Trendy
Trendy Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Overview
2 to 5 players, ages 8 and up. Playing time: about 20 minutes. 65 cards.
Players are rival fashion houses racing to spot — or start — the season's hottest trends. On your turn you play a card and see whether it is enough to make a design "break through." When it does, everyone who backed that trend cashes in.
Components
65 cards, split among five fashion designers (suits). Each designer has a breakthrough number printed on its cards — for example, Hugo Moss is worth 3, Kurt Feldlager is worth 4, and Urs Zerutti is worth 7. For each designer, the deck also includes:
- A Supermodel card, which counts as two cards of that designer.
- An Out card, which knocks that designer out of contention for the current trend.
Setup
Shuffle all 65 cards together and deal six cards to each player. Place the remaining cards face down in the middle of the table as the draw pile. Choose a first dealer at random; the player to the dealer's left goes first.
Playing the Game
Play passes clockwise. On your turn:
- Play one card from your hand face up on the table in front of you.
- Draw a card from the draw pile to bring your hand back up to six.
Keep the face-up cards sorted by designer — every card played by any player for a given designer forms one shared group, growing turn by turn as different players add to it.
Breakthroughs
A designer "breaks through" the moment the number of face-up cards played for it (counting cards from every player) reaches the number printed on that designer's cards. For instance, Hugo Moss needs three face-up cards to break through, while Urs Zerutti needs seven.
When a breakthrough happens:
- Every player who has a face-up card of that designer collects it and sets it aside, face down, in their own scoring pile.
- All other face-up cards on the table (of every other designer) are discarded and removed from the game.
- The player after the one who triggered the breakthrough plays next, starting a fresh trend from an empty table.
Supermodel Cards
Each designer's Supermodel card counts as two cards of that designer for the purpose of reaching a breakthrough. For example, two Kurt Feldlager cards plus the Kurt Feldlager Supermodel card are enough to trigger his breakthrough (his number is 4). A Supermodel card is still just one physical card, and is collected and scored like any other card if its designer breaks through.
Out Cards
If you play a designer's Out card, resolve it immediately: discard the Out card together with every face-up card of that designer currently on the table. Nobody scores those cards — they are simply removed from play. All other face-up groups (for the other designers) are unaffected, and play continues normally with the next player.
End of the Game
When a player draws the last card from the draw pile, play continues without further drawing — players simply play a card from their hand on their turn until the round ends.
The round ends as soon as the next breakthrough occurs; it scores normally as described above. Any cards remaining in players' hands at that point have no further effect and are not scored.
Scoring
Each player adds up the face value of every card in their scoring pile — cards won from breakthroughs over the course of the game. A Supermodel card scores the same as any other card of its designer (it is not worth double for scoring, even though it counted as two cards for triggering a breakthrough).
Playing Multiple Rounds
Trendy can be played over several rounds. After a round ends, pass the dealer role to the next player on the left and start a new round, keeping a running total of everyone's score.
Agree beforehand on either:
- Playing until one player's total score passes 100 points, or
- Playing a fixed number of rounds — typically one round per player in the game.
Whichever way you end the game, the player with the highest total score wins.