F@#$ Tokaido

Tokaido

Here we go again!  I usually hold off doing these reviews until I've had a couple sessions where I played this game.  I won't get that luxury with Tokaido, it was pretty much universally panned last night.

The Summary of the Review

This game is average at best.   There's not enough viable options to victory, the popular moves are really popular, some important aspects are ridiculously random, and the movement mechanics are problematic.

Theme

You're on vacation and taking a road trip to Edo.  You stop at several places along the way getting pictures, collecting souvenirs or meeting people.  The player who took the most impressive vacation wins!

The game play doesn't feel vacationy but the art and layout of the board are terrific.  This a beautiful game.

Characters

Everyone gets two characters and you get to pick one.  Each character has some unique power, some kind of exception to the core rules.  And then the powers are balanced by starting money, with the weaker characters getting more starting bucks.

Quick Mechanics

Turn order is determined by a number line.  Player furthest in the back gets to move.  So that means you can move twice if there's empty spots.

When you move, you can move any number of spaces with the restriction that you have to stop at an "Inn" and wait till everyone finishes.

There's about 10 spots to land on and something happens there. From simplest to most complex

Farm : Get 3 monies.

Hot Springs :   Draw a Hot Springs card, this is worth 2 or 3 VP.  

Panoramas:  There's 3 types, add a card to your collection and score by how far along you are (1 point for 1 card, 2 points for 2 cards and so on).  There's also a bonus for completing the panorama first.

Temple:  Donate monies to the temple and score points.  Also there's a bonus at the end based on how generous everyone is.

Village:  you can buy souvenirs here.  You're looking for sets and they score exponentially based on those sets.  You can start a new set before completing an old one.

Encounters:  Draw a card from the encounter deck and immediately resolve.  Encounters may give you money, VP, a souvenir or a couple other things.

Inn:  This is a stop sign and you can't go further until everyone is in the inn.

More on the Inn

You can eat a meal at one of the 4 inns.  You need to pay 1-3 gold, and if you eat you get 6 points!

Some more restrictions.  You can't eat the same meal twice and you can't eat at the same inn twice.  So if you eat Dango  at Inn#1 and draw Dango  at Inn#3, too bad.  Eat something else.  This really only comes up for 1 gold meals.  There's only 3 of them. 

First one into the inn gets the best selection of meals.  Last one in moves out first.

End Game wrap up

So that's basically it.  Move from station to station getting points.  There's bonus points at the end for most souvenirs, most money spent on meals, most encounters and most hot springs visits, as well as the temple points.

So what went wrong?

In the middle of game 1, Mike realized the game was playing him.   Mike started last, the spots available to him were awful and then arranged themselves so that he was first one into the inn several times.  Which meant after the reset, he went last again getting the 5th worst spot.

Driving home, I thought about it some more.  And the game this reminded me the most of was The Game of Life.  Being compared to a 55 year old game is not a good thing.   But there's simply not enough good options.  Everyone playing instinctively tried to optimize the number of turns they got.  Which led to a crowded board, set piece moves and slow realizations that you're going to get hosed at the next inn.

There's not enough money in the game.  Farms and Encounters were taken so fast, so often, that several times during the game, players realized "Well, I'm just not going to eat at the next inn".

There's too much randomness in the game.  Characters, Encounters and Meals are crazy important and there's a ridiculous amount of luck in what you draw.

There is absolutely not enough incentive for arriving at the inn 1st.  Getting into the inn 1st is a round killer, and cheap food does not compensate adequately.

Tactics?

Pick a good character?  The money doesn't quite compensate for the power, it's a long game.  The ones that mess with souvenirs and panoramas look the most powerful, but an encounter character won game 1 and a hot springs character won game 2.  YMMV.

The final spot before an inn turns out to be a really good spot, no matter what it does.  Placing there guarantees you'll be first out the door.  Unless there's a really lucrative alternative, being first for next round is probably worth the 1 or 2 points you punted.

Final Word

I would play this game again to confirm I didn't like it but I'm in no hurry too.  Also, 4 player might change it a lot because it opens up a lot more plays.  But the Last Inn First Out and lucky draws have just killed this game so far.