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"Close eye. Trust. Concentrate. Think only tree. Make a perfect picture down to last pine needle. Wipe your mind clean everything but tree. Nothing exists whole world. Only tree. Just trust picture". Mr Myagi- The Karate Kid (1984)
Do you like the concept of growing a Bonsai tree, but lack the patience, skill or dexterity? If so, this snappy game of card drafting and tile placement might just be for you!
Set Up
The set up of this game is super speedy and simple, great for those who want to get straight into the gameplay. Each player chooses their own pot tile of differing colours and corresponding ‘Seishi’ tile. These pots are the starting point from which you grow your Bonsai tree, with the Seishi tiles being a kind of player aid as well as space to place any cards that you collect during the game (more on that later!). You then shuffle and place the cards on the card drafting board in the centre of the table, and choose three goals at random for that game. And then you are ready to play!
Your Turn
On your turn, you can perform one of two actions- meditate or cultivate. Or, put more simply, taking a card (and doing any corresponding actions) or playing tiles.
When you choose to meditate, you take one of four face up cards from the slots on the board. When you draw one of these cards, you also get to do the action shown in the space below the card you drew- which in most cases will be taking one or more of a certain type of tile to play on a later turn. In some cases, there are also actions on the cards themselves to resolve- Master cards allow you to take additional tiles for play on a later turn, and Helper cards allow you to play one or more tiles from your personal supply. Three other types of cards available are Growth cards (more about those in a moment), Tool cards (which increase the number of tiles that you can keep in front of you at any time), and Parchment cards (which provide scoring bonuses based on the different criteria displayed).
When you choose the cultivate action, you place tiles from your personal supply to grow your Bonsai. You can place as many tiles as there are symbols on your Seishi tile, plus how many growth cards you have of that type. There are 4 types of tiles- wood, lead, flower and fruit, all with slightly different placement rules. But in essence, your Seishi tile will allow you to place a wood, a leaf, and one of your choice- and then you can place extra tiles for each growth card you have of that type (e.g. if you have a wood, a leaf and a flower growth card, you can also place one tile of each of those- so long as they are in your personal supply).
So in short- you meditate to pick up cards, and (sometimes) tiles. You cultivate to place those tiles, but the type of tile you can place is dictated by the tiles placement rules and the icons on your Seishi/growth cards.
Scoring Points
‘Building a pretty Bonsai is great…but how do I crush my enemies in a humiliating victory?’ I hear you cry.
There are 3 ways to score points at the end of the game- through your tiles, through your cards, and through claiming goals.
When scoring points through your tiles, different tiles have different scoring criteria. Each leaf tile gives you a straight up 3 points, each flower tile gives you 1 point for each side not touching another tile, and each fruit gets 7 points (but it has to be placed next to two leaf tiles, and can’t be touching another fruit).
When scoring your cards, each parchment card has a different scoring criteria on it. It could be extra points for each Helper card you have, or 2 points for each flower tile you have.
Goal tiles are active throughout the game, and are focused around different aspects of your bonsai- for example how many wood tiles you have placed. They come in three levels of difficulty (unless you are playing two player, in which case it is only two levels), with more points for those which are more complicated. Once you have met the criteria of a tile, you are faced with a choice to make immediately- do you claim it, or do you renounce it? By claiming it, you are securing the points to be tallied at the end of the game for yourself, and only yourself. Renouncing it feels similar to that old gameshow trope of “Are you going to take the money, or are you going to gamble?”, as once you renounce the goal you cannot go back and claim it. You are saying that you are going for the higher prize pot of points, and you hope that no one else has the same idea (or the game ends before you get a chance to claim it).
Art and Theming
The art and theme of Bonsai is consistently pretty throughout, with hints of Japanese art style and culture being drip fed throughout the game. That being said, heavy disclaimer, I am not an expert on Japanese culture, so I am making the assumption/hoping that the theming is accurate and well researched as opposed to heavily westernised. I am making this assumption based on some of the unique touches which the designers decided to include- for example, Japanese phrases, or information on the origin of Bonsai’s themselves and how to care for them. It doesn’t feel like the work of someone who isn’t interested in being at least somewhat authentic to the culture.
A particular shout out goes to the idea of including information about the different styles of Bonsai’s and their characteristics. Whenever my wife and I play, we always end the game by trying to match the Bonsai’s that we have grown during the game to a specific style shown at the back of the instructions. I can’t help but wonder if it would have been interesting to try and attach some scoring criteria to this- X number of points for one which meets the criteria of a Moyoji style, for example. But that might just be me asking for too much!
Gameplay
I have mainly played this in two player, and it plays as a quick and fast moving game which allows you to be planning your move while the other player is taking theirs. I have played it once or twice with 3 and 4 players, and it does begin to slow down the more players you have. As you can imagine, there can just be a little more waiting around for people to take their turn.
There is quite a lot of adjacent play, however the fact that you are openly drawing cards from the same spaces as other places, and going after the same goals, means that there is some opportunity for competitive play. For example, there is some opportunity for spite drawing of cards to prevent the opponent who has all the flowers on their Bonsai tree from getting the flower bonus point parchment cards. Likewise, there is the opportunity for you to be tactical about the goals which you renounce or claim depending on the progress of your opponent(s) towards these goals.
In Summary
All in all, Bonsai is a beautiful game which is successful in what it sets out to do, consistently feeling intentional in its actions and pathways that it lays out for the players. It’s well balanced, and you don’t ever feel like you have been ‘screwed over’ by the game because the card you wanted hasn’t come up.
My only personal negatives would be because I want more- I want more of the Japanese culture, a wider selection of goals for replayability- just more Bonsai. But I’m not sure that this would be the right thing to do- it might make the game unwieldy or unbalanced, and fundamentally change what it is- a great game, at an accessible level of heaviness to everyone.
