Quick review: Takenoko
Feb. 15th, 2016 11:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackhttps://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/70919/takenoko
Ghoti showed me the Bamboo/Panda game! It was really nice. Each turn you have two actions, plus a random bonus. These can be, "Place new large hex tile", "move panda", "move gardener", "take irrigation", or "take goal card".
The board is completely symmetric between players, there are no pieces which are specific to one player, the only difference is which goal cards they drew. The hex tiles are paddies of three colours, which when irrigated, grow a stalk of bamboo of that colour. When the gardener moves, he/she grows more bamboo on that hex if it's irrigated, plus adjacent hexes of the same colour if they're irrigated. The panda eats one segment of bamboo (you get that).
Goals are either "these segments of bamboo" (which you trade in), or "this combination of bamboo stalks anywhere on the board" or "this arrangement of hexes (must be irrigated)". The last two, you can score on your turn whenever they're satisfied, it doesn't matter if you laid them or your opponent laid them or someone scored them earlier, just if they exist.
The towers of bamboo are really cute, little plastic segments which stack four high. The panda is very cute, though when the game was described to me, I imagined it a lot bigger :)
And after the first few turns, it started to go quickly, each turn, there's only a couple of things you can do so there's not that much to decide, but the aggregate effect of your decisions matters a lot.
Ghoti showed me the Bamboo/Panda game! It was really nice. Each turn you have two actions, plus a random bonus. These can be, "Place new large hex tile", "move panda", "move gardener", "take irrigation", or "take goal card".
The board is completely symmetric between players, there are no pieces which are specific to one player, the only difference is which goal cards they drew. The hex tiles are paddies of three colours, which when irrigated, grow a stalk of bamboo of that colour. When the gardener moves, he/she grows more bamboo on that hex if it's irrigated, plus adjacent hexes of the same colour if they're irrigated. The panda eats one segment of bamboo (you get that).
Goals are either "these segments of bamboo" (which you trade in), or "this combination of bamboo stalks anywhere on the board" or "this arrangement of hexes (must be irrigated)". The last two, you can score on your turn whenever they're satisfied, it doesn't matter if you laid them or your opponent laid them or someone scored them earlier, just if they exist.
The towers of bamboo are really cute, little plastic segments which stack four high. The panda is very cute, though when the game was described to me, I imagined it a lot bigger :)
And after the first few turns, it started to go quickly, each turn, there's only a couple of things you can do so there's not that much to decide, but the aggregate effect of your decisions matters a lot.