Triominos Tribalance


Tribalance box coverI received a free review copy from the Finnish distributor.

The game: Triominos Tribalance by Michael Sohre, published by Goliath in 2013. Originally published as Tri-Ba-Lance by Theta Games in 1995.

Elevator pitch: A balancing challenge: try to get the best pieces on the best locations on a wobbly board without unbalancing the board.

What’s in the box? There’s a triangular plastic board (hence the Triominos branding; this has nothing else to do with Triominos) and a stand for it. When set free, the board will be on balance on a hemisphere on its bottom.

Each player gets a set of triangular pieces of various sizes. The pieces are numbered 1–5 and the sizes match: the 5 pieces is five times bigger than the 1 piece.

The components are all plastic and not wood as in the original Theta version. They look nice, though, and do their job quite well, and I’m sure the new version is both cheaper and more readily available because of the plastic bits.

What do you do in the game? Players take turns placing their pieces on the board. A move is legal, if the board balances after the piece is played without touching the table. It’s fine if the board tips touch the table while the board finds the new balance, but once it’s balanced, the tips of the board should not touch the table. If the move fails, the player simply takes their piece back and loses their turn.

The pieces are played in marked recesses on the board. Each spot has a point value from 1 to 5, and the closer the recess is to the tips of the board, the higher the value. In the end, the pieces are scored by multiplying the piece value with the value of the recess it is placed in.

The game ends when somebody places their last piece. Then the other players may finish the game by placing rest of their pieces, but the rules become stricter: touching the table even temporary means the move fails and the player in question drops out of the game.

In the end, pieces on board are scored and pieces that weren’t played score negative. The player with the most points wins.

Lucky or skillful? No luck involved, it’s all skill. You need to be able to read the balance of the board and figure out how much load the board can take. It’s somewhat random how the board will wobble, so this is not quite as deterministic as some luckless abstracts are.

Abstract or thematic? Pure abstract, no sign of theme.

Solitaire or interactive? This is not a mean game, but of course you’re constantly reacting to the moves your opponent makes and trying to benefit from their mistakes.

Players: 2–3. In the three-player game it’s best if you sit after the weaker player.

Who can play? Age recommendation is 6+. While the rules are simple, balancing the board may be a bit difficult for children. An adult will probably always win, but children can play against each other without problems. Key requirement is knowing enough math to be able to count the scores in the end.

Length: 10–15 minutes. There aren’t that many pieces or options.

What’s to like: The game looks splendid; balancing the board is fun; the scoring is logical.

What’s not to like: The game feels always the same; it’s very much a game of avoiding mistakes.

My verdict: Triominos Tribalance is static. The game is always the same: you want to get the big pieces as near as the tips as possible. How well you can manage that is, I feel, less about your skill and more about the mistakes your opponent makes.

I can’t really see anyone being really enthusiastic about this game, at least for a long time. It just doesn’t have the legs for it. However, as a good-looking coffee table game this is great: the game looks really good, is quite unlike most other games and intrigues onlookers. If you play just occasionally, the game doesn’t get boring.

So, it’s nice to see this old game brought back to life as a mass-market edition, even though the Triominos branding seems quite pointless. I’m sure many people will enjoy this at least for a while.

On the scale of Enthusiastic, Suggest, Indifferent or Avoid, Triominos Tribalance gets Indifferent from me.

Triominos Tribalance

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