In Trash Pandas, players are raucous raccoons, tipping over trash cans for food (and shiny objects). Players push their luck to acquire more cards, but must stash them in order for them to count as points at the end of the game. When the deck runs out, the game ends and players compare their stashes to see who has the majority for each card type and score points accordingly. The player with the most points wins!
BoardGameGeek Rating: 7.2
MSRP: $12.00
Players: 2–4
Ages: 10+
Playtime: 15–20 Min
Publishers: RedRookGames and GameWrightGames
Designers: Michael Eskue, Lisa Eskue
Year: 2017
Concept
Trash pandas is fun quick portable game where you press your luck rolling a die to collect the token’s that match. But be careful, if you roll a token you already have your turn is over. Cash in your tokens for cards or stash cards for points at the end of game.
Quality
Super nice linen cards with great print quality. The stickers for the tokens keep wanting to peel after being slid across the table a few times.
Artwork
Fun Cartoony
Difficulty
It’s not, but it is a unique concept so people might not get it at first and the rules are worded a little awkwardly, but once you start playing it all makes since. Just pay attention to how scoring works.
Replayability
— Moderate High
Our Reviews
My rating: 8
by Aaron KlaserTo be honest, I expected this game to be little kiddish and kind of boring, But I was absolutely wrong. Trash Pandas is as easy fun quick game. I like nerve racking press your luck die rolling. It helps keep your turns emotional. And, it doesn’t end when you pass dice. The fact that players can steal cards, or you might get and opportunity to stash cards during other players turns, it really keeps players engages throughout the whole game.
I would change two things.
First, the rules book could be reworded and laid out cleaner, it just feels like blobs of text to me, but to be fair I’m UX Designer by day so I’m way more critical then most people. The wording was a little confusing and layout didn’t help.
Second, the 2 player scoring should just be a total of all the cards gold values vs. the first/second place scoring which works better with 3+ players. We played our first game wrong because we missed understood the scoring rules, and I think it was way more fun.
All and all, this is a fantastic game and this will be our new dinner game to play while waiting for our food.
My rating: 8
by Beth KlaserWhen Trash Pandas arrived I was pumped. I ripped it out of the box and looked over the various components. I’m very impressed with the quality of the cards. The linen cards hold up quiet fantastically to shuffling, reduce surface contact between cards, and handle being slid across tables. I enjoy the art work —can you spot the meeple?
Each game comes with two sticker sheets, a rule book, six tokens, a token die, and cards. The rule book did not mention placement of the stickers. We just assumed they went front and back. It turns out, one sheet is extra. So, you can either place both sets on the tokens front and back, or simply just place one set of stickers. The stickers seemed to want to peel up a little but — a little glue will solve that problem. The rule book was a little confusing in some places. It was easy to overlook some rules — such as the scoring.
Trash Pandas is a lot of fun. Aaron and I played several times in a row, without hesitation. Once you get the hang of it, it plays rather quickly — in under 20 minutes, when the Olympics isn’t on. It doesn’t take up a lot of real estate on the table, making it a great candidate to be our go-to game for dinners out and about.
A copy of Trash Pandas was provided to us free for review by the developer.
But what does it all mean? Find out how we review the games we play!
