by Loofish
We got lots done today, some gardening/raking, re-organized the garage, laundry, etc and it ended up being quite a bit later than I expected when we finally sat down to play a game. In fact, I set up the game and then the timer on the oven went off and it was time to eat dinner! But finally we sat down to play
Tokaido, including the expansion
Crossroads.
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Tokaido just featured on Tabletop so should be familiar to most people. It is a game about a leisurely walk where the idea is to have the most interesting time possible. The board is a path between various inns and ultimately Edo, the final destination. The player furthest back on the path moves to any available spot then does something there. There are 3 panoramas to paint, hot springs to soak in, a souvenir shop to buy stuff in, people to meet on the road, a temple to make donations to and a farm where you can earn a few coins to help pay for the trip. Most of these things score points. Everyone has to stop at each of the inns, where a meal can be purchased and here variety is the spice of points. Each player will have a particular traveler with a special ability that breaks the rules of the game. There are also bonus points at the end for most donations to the temple, first to complete each panorama and the 4 achievements: most stuff bought, most people met, most expensive dinners and most hot spring soaking.
Crossroads introduces a second choice for each spot on the road, as well as new travelers. At the temple you can buy an amulet, a one-use power, the encounters can instead get you calligraphy which score you bonus points at the end, you can gamble in the farm's gaming room or buy legendary objects in the shop. Or pay for a proper bath house for points or admire the cherry tree.
For the 2-player game, there is a dummy pawn who is moved by the player furthest along the track. He doesn't do anything except block except at the temple where he makes a contribution and the inn where he eats at random. Using this dummy effectively is a big part of the 2 player game.
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In our game, I was Kita the old woman and I could do both things at the encounter space (meet someone, buy a calligraphy card). My wife was Sasayakko the geisha, who could get the cheapest souvenir she bought for free. She went hard at those, getting a legendary object which scored her a bonus point for each souvenir she got all game, and tried to stop there all game. I went to the encounter first, picking up Perfection, which scored me a bonus point for each achievement and calligraphy card. So I went hard after completing as many of those as I could, taking on 2 panoramas, the hot springs and the eating, plus the encounters of course. I had also thrown 2 coins to the temple as a donation early on, which paid off nicely as my wife preferred to get the amulets, though she did make good use of them to take extra turns or use both powers of the space. She had money trouble after spending a lot at the shop and 'someone else' stood on the temple, so she couldn't afford anything more than a 1 coin meal, which gave me a lead in the gourmet stakes. However, I had made the decision to avoid spending money on the stuff and concentrate on everything else, using the dummy player to fight for shop spaces with her. She still managed to buy quite a lot, though she was very unlucky in never finding any of the clothing items - you get the most points if you complete the set of 'one from each category' - so while she scored a lot, it could have been worse for me. Indeed, she could not get a final meal, so I was safe on the gourmet, and though she had a good lead up to that point, my end game scoring was very strong - 2 of the panoramas, 10 points from the temple, 3 of the 'most' achievements (one shared) and the bonus from the calligraphy meant I jumped from 15 points behind to a good few in front. Which I will note is my first win at this game.
This was a new-to-us game this year and has been a big hit, ever since my wife saw it in the game store and said "Is this good, because it is very pretty?" But there is a bit more to it than looks and the subtleties of the maneuvering as you move along the path keep us coming back to it. And actually we had been playing the Crossroads cards wrong up until now, as we had just been drawing them at random, but you get to pick from the subset of the ones on the game (some are removed for a less than full table). So that added more strategy on top. It has had 8 plays this year and I expect to see that continue in the next year.
Today's photos from Funforge (the box covers) and Teenwolfdude (the game photo)
