 So we were at earn NYC and our good friend as we started to tell whipped out this game and It had a really cute panda on the cover upper cocious panda. It is called Takenoko and I was straight off the bed I'm gonna say that this is an equivalent game in terms of the way you can use it as a person who owns games and Needs to present games for other people, you know to play as Zulareto Well, it's not just because it has animals No, but yes similar level of complexity similar level of how difficult it is to teach how quick it is to play How easy it is to socialize while playing? Also, you know this while the theme is animals and that but that's not has anything to do with their similarity But what is similar in the theme as the theme is accessible and friendly, right? Which does matter if you got a new player, right? Yes, I mean Something like, you know, St. Petersburg. It's like, okay, it's got this theme with old European dudes all over it That's not enticing to someone who's never played. Yeah, I was gonna say go to go to some of our friends Me like you want to play a game that simulates the plantation crop trade in Puerto Rico, right or Panda game if you take the exact same game and you put zombies on it Suddenly people want to play because they're shallow and well, you could just reskin Takenoko was a zombie game Yeah, why not pretty trivially you could reskin any game as any game trivially? What game can't I reskin can't reskin. All right, try to reskin Puerto Rico all right as tic-tac-toe Okay, so There's not enough things in tic-tac-toe for exactly toes not really a I chose the stupid example That's not it. That's tic-tac-toe isn't really a theme. It's more of a game, right? You need to pick a theme It's a theme it like tic-tac-toe Okay, so they would just be I'd need more than X's and O's though I'd have to like you know make like X's with an O around them and you know Like Puerto Rico the theme of the game is pretty deeply tied to the metaphor of the mechanics Like the it is a metaphor for the mechanics in a sense. Well, and yeah in some games That's more or less tied right and when it is really closely tied. It's pretty awesome, right? Dominion card the thing it does make sense considering what it is That's always but when it doesn't make sense It literally just confuses players and causes you to cock up rules Yeah, when it's like militia make the other guy discard two cards. It's like, oh, I get it The militia attacks the other guy's hand it makes sense, right? But when it's like Chapel trash, you know zero to four cards. It's like what does chapel have to do? Confessing my sins and getting rid of them lightning my load. I guess but that's stretching it you see that's not that much It's not it's it's more of a stretch. Why would the militia attack my hand instead of my town? You don't have a town, but you see how it's more of a stretch. Yeah, I do. I have all these problems Okay, he's the perfect one. That's not a state. Why didn't they attack that the moat? You know defends against attacks perfect metaphor, right? It's a moat. It's a defensive structure It defends against anything because it's a moat perfect But how does it defend against the witches they fly? It just does they don't like getting wet But they fly But if you have a moat you can splash them So it should be moat and splasher No, you're the splasher But then how am I gonna manage my estate? I have a shit ton of inside the castle. It's protected by the moat Do you know how many estates I have three? So takenoko is a pretty simple game the story of the game is actually pretty cute too You've got this precocious panda takenoko and you might think wait a minute Do these guys confuse China and Japan because pandas are from China and takenoko is a Japanese name That is what everyone who came up to the table to see what we were playing said when we told them what the game was called Yep, but no the story is the emperor of China in a show of good faith Gives the emperor of Japan as a gift a precocious panda But it was a trap gift the emperor of Japan doesn't know what to do So he gives it to the poor gardener and the gardener doesn't know what to do and the guard There's a little miniature of a panda and there's a miniature of the garden The gardener has his look on her face like what the fuck am I gonna do with this panda? I Don't know what the fuck I would do with a panda play with it and feed it bamboo apparently Where would I get enough bamboo for the panda? Apparently grows pretty easily Where am I gonna grow it in your luscious Japanese garden? Yeah, you know how much freaking bamboo you need to feed a panda Anyway, the metaphor of this game actually does not link too closely to the reality of the game mechanics the game is a pretty abstract game of sort of pattern matching territory control with card objectives kind of like Take it to ride But you don't really control territories so much as try to construct a territory that will match While other people are trying to match on similar things you can have momentary control by putting things on territories that augment them Yeah, it's like there's a shared space right so in ticket to ride It's like these are your trains These are someone else's trains and you're trying to get your trains to meet your goals in this game There's a shared space and everyone can modify that space in different ways And you're trying to get the shared space to match your goals and everyone has goals You might inadvertently help it match someone else's goal You might you know Someone else might do something that makes it not match your goal anymore and make it more difficult for you to make the space match your goal so you modify the shared space and you get cards and you need the space to Go in line with what your cards say and then you can play the cards to get points So I should back up But you can't really control the territory so much as you can control access to the territory at a given time There's actually for such a simple game to learn. There's a surprising number of mechanics when I think about trying to mention them All here basically the pen there's three ways to get victory points and you get them from these cards One deck of cards has a series of configurations of colored tiles that can that can basically Constitute the board. There's pink ones and yellow ones and green ones. I think it's only three colors Yeah, I think so too so if the if there's like two pinks in a row or three in a row or three in a circle and That's on the board at any time on your turn. You can reveal that. Yes. I have that pattern I get that many victory points. However many are on the card, right? But it's really easy to set these up because Just the tiles isn't to be on the board so you just choose the action for place tiles on the board and you really only need like a few tiles so you can If you choose that action enough, it's easy to score on these cards very, you know quickly But these cards aren't worth very many points. They're worth like two three four points based on their difficulty But if you get enough of them quickly enough If you could end the game because playing a number of cards is the game ending condition So if you can get seven of these before other people have a chance to score big-point cards You can win so it is it is a good strategy so here so he the way to win the game is there when a player has revealed Seven matching victory point cards that they have actually done they reveal them They've got them out the game will end every other player gets one final turn You can only reveal cards on your turn But if you have more than seven revealed That's okay So say Scott reveals the seventh one and immediately ends the game the game is I get a two-point bonus for being the guy Who'd to first reveal a and then we all get to take our turns say I already had six revealed And I have five more cards in my hand Which is the hand limit that actually have matched, but I had not revealed yet I didn't want to end the game on my turn. I can reveal all of them Yeah, you have a handling. I now have 11 the hand limit is five So you can have five cards in your hand have six on the table And then if you can somehow manage you get all five of those to be scored at once You just play them all at once so my I won this game like handily, but in the way I did it was pretty simple I looked at the board and figured out how to get as many of these cards as possible I didn't care how many points they were worth I just wanted to match match match and I did that and then I held them all in my hand I only revealed like one or two at a time. So I was on par with everyone else, but then one turn Every card in my hand was also matched and I could just end the game So I just dropped all my cards and no one was even close to me Yeah, I mean I tried to get more of those cards, but there's also this die factor, right? So at the beginning of your turn you roll a die sort of like settlers And that die determines the weather and the weather pretty strongly influences your turn if you roll like think the rain If you're all the wind you can do the same action Let's back up a little bit so that basically on your turn is simple You take you roll the die and get a bonus action and then you take any two actions You have a list of actions like plant place some tiles on the board or draw a card anyone you like or move the panda or move the farmer and Then the die determines what your third special action is and they range from your two actions can be the same action or get a third Action or those are the best ones right or get one of these Modifiers to tiles that I don't care about Exactly if you roll the one that gives you three actions and the one that lets you double up on actions or the rent the one that Let's you choose and then you can choose or the rain the rain was really good The rain is okay, but a lot of these other ones kind of suck depending You know, I'm sure somebody says oh no if you're rolled up. Here's what you do, right? But you know, it's like I'm already going in a particular direction You know, I don't know what my future roles are gonna be so if one person rolls Let's say theoretically the get three actions thing They're probably gonna win if someone you know because you can't take the same action twice and there's a big You also have to roll the one the thing is if you get three actions You can always use that third action to draw a card and still get two actions Unless your hand is full of things that you can't lay down But if you're using to act the other two actions to fulfill the cards you can lay them down I'll be you're also help and everyone else out and actually you but you know if you're helping anyone So you could be hurting other people. I don't know. Yeah, and you know what the way I won is I only did things that other players couldn't fuck with and that I could not help other players with I Got one because you know, there's three decks of the cards with these quests One of them is basically configuration of the board one of them is configuration of growth of bamboo on a particular tile which is much more difficult to pull off and then one of them is Some combination of bamboo that Takenoko has eaten No one else was going for that. So I just went for that like a hundred percent. I went for that a hundred percent So how come I had five cards with those points on them and you had what one? Because you I kept rolling the thing that gives me the stupid modifier tokens And you often rolled the wind thingy that let you choose the take card action twice I only rolled wind once in the game I was not able to draw enough of those cards even though I wanted to see if you have those Modifiers you really should be going for the high point what cards instead of the panda car Also went for the high point cards But the thing is you can't play the modifiers unless it's on an empty tile completely empty So I had these modifiers. I couldn't use for anything. We're completely useless So basically other people are getting bonuses on their turn by the luck of the die Random in that regard Anyway, it's not perfect It's let it's slightly less random than settlers But it's similar in its randomness to settlers in that you're playing a game where you make a bunch of decisions But every turn your roll a die that determines something it determines a third action, right? But the mechanics are there's a lot of like interesting things going on to make the game Not nearly as simple to play optimally as say Zula Redo for one There's the game of the odds of what different cards of people drawn or will they draw and will I give someone else victory Points and is someone else close to ending the game and all that stuff There's also this mechanic of if you move the panda He'll then eat bamboo from wherever he ends up if you move the farmer Then all the tiles of the same color as where he is that are adjacent to him The bamboo grows up in there's these cool pieces of stacking bamboo like on the board like these big stacks But both of them pieces in this game are really awesome in a straight line Which doesn't seem like it's that big of a deal But because of the way the board grows it actually is a huge deal because in order to go for a particular Strategy like I wanted one particular spot to grow bamboo and it was Incredibly obvious. This is what I wanted to happen because it was so dip I had to take multiple actions to set it up to grow over there meaning everyone knew I really wanted it to grow and just totally dick me on it Yeah, it's like I sort of tried to pay attention to that it was the first time But it's like I knew that someone wanted to put something somewhere and I was like Move the farmer to that spot that way he can't it can't move it in a straight line to the spot He wants to move it to and it won't be what he wants because he made it obvious to what he wants Yep, and that's what happened does or killing the other guy making him lose in action or lose points Taking him out of the game Whereas whenever I was my turn the panda and the farmer always happened to be in just the right spot for me To move them where I wanted to move them, but I couldn't get enough cards to draw So I only could score it, you know so many well see I don't know if it mattered But basically that spot I was going for was the only card I ever held that I didn't play and I knew I wasn't gonna get it So whenever I had an extra action that I could not do anything useful with what I did is go for making that grow To convince everyone at least I was hoping to think I really needed that and waste their actions stopping you from achieving Whatever it was they thought I was yeah That's another thing is I never did an action to screw anyone that was not also an action to benefit me But you could by bluffing, you know and depending on how many cards you've played already You know to convince people that like you're ahead or whatever Convince people to spend actions trying to hurt you and maybe they will hurt you or hurt your bluff or who knows what? Thus actually helping you by her by hurting them because they waste their act now that part is interesting because this game mechanically would be Incredibly simple like baby's first ticket to ride But there's just enough mechanics interleaved with each other to actually give a surprising amount of strategic depth despite the randomness and Four skilled players playing this game It'll actually turn into a twilight struggle anticipation and card counting game Like it really will become a game of bluffing and second guys cuz it's like rim I know in his hand. He has the hex cards, right? Three I have three of them and I can see on the board. I know what the possible hex cards are It's usually three in a cook or three in a row and or four in a blob So where I will make sure I will not draw any hex cards his hand as a limit on he can't play them unless he scores them I'm gonna choose the hex action I'm gonna put hexes down that I need of the right color to eat the panda or whatever But I'm gonna put them in spots that make it impossible for any of those hex cards to score Now what's room gonna do with this handful of cards? He can't score. He's pretty much done But maybe I was bluffing on that because I have three hex cards in my hand that are worthless And I have two high-scoring ones that you're ignoring now Maybe but I have four high-scoring ones and now I think I can score on four or mine and you'll only score Maybe but I just got really lucky in one anyway Possible now that I guess my point is just that the game is More complex than you might think on the first play in that it'll have plenty of staying power even for skilled players But it is not the main event. It's like Zulareto. It's fun to play But I would play it as the warm-up before I played Puerto Rico or Tiggers and Euphrates It's not the brain feel is not that strong It does not engage the brain but I think but what's great about it, right? Is that it has a lot more brain feel than you know your typical warm-up game like spotted But it only takes like 30 minutes game is fast this game is faster than Zulareto It's yeah, it's way faster than Zulareto or settlers and just as you know has is just as much going on But it's over like that which is totally awesome in terms of you know overall brain power It's not the highest on the charts, but in terms of brain Power to time it takes to play an entire game the ratio may be the highest I've ever played ever That's that's a tough one. I have to think on that we could do a whole show on what game has more brain feel per minute Right. It's like yeah, sure eclipse is awesome, but it takes forever, right? Yeah, it's plenty of other war games They also take forever what game had you know, and this is not as it doesn't have as much as Puerto Rico It has as much as settlers but has a pretty intense brain feel and is over pretty quickly But I don't think it's quite on the ratio of this game. No, I don't think so either I have to think on that. I feel like there's a show there something about What what we mean by brain feel because that's the term that me and Scott have been using lately talking about games You mean use it for the last five minutes. No, I've been using it for a few weeks now It had been hearing it off and on No one else uses that term talking about board games I feel like we might need to clarify what we mean by that Pretty sure someone else has maybe but I think I think we could do a show on something like that But anyway, Takenoko is Equivalent to ticket to ride or zula reto in terms of hey Here's a pretty easy to teach game that we can play while we socialize As opposed to the silent game of Puerto Rico, but it's not a completely Worthless game that you know that has no intellectual component whatsoever And simultaneously is not a light game like spotted which while spotted is very light mechanically It wears the brain out for one because of the type of test it is and two you can't actually socialize while playing spotted This game is also short so you can socialize And then bail quickly as opposed to be you know, even if it's a socializable game You won't be evicted from the party because the game's over quickly and you're back partying exactly So i'm probably gonna buy it Why wouldn't you? Well, if you bought it I would not why would you not? Because I don't want to well then I won't buy it. So now we can't play it. Okay This has been geek nights with rim and scott special thanks to dj pretzel for the opening music cat Lee for web design and brand okay for the logos be sure to visit our website at front row crew dot com for show notes Discussion news and more remember geek nights is not one but four different shows sci-tech mondays gaming tuesdays anime comic wednesdays And indiscriminate thursdays geek nights is distributed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license Geek nights is recorded live with no studio and no audience but unlike those other late shows It's actually recorded at night