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Kohaku
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3850 Victory Points
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Description
Kohaku is a peaceful koi-pond-building, tile-laying game. Each turn, players will draft both a Koi and Feature tile from the central pond board to place into their personal koi pond. Score points by surrounding flowers with koi containing matching colors, placing frogs next to koi tiles that have dragonflies, and ensuring that baby koi have a safe place to hide by placing them near rocks. With no restrictions on the shape of your pond, you can build a unique layout to maximize your koi ponds appeal.
I would love to have my own Koi Pond. But the realities of the cost, upkeep and where I live mean this is unlikely to ever happen. But thanks to Kohaku, a tile laying game by Danny Devine published by Gold Seal Games and 25th Century Games, I can now build and admire my own Koi Pond in less than 30 minutes.
In this 1 to 4 player game you draft tiles from the central board and place them in front of you to build your own pond. The rule set is incredibly simple and can be taught in less than 5 minutes. At the end of the game everyone would have built a beautiful pond that can be admired.
Set Up
Before play can commence you put the board in the middle of the table and fill the spaces according to the pictures. This way you will have a board which alternates between fish and features. The fish come in 4 different colours, red, yellow, white and black with some fish having two of these colours. Every fish is drawn slightly differently with accompanying baby koi, dragonflies or a coin for the single coloured fish.
There are several different feature tiles which provide scoring opportunities such as 1 point per dragonfly in the 4 tiles orthogonally touching this feature. You can pass each player an aid which provides details of how each feature scores, however it is fairly obvious from the writing on the tiles and I found new players do not require the aid. Apart from removing or adding koi tiles according to player number this is all the set up you need.
Clever Drafting
On your turn you take a koi tile and an adjacent feature tile and place them in your pond. If this is your first turn they must be placed next to each other, on future turns the tiles can be placed anywhere following these simple rules. 1. Tiles must always be placed orthogonally. 2. Feature tiles must be placed next to koi tiles and vica versa.
Once you have chosen your tiles the central board is refilled. If there are any spaces on the outside of the board you move the tiles from the middle to replace them, and then refill the empty spaces according to the pictures. This method of refilling the central board feels like the tiles are being shuffled and it really helps the gameplay as koi could be moved next to features that work really well together.
You continue drafting tiles and placing them in your pond until there are no more koi tiles available to refill the board. You then flip the central board over and use the cute little fish tokens to record your scores according to the feature tiles and coins placed in your pond. I found the best way to keep track of which tiles you have already scored with is to go from left to right, top to bottom.
Final Thoughts On Kohaku
Kohaku is one of the most Zen like games I have ever played. There is next to no down time and it doesn’t really matter if someone takes the tile you had your eye on, a new tile just came out that works just as well and thanks to the clever refill mechanism it may have moved a tile I hadn’t even considered before. I feel so chilled when playing this game and everyone I have showed it to agreed. The artwork is outstanding, the rule book is clear and easy to understand and the solo mode is a solid game which will keep you coming back for more. The only real complaints about the game is the lack of insert in the box, instead you get several high quality plastic bags, and maybe an advanced mode with secret scoring objectives.
The box says the game takes 30 to 45 minutes but I would say anywhere between 20 and 25 is about right. I have played the game at all player counts and it works really well in all cases. The artwork really is amazing and the tiles have little UV spots that look like ripples on the pond. Once you have finished playing you will always sit back and stare at your beautiful creation.
We moved into an old farmhouse last year. It’s got a pond and a stream which are home to around 15 Koi carp. We call the big crimson one Big Bad Kevin. Mainly because our neighbour is called Barry, and he’s get the wrong idea if he heard us talking about Big Bad Barry! After a busy day, I go out and feed them. And a bit like watching fire, their slow, smooth movements captivate me. Stop me in my tracks, and I find myself standing and breathing. That is the power of the Koi. So when I saw Kohaku, I was instantly drawn to it. And when I saw it had a solo mode, that was the clincher.
The Rivals
But, for a game that feels relaxing and yet crunchy (my mental meditation) when playing with my husband, the solo ramps up the tension 3 fold. And that’s because I am playing against not just 1 AI, but 3! Easy (yellow Koi), medium (red Koi), and hard (Black Koi). Simultaneously!
Set up is almost identical to the 2 player – I just don’t remove the extra 7 Koi tiles), so it hits the table super-fast. And that’s a must when I solo a game.
And so is my turn. I take an orthogonally adjacent pair of Koi and Feature tiles, place them in my personal oasis pond, and then refill the board (moving any central tiles to empty spaces on the outer edges).
But then, the Rivals enter the serene scene, and it’s serious messing time!
On the Rivals’ turn, they are going to flip the next face-down Koi tile in the stack. They take all the Koi tiles matching the colour(s) of the revealed tile from the central pond. These, plus the one they flipped over, go into their own stack (they don’t build a pond themselves – thieves and lazy ones at that! haha). If there are no matchy-matchies, they still get the flipped tile. But now they also get the top Feature tile from the Feature tile stack. If there are any of those same Features in the central pond, they thieve those away for themselves too! And, regardless of colour or number, like Features always count (so e.g. a flipped-over lily would enable the Rivals to take all the lily tiles from the central pond).
If any tiles have been taken by the Rivals, they get replaced from the face-down stacks in a clockwise direction, starting in the top left corner (rather than the central space- shift that I do on my turn).
When the Koi stack runs out, the game is over and it’s me v the Rivals in totting up time!
I score normally, and:
- Easy-Wheezy gets 3 points per Koi and 2 points per Feature
- Medium-Maude starts from Easy-peasy’s score and gets 1 additional point per Feature; and
- Hard-Horrace starts from Medium-Maude’s score and gets 1 additional point for every coin and every single flower
Wowza! 3 to beat! Which I rarely do – that Hard Horrace is a Koi thieving king!
Mental Meditation
Whilst I love a BYOS solo game, having an actual opponent to beat is tip-top. And here there are 3 in one! I own quite a few games where you can increase/decrease the Automa challenge level – Welcome To being an obvious one. But this is the first where I play all 3 levels at once. And it is great! It feels like a simple but fresh twist on the usual solo scoring mechanism.
And the brutal arbitrary nature of the Rival’s picks really means each of my turns becomes a series of snatches- what can I take before they potentially wipe them off the pond for good?
Yes, there’s luck in there; what comes off the decks each turn is based on shuffling and probabilities. But that’s what placement optimisation is about’ mitigating the randomness with tactical tile laying! Using what I’ve got to make the most of what I have, as well as what might come out! Setting up 4 Koi in the hope a matching lily or statue is going to be available also brings that push-your-luck tension into the game. I mean, you could be working on a configuration that never comes to pass. But with 7 different scoring opportunities, there’s always something I can do. It might just not be the BEST thing that could have been done. And that HURTS in the BEST way! Haha
And I really like the added re-arrangement of the tiles at turn-end when I play the Rivals – refreshing the tiles from different spots gives less predictable decision dilemmas which for me is excellent.
Final Thoughts
Kohaku is a beautiful, highly replayable, easy to learn, crunchy tile-laying game that works perfectly (dare I say it even better!?) as a solo. I love how the simple drafting mechanic lends itself to a smooth and satisfyingly crunch single player experience that is on my table in the time it takes for me to shuffle the stacks. Scoring is probably the longest part of the game. But once familiar with how the Features work, it definitely gets faster to find out I lost…hard! haha. If you like placement optimisation puzzles that you can play solo, I would highly recommend Kohaku!