Review: TrollFest

Your garage band is ready to come out from under the bridge and play the fabled Trollfest concert. Take your band on tour through the fantasy realm and recruit new members along the way to enhance your band. Trollfest is designed by Bruno Faidutti, Camille Mathieu and brought to us by Trick or Treat Studios.

TrollFest will have you moving around the map playing shows and dropping off tour tokens showing that you played a concert there. Along the way you will encounter towns that will offer more action cards or the ability to recruit new band members. Also along the way you may encounter the groundhog... more on that later.

Before you leave on your tour, you will need to recruit a band and get some action cards to help you along the way. To get the first set of cards the players will go through a closed draft where they get 4 action cards and 4 band member cards. Each player will choose a card from the 8 and then pass the rest to the player on the left. Every band must always have a drummer, bassist, guitarist and a singer.

Now that you have your band you will choose a starting city and take your first turn. On a players turn they will move to a city connected to the city they are currently in. Place a tour marker there if the city hasn't reached its limit or if you already have one in this city. If you passed through a dragon pass you may pick up the token (you can only hold one of each color). If your the first person to put your token in this city then score 2 points.

As you find more advanced musicians on your tour you can add them to the band or replace existing members

There are 2 types a special cities that allow you to draw action cards or recruit new members into your band. As you find more advanced musicians on your tour you can add them to the band or replace existing members. In the end game scoring there are bonus points for having an all female or male band, a band with only the same species, and a classic rock band. While building your band in your face up tableau you will need to pay attention to what bands have the highest totals in the three attributes energy, charisma and skill. There is end game scoring for highest and second highest in each category. Finally the player with the most different colored dragon tokens will win the light show points (second place too).

It doesn't matter to this groundhog if they see their shadow they came to see rock and roll

Along your tour you will come across the groundhog. It doesn't matter to this groundhog if they see their shadow they came to see rock and roll and give the player 5 points who stops in that city. That player will then keep the groundhog until their next turn and the pull a card to put it back out on the board. Poor thing has to rest its ears after all that rock.

TrollFest is a fun game that really gets into the rock and roll troll vibe. Which i suppose is a thing now if it wasn't before. TrollFest was a fairly simple game that did not take a lot to learn. I suggest putting this out on game night and maybe pair it with another music themed game for a full night of rock. I had a lot of fun playing it at Gen Con this year and I have seen it in FLGS since then. You can also buy it direct from Trick or Treat Studios along with all your other Halloween gear!

Players: 3-6

Year Published: 2022

Recommended Ages: 14+

Time to Play: 45 minutes