IELLO Kanagawa Game

The first thing that you notice about this game is that the artwork is exceptionally well done. All of the art work on the cards blend together nicely, and the overall look and feel of the game is noticeably better than most board games. My only aesthetic complaint is with the "paint brushes", which due to being designed to mimic paint brushes from Japan look more like "corndogs with crooked sticks" to my heathenistic America upbringing. But, that is certainly a minor quibble given the overall feeling achieved with the wonderfully implemented Japanese Artist theme, with my favorite part being the play mat made out of bamboo, which rolls up nicely when placed into the box for storage.Turns consist of players choosing cards for their use from a central pool. You can end up with one, two or three cards on each turn. Once selected the cards are then placed into your studio (advancing your possible painting skills) or into your final artwork (where most of your points are scored). The size of your artwork, the length of consecutive sequences and the appearance of elements within your painting determine the bulk of your score at the end of the game. The color variety and amount of skill elements within your studio then round out the remainder of the scoring.The overall competitive play seems to be very well balanced, with a great many possible choices to make for each player on each turn, making the loss of initiative to be less of an issue than I've found when playing other games. While there is certainly an optimal turn that can be made given the cards available for selection, you can usually adjust your long term plans on the fly if someone else took the cards that you wanted. Given that there are many different end game rewards to earn along the way,and thus many ways to earn victory points, the frequency of chances to gain the same "similar" cards long the way means that long term goals are not blocked by a single turn. Of course, you still need to keep an eye on how far along opponents are, to prevent the game from ending before you finish whatever goals you were targeting.Overall, this is one of those games that you grasp after a full play through, but which seemed much more daunting and confusing when beginning to play it or even halfway through that first game. It took about 45 minutes to an hour to play the first game, which means that I expect it to take around thirty minutes with people comfortable with the game. Most notably, there were portions of the game, particularly the card placements into your studio and artwork that can be done mostly in parallel without waiting for the other players to perform there choices. This should significantly reduce the length of the game during future game plays.In my opinion, this is one of the more beautiful, interesting and well designed games that I have played. It is certainly well worth keeping an eye on for those that want an excellent two to four player game, with medium/light complexity. I personally equate it to 7 Wonders, in that there are so many symbols to learn that it is very confusing and daunting at first, but after you have all of the symbols memorized, it becomes a much lighter and easier to play game.

Got it today and already played it six times! If you got Tokaido and really wanted to like it but found it too slow, this one might be for you. The mechanics are quite different, but a strong similarity to me is that in both games you are offered multiple goals you could easily pursue, but you can only pursue a few of them well -- and other players' choices will keep you guessing.+ Pros: Relaxed but interesting to play. Good choices each turn, but not enough for analysis paralysis, and a good dose of random luck. This is a nice game to play several times in one evening and give everyone a chance to win, as opposed to investing 2 hours in a bigger game. As two players we're done in 30 minutes max.- Cons: The rules are poorly sequenced; things that belong together, aren't, so you have to read it all the way through before you understand how things relate. However, after that, it's an easy game to teach, or learn from someone who's played.

We bought this game after our friends came to visit. I'm not going to lie. They described it as a "Painting Game" and I was like "Huh? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot"??However, they were visiting with us for 2 days and we probably played this game a dozen times! Once you understand the rules and what the objective of it is then it is easy to follow.Every piece of this game feels like an aspect of art and ties into the theme beautifully.

After playing Takenoko, Tokaido, and games like them, I was a little suspicious of this. I also didn't enjoy Iello's "King of Tokyo," which puts an elimination mechanic in a relatively long game - meaning 2-3 players are sitting around doing nothing or looking for something else to play while the game finishes. This game, however, is different.Kanagawa boils down to a limited number of resources, and the question - "Do I take some resources for myself before someone else claims them, or do I wait for those resources to become more valuable before I take one?" Then, once you have those resources, how do you allocate them? Do you add to your creation (the point of the game, earns you victory points), or do you add to your power so that creation is easier later? The kinds of decisions you make have a very Dominion kind of feel, though Kanagawa isn't even in the same genre of tabletop games.Kanagawa is a fun little competitive game with gorgeous artwork and some social strategy required. Everyone's a real competitor until you total up the points at the end. Our last game was pretty close in terms of points and even ended with a tie, so it felt like every decision counted and no one really knew who was going to win until the end.But dear god. Who wrote the rulebook explaining how to play this game? The instructions are confusing and terrible. Make sure you study it before you actually pull this game out in front of your friends so you can give them the simple version of the rules in person.The one poor design choice / lapse in pieces that I thought this game had was regarding the diplomas - it would be nice to have some way of tracking which diplomas you've already refused so you don't have to remember or write it down. It can get pretty complex to keep track of. Maybe a duplicate set of diplomas in grey would have been nice, so that players could keep the gray versions of the diplomas they had already refused...or a section on the left side of the starting tile where you could somehow mark which diplomas you had refused.Some things the instructions missed or explained poorly that are actually important to remember:- Seasons are ONLY important for the "streak" points at the end and have no other effect on the game whatsoever. They may look important, but they really aren't.- Brushes are never consumed.- An arrow icon allows you to move a brush to ANY empty landscape icon you possess, not just an adjacent one.- The final player to choose lesson cards during a round CAN choose to wait for another card if someone else took cards before them during this row-deal cycle. So, if players 1, 2, and 3 take cards in the first row-deal cycle, even though player 4 has no choice but to take the remaining column, they can choose to pass their turn and gain two cards in that column instead of one on the second row-deal cycle.- There is a pawn for both the Grand Master and the Apprentice because the Apprentice moves during a round - the Grand Master does not. The Grand Master is there to denote who is going first for this entire round.- The Grand Master moves at the very end of a round, not at the beginning of the next (important for the final turn).

One of our favorite games.

A beautiful, simple-yet-deep engine-building game. It is a relaxing and peaceful game where you play as an artist creating a tapestry. Works well with two players.