Tucano - First Play!

9th April 2023

Sunday night on Board Game Arena means gaming goodness.

Ruffle your feathers, flap you wings and squawk for this err... bird and fruit themed set collecting card game.

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Caveat: We've only played this game digitally.

What's in a game?
Cards: Toucan consists of a deck of 70 cards, broken down into 3 types.

• Fruit cards: These form the bulk of the game's cards.
  They each depict 1 of a selection of different fruits with a colourful illustration.
  Furthermore each type of fruit displays its own set-collecting rules as shown on each card.

2 fruit cards with their individual scoring rules. You will note that the coconut card loses points the more are collected and when more than 4 coconut cards are collected the scoring goes into negatives.

• Joker: These cards depict a rainbow and are considered wild cards.
  At the game end, a joker can be added to any set of fruit collection and will count as an extra card of that collection.

Taste the (fruity) rainbow?

• Toucan cards: Each of these cards depicts the game's titular bird.
  There are 3 types of these cards which allow the player to steal (Or give.) a card from an opponent or 'secure' their cards.

Squawwwk!

Tucano features colourful and bright cartoony illustrations throughout.
It's a nice art style that works well with cheerfully anthropomorphic fruit and stylised birds that suits the game's lightweight nature.

The game's only iconography are the 3 symbols found on the toucan cards and icons used for set collecting scoring on fruit cards.
All of these are easily and quickly explained and understood.

A sample of cards.

How's it play?
Setup

• Cards: Separate all the toucan cards from the deck and put them aside.
  • Shuffle all the remaining cards and deal them into 2 face-down decks.
  • Now take the toucan cards and shuffle them into one of the 2 decks, ensuring it all remains face-down.
  • Finally, take the other deck and place it on top of the deck with the toucan cards.
    ​Thus all the toucan cards will be in the lower half of the deck.
• Columns: Deal 3 cards face-up into the central area to form the beginnings of 3 columns. Then deal another card face-up into the middle column.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play.
In Tucano, players will drafting cards from a column in the central area and add to their personal area with the aim of collecting sets which will in turn score them maximum victory points (VPs).

Tucano uses a traditional turn order with the active player resolving their turn before play moves on to the player on their left.
The active player will perform the following.

• Draft: The active player picks any 1 of the 3 available columns and adds all the cards in that column to their personal area.
  It's a good idea to sort cards by type at this point.
  Toucan cards: If one of the cards that were drafted is a toucan card, its action must be immediately resolved.
  Joker: If one of the drafted cards is a joker, it does not need to be assigned to a set until the game end.
• Refresh: Once the active player has finished their turn, a card each is added face-up to the 3 columns - including the empty one.
  Next player: Play then progresses to the player to the left of the current active player who then becomes the new active player.

Endgame
Play continues until the deck has been depleted and there's only 1 column of cards left in the central area.

At this point, any players with a joker card may choose which set to add it to.
Sets are then scored.

​Most sets will score according to how many cards a player has collected of that set.
However, some sets score based on how many cards a player has collected in relation to other players. In this case whoever has the most cards will score the larger amount and all other players with cards in that set will score the lesser amount.
It is possible in some circumstances for sets to lose players VPs!

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

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Overall
I guess toucans collecting fruit is a good a theme for a set collecting game as any! 

When playing, players are broadly speaking, faced with 3 choices during their turn which on the surface is not a lot.
However, Tucano does a clever thing is by having some sets earning increasing VPs, some sets intermittently scoring VPs and some losing them - and then having columns that get longer.
Invariably, when a column contains a card that loses VPs; players will initially ignore that column, this means that over the rounds more cards will be added to that column, making it more appealing to draft.
As a result; sometimes players will have no-brainers on what to draft but sometimes they will have to choose between columns which will add negative cards to their collections. They'll be looking to minimise the negatives and hoping to get rid of them at some later point.
Which brings me to the toucan cards, these wisely appear in the latter part of the game - where they'll have the most impact. The right use of toucan cards when they appear can be a real game changer (And also frustrating!), particularly when giving cards to other players: In the right circumstances a player can remove a negative from one of their collections and add it to an opponent's!

There's not more to add. Tucano is a pared down, fairly simple set collecting game and I'm pretty certain I'm not the target audience here.
Even as a filler or short game, I'm unsure it offers enough depth for seasoned players. Personally I found it a fairly shallow experience and the mechanics of the toucan cards a little frustrating.

Conversely though, just from the appealing, colourful art, it apparent Tucano is squarely aimed at younger players.
Its simplicity makes for a accessible game and a great way to introduce set collecting mechanics to budding future gamers and for family gaming.