presentation

Hanamikoji

Win Favor from GEishas

As a restaurant owner, you try to entice as many Geishas as possible to your restaurant; Geishas will favor whoever has more favorite items of a Geisha assembled on his side of the display.

Seven Geishas are laid out in adjacent order of values, a favor tile is placed on each of them. Each player has four action markers laid out, active side up. For a round in the game, you shuffle 21 item cards and set one of them aside unseen; each player is dealt six cards. Then players alternate turns as active player and have three steps to resolve in a turn: Draw a card from the draw pile, select and resolve an active action marker and then turn it over to the inactive side.

Action options are: Secret - one item card is placed face-down underneath the action marker, the card is revealed and placed with the respective Geisha at the end of the round. Trade-off - place two item cards face-down underneath the action marker to take them out of play. Gift - you lay out three cards open-faced, your opponent selects one card, you keep two, and both place the cards with the respective Geishas. Competition: You lay out four cards, split into two pairs, first your opponent and then you take one one pair and place it with the respective Geishas.

Who then has the majority with a Geisha, wins her favor - if you have eleven favor points or the favor of four or more Geishas, you win; otherwise, you play another round.

Tactical despite hidden information; clever use of actions is the key to winning but the decision on their use demands nerve-racking cogitation. Not a game for everybody, but definitely worth trying out.

Players: 2

Age: 10+

Time: 15+

Designer: Kota Nakayama

Artist: Maisherly Chan, Mirko Akira Suzuki

Price: ca. 13 Euro

Publisher: Kosmos 2017

Web: www.kosmos.de

Genre: Card comparison

Users: For families

Special: 2 players

Version: de

Rules: cn de en hu jp pl ro

In-game text: no

Comments:

Abstract despite topic

Very beautiful graphics

Tactical conflict game

Simple mechanism

Tough decisions about order of actions

Compares to:

Schotten Totten and other conflict games for two with card comparison

Other editions:

Emperor S4 / Colon Arc (cn, en, jp), Ludicus (ro), Nasza Ksiegarnia (pl), Reflexshop (hu) and others

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 1

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0