enjoy putting tiles with birds out, because who wouldn’t enjoy having birds enjoy their music?

But there is some strategic depth for older players. The Queen’s Plans can help drive choices when laying out tiles, and give needed direction on early turns.

There are plenty of ways to gain points in Twisted Trumpets, so even the youngest players will feel like they’ve accomplished something.

Make no mistake, this is definitely a game geared toward younger players with just enough under the surface to give parents and older siblings something to focus on.

In all, Twisted Trumpets is a cute game for families with younger players. It doesn’t overstay its welcome and is easy enough for everyone to play along. However, if your family skews toward more strategic games, you will likely want to pass.

Get Twisted Trumpets directly from Play to Z Games, on Amazon, or at your friendly local game store.

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The Family Gamers received a copy of Twisted Trumpets from Play to Z Games for this review.

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