How To Play Iki

Iki is a worker placement and set collection game designed by Koota Yamada for 2-4 players.

Once you get your head around Iki it makes sense but there are a few unconventional mechanics and ideas in the game that might be confusing. I’ll be doing my best to clear the fog and teach you how to play Iki.

Aim

You’re trying to obtain the most iki, which are basically victory points. The pink flower symbols are Iki you obtain during the game while the red flower symbols are points you score during the end game. You get more iki by completing certain sets and actions:

Collecting a set of five different workers (yellow street peddlers, brown artisans, purple specials, red master craftsmen and blue shop sellers) in your player board

• Collecting fish from every season
• Collecting tobacco pouches (and their points are doubled if you have tobacco pipes)

Building a building (which can give you ongoing bonuses or end game bonuses, for example, the Merchant House gives you three iki for each leftover scandal you have, with a maximum of 30 points you can get this way)

There are other ways to get iki, for example through certain workers gaining experience in their stalls. There’s also the Nagaya (a set of stalls) harmony bonus at each payday but I’ll go into that later.

Set Up

There are a lot of components and tokens but first thing’s first, make sure the board is on the correct player count. The 2 player board has fewer stalls and doesn’t have an extra Nagaya.

Each player starts with:

• A Oyakata meeple (big boy)
• A Ikizama meeple (medium boy)
• Four Kobun meeples (small bois)
• 1 sandal token
• 1 rice
• 8 mons

Then after you decide who goes first (the person who was most recently in Japan), the last player takes the four starting worker cards and takes one. This continues until the first player gets a starting worker. Then all players place their starting worker with a kobun at the outermost edge of each market (there can only be one in each Nagaya).

You separate the worker cards, fish and tobacco pipes into their seasons and the fish and pipes go on the calendar track. You also shuffle the buildings and lay out 6 of them. You place your flower token on the Iki track as you score points throughout.

I’ll go into the differences with a two player game at the end.

Workers

Every round you have the option to purchase a worker for the cost in their top left corner. Once you buy a worker you can place them in any of the stalls. Something to be aware of is that the further a worker is away from the edge of the board, the less likely they’ll die in a fire, as the fire subsides as it travels inwards (as indicated by the -2 etc. on the board). The stalls on the innermost edge are also more expensive to place workers in and you have to pay an extra 2 mon.

When placing your worker you should think about what market action they’ll be able to do, for example, they could give people firefighting power or sell fish. When you place the card, you also place a small boi on it too at the bottom of the track. When other people do business with your worker (by getting what’s stated at the bottom of the card), you gain experience and you get a little bonus. You can also interact with your worker but they won’t gain experience for that. Interacting with workers is an optional step.

The top right corner also indicates any other bonuses the worker can give you (like extra firefighting). And then the bottom of the card shows the ability of the worker, for example, the Dice Maker lets you pay one mon for a wood.

Types of worker abilities:

• Gaining resources
• Trade resources
• Swap two workers’ placements on the board
• Build

Once a worker completes the experience track they retire and are placed on your player board and they count towards having a multicoloured set of workers. They’ll also continue to give you bonuses every payday (which feels suss but we don’t question it).

Taking Your Turn

Before each turn you place a mon for workers that weren’t taken previously. Then you reveal four new workers.

Whoever’s highest on the firefighting track gets to bid first for movement and it continues in descending order. First thing you’ve got to do is place the medium boy (the one with the hat) on one of the numbered spaces, which determines how many spaces you move. Only one meeple can be on a number space. You also have the option of placing your meeple in the leftmost space where you’ll be able to choose how many spaces you move but you only get one mon and don’t get the option of buying a worker. For each full rotation you make around the board, all of your workers gain experience.

Once everyone has placed their Ikizama meeple, the Oyakata moves from whoever has the leftmost Ikizama to the rightmost one i.e. if someone placed on the leftmost space (the one negating benefits) they would get to move first. If not it would be the person who placed their Ikizama on 1 and so forth.

You have the option of taking 4 mon or purchasing a worker that you immediately place on the board with a small meeple (unless you chose the leftmost Ikizama space). Then you take turns moving the steps previously determined and you do business at a stall. It doesn’t matter which order you take the actions between the one printed on the board or with the person in the stall (if there is one). There are times when you get to choose a worker to do business with but you only get to do business with one of them. You take your medium meeple back for the next round when you move.

You have to move the exact number of spaces that was determined, however if you have any sandal tokens you can use them to move forward as many extra steps you decide to use.

After everyone has taken their turn you check if any of the special events have triggered on the calendar. The other half of the player board is to store your fish and tobacco related items. You continue to follow this pattern until the end of the 12th month.

Working During The Calendar Year

The game is played over 12 rounds representing the months of the year with an extra New Year’s bonus at the end of the game, where you can place your big boy meeple on any of the spaces and get the associated bonuses/actions. You use the grey bird token to keep track of where you are in the year.

Throughout the year there are some special events including payday, fires and the changing of seasons.

Payday is indicated by a little money bag and occurs after the 3rd, 6th and 9th month. On payday you get the bonus stated above each of your little bois on the main board and the circle in the top right corner of any retired workers you have. You also calculate the Nagaya harmony bonus (which I’ll go into later) and then you have to feed all your workers on the main board (not the retired workers but we don’t think about that). If you don’t have enough rice to feed the workers in the stalls, they die, which isn’t great so it’s good to think about rice.

Since payday coincides with the changing of the seasons, you discard all the unused workers, fish and tobacco items from the previous season. Then you replace them with the new season’s items. The only exception is winter where you’ll have the ability to buy the winter fish, pipes and pouches on New Year’s Day.

Fires happen after the 5th, 8th and 11th month and their strength is indicated on the calendar, for example the strength of the fire after the 11th month is 9. Then you flip over one of the little fire tiles which indicates where the fire starts. Then the fire spreads from the outside in, if the worker at the edge has a firefighting strength equal or above the fire then the fire stops and no one has to worry. However, if they’re not strong enough, they die and the fire goes to the next worker. The strength of the fire decreases by one for each adjacent stall, for example, a 9 strength fire would be 6 strength fire by the time it reaches the innermost worker. It’s very possible that no one dies in the game and that’s probably a good thing. But if someone does, they are removed off the board and you don’t get them back (understandably) but you do get the small boi meeple back. And the fire spreads until someone stops it.

Buildings

Aside from workers, buildings can also be put in the stalls. Once a small boi is placed there they can’t be removed, so it’s a long term investment. Some of the buildings have ongoing effects so sometimes it’s worth it to get one early. Others will only score you points at the end.

If you build a building, you pay the resource cost and place it in an empty stall. You don’t do business with buildings and they can be burnt down in fires.

Nagaya Harmony Bonus

We’re finally here, I’ve saved this for later as it can be confusing, but it’s a nice way to get a nice chunk of points each payday. A Nagaya is basically a set of stalls and in a 3-4 player game you also count the innermost corners (with the flowers) as a Nagaya.

To calculate the Nagaya harmony bonus, you see if there are multiples of any colour of worker in the sets of stalls. You count how many of them they are (for example if there were three red workers, it’s three iki per worker), and each person who owns a stall gets extra points based on how many of that type of worker they have. So in the red worker example, if someone owned two of those red workers, they’d score 6 points. The other person with a red worker in that Nagaya would get 3 points. And you calculate this for all the Nagayas that have multiple workers of a colour.

The Nagayas get you thinking about how to utilise the placement of certain colours of workers to your benefit as the ongoing iki bonuses can make all the difference.

Variations For Two Players

First and foremost you use the two player side of the board and distribute the sun and the moon token to the players. This is so it’s easier to remember who is meant to place an additional worker (that neither of you own) in a stall every round. The symbol is indicated on the calendar track. This just means there’s more business options on the board. These workers don’t gain experience but can die in fires.

You also use the blocking tiles which’ll block one of the spaces on the Ikizama track, giving you and your opponent slightly fewer options.

There’s one fewer Nagaya in the 2 player game. And the worker in the middle stall of each Nagaya can be interacted with from both spaces adjacent to it.

End Game Scoring

At the end of the game, you combine the scores from the criteria I mentioned in the Aim section at the beginning alongside the iki you got during the game.

There are a few resources that will score you points if you have any left at the game’s end: koban (the big coin) will get you three iki, wood will give you one iki and every four mons will give you an iki.

Now you know how to play Iki, it’s generally straightforward and you get the hang of things after a while. But there are a few details that can easily be missed. It’s a lovely game and one that allows you to try different strategies and adapt to the different variables from the workers to how many spaces you can move. And it always helps that it’s beautiful.