Summary

The Tribbles Customizable Card Game is a casual card game by Decipher, based around fuzzy creatures called tribbles from Star Trek. Breed tribbles (from 1 to 100,000) and use their abilities to breed faster or thwart your opponents' breeding. Breed the most tribbles to win!

This game is a direct spinoff of the First Edition (1E) of the Star Trek Customizable Card Game. Cards for this game were only available in one set of 1E (The Trouble With Tribbles), and additional game cards could only be found in 1E booster packs (alongside 1E game cards). That puts this game in a rather strange position: while technically a customizable card game, no one would exclusively collect and play this game. Rather, you would play 1E, incidentally acquire tribble cards, and have rounds of Tribbles between games of 1E.

In that sense, and because the starter set can be used as an entirely self-contained product, Tribbles might be better considered a board game. But I love the game and we're going to talk about it, dammit.

(Yes, the Continuing Committee continues to release Tribbles cards, and has introduced Troubles into the game as well. No, we're not considering anything other than the physical release as part of The Trouble With Tribbles 1E set here.)

Card Types

The "starter" product for this game comes with reference lists for each of the four decks and reference cards, but we are not counting those as a card type, as they are not involved in the game at all. Therefore, the game only has one card type! (We're ignoring Troubles, which were added into the game later by the Continuing Committee.)

• Tribble - One (or more) fuzzy tribbles! Comes in denominations of 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10,000, and 100,000. Each also has a special ability (one of Reverse, Skip, Go, Discard, Poison, Rescue, Clone, or Bonus).

Sets and Decks

This game really only has one set. However, it was available in two ways: As a 4-player "starter" box, and as individual tribble cards that could be found in Trouble With Tribbles booster packs for Star Trek CCG's 1E (or the Klingon starter deck for 1E).

But the cards between the two are actually different: All cards in the starter box have fun facts about tribbles (and Star Trek episodes featuring tribbles) in place of a gameplay effect box and they also each have a colored square indicating which of the 4 starter decks they belong to. Cards found in booster packs (and the 1E deck, which includes 6 tribble cards as a side deck) have gameplay effects in the box, and the colored square is instead the set indicator icon for 1E cards. (The image above compares cards in the starter box versus ones from 1E.)

Deck Composition and Contents

"Starter" Deck

Okay, yes. This product is much closer to a board game than a TCG starter deck, and you're completely fine if you never purchase any Trouble With Tribbles booster packs (or a Klingon starter deck), never customize any of the decks, and just play the game for fun using these starter decks.

The box includes four separate decks that are roughly themed around specific abilities: Go, Discard, Poison, and Rescue. Each deck contains a different number of cards (27, 30, 29, and 26, respectively). No deck includes a 100,000 tribbles card (nor any tribbles with the Bonus ability), and (as noted above) each card in each deck has a colored square indicating the deck it belongs to (for easy separation if needed) as well as a reference card identifying all cards in that deck.

The box also includes 4 reference cards (for the tribble abilities), a scorepad, a Decipher-branded pencil, and a sheet of rules. (The game is simple enough that a full rulebook would be overkill.)

Deck Rarity Analysis

Yeah this is basically a board game. Rarity isn't a thing here.

Okay, fine. The only potential weirdness might be if you could buy a starter box for Tribbles and ruin pulling tribble cards from 1E Trouble With Tribble booster packs. But since none of the cards in this starter box have gameplay text on them (and therefore aren't usable in 1E), that isn't a concern.

In the other direction, the 1000 tribble cards are actually marked as R*, meaning they'll come in a pack with two rares (replacing one of the uncommons) meaning they don't even spoil the pack's rare if you don't care about the Tribbles game nor running a tribble side deck for 1E, so that's great too. (10,000 and 100,000 tribble cards are R+, which are rarer than rares, so pulling them is extra satisfying. Not great if you want them for Tribbles, but they're pretty strong effect cards in 1E, so that feels appropriate.)

But, again, no one is buying Trouble With Tribbles 1E booster packs for the sake of the Tribbles CCG. So none of this matters anyway.

Alan's Thoughts On The Game

I love this game. It's a great filler (along the lines of Uno, but more strategic), the ludicrous range of scores you can run in a round thanks to the tribble scales is hilarious, and it's just super cute. The fact that you can collect other tribble cards from 1E boosters and use them in this game (chase those elusive 100,000 tribble cards and Bonus effects!) is just such a nice extra for people who are playing 1E anyway.

(I do want to note that this game plays far better with 4 people than with 2. There's too much luck involved in having a 1 tribble card with only two players, and you'll find yourself resetting to 1 more often than not, meaning you'll never really reach the 10,000 or 100,000 tribble cards.)

I know the Continuing Committee has continued releasing cards for this game, including greatly increasing the number of abilities (they seem to be up to 52 now!) and adding Troubles (an existing card type in 1E, but which had no effect on the Tribbles card game) into the game, but that just feels like an attempt to make the game into an actual TCG by adding complexity and mechanics to build decks around.

But that's not necessary. It's Tribbles. It's cute, and fun, and plays in like 5 minutes. And that's all I want out of it.

Resources

• The Continuing Committee (maintains and continues to release cards for the game)