We are in the 1400s: a legend is spreading about the Trident of Poseidon, an ancient artifact that lies in a sunken temple, waiting for someone to retrieve it, thus controlling all the seas of the world. To do this, three special items are needed: a map leading to the temple, a compass that navigates the intruders in the mazelike halls of the temple, and the forsaken key that opens the chamber of the Trident.

In Trident, two players attempt to get the three items by playing mercenary cards – these include pirates, Brittish soldiers, Aztecs and the undead. These mercenary cards are drafted from a 15-card deck – 6 for each player, 3 left in the middle facedown -, then 4 of them are played by each player. Whenever a card is played, the player must choose from the 2+1 abilities of the mercenary to use. Each of the items can be retrieved in a different way: the compass must be stolen from each other; the key requires them to eliminate an enemy mercenary; while the map goes to the player with the most gold at the end of each round.

If a player owns all three items at the end of a round, that player immediately wins. If this does not happen by end of the fourth (or sixth in case of a long game) round, the player with the most items wins.

The game set consists of 22 mercenary cards, 3 item markers (from which Poseidon’s Trident can be assembled), a first player marker and some ‘gold’ tokens.

Strengths

• short (only 10-20 minutes of playtime)
• variable deck for replayability
• its deck has a potential for future expansions
• even the longer games are exciting til the last moment, as the tide of the game can turn anytime

Designer’s note

In 2020, a competition was hosted to adapt Hungarian the young adult radio play Időfutár (Timerunner) as a card game, so I applied. My submission was awarded with a special award – the main prize was won by my colleague István Szauer, so his version was published. Based on this success, I decided to keep the base mechanisms of my version of Időfutár and place it in another environment: so the adventures of the seventh grade students from Budapest was replaced by a classic pirate tale, where the main treasure is the Trident of Poseidon instead of a mysterious compass. This game is the result.