How To Play Kohaku

Koi Koi, what do we have here? It’s a how to play guide for Kohaku!

If you like relaxing, puzzly, thinky, tile laying games that look gorgeous and play brilliantly at all player counts, then you are going to want to play Kohaku! And I’m going to tell you how! Note: I’ll cover the solo rules in the solo review on the other tab!

Set Up

Simple as K O I :

1. Place the pond mat in the centre of the table
2. Grab the Koi tiles and remove:

• Koi tiles with 3/4 stone markings plus 7 more random tiles for 2 player;
• Koi tiles with 4 stone markings plus 5 more random tiles for 3 player; and
• 5 random Koi tiles for 4 player

3. Shuffle them into a stack and place face down. Also shuffle the Feature tiles and shuffle those into a sstack and place face down.
4. Then draft tiles one by one, starting in the top left corner and working along each row, placing Koi tiles face up on pond squares with a fish and Feature tiles on those with a lily pad.

That’s it! You are ready to reeeeellllax (in a thinky, puzzly way!)

Taking A Turn

When it’s your turn you must take 2 adjacent tiles from the pond – 1 Koi and 1 Feature. You then place them in the personal Koi pond you are creating. But, you can’t place them anywhere!

• New tiles must be placed orthogonally adjacent to any previously placed tile (save for the first tile in the game!) – note: the two tiles you pick do not have to be placed next to each other; and
• Koi and Features must alternate such that 2 fish and 2 features can never be touching – think aquatic checkerboard!
• If there are tiles left in the middle of the pond, move them to matching spaces on the outer edges and then refill the board with new Koi and Feature tiles as required ready for the next player.

Scoring

Creating an aquatic scene is all well and lovely. But you want points, right? Well each Koi and Feature scores (yay!) but only if you place it just right!

• Single lilies – each Koi surrounding a single lily flower of a matching colour will score 2 points (if you get all 4 sides matching the score bumps up to 12!)
• Two lilies – each Koi surrounding a double lily of either matching colour scores 2 points. If the Koi matches both colours, it bumps up to 3 points!
• Rocks – each baby Koi adjacent to a rock scores 1 point
• Frogs – each frog scores 1 point per adjacent dragonfly
• Butterflies – each Koi in the same row/column as the Butterfly will score 2 points if matching in colour;
• Statues – each Statue will score 1/3/6/10 points for 1/2/3/4 adjacent Koi (colour is irrelevant); and
• Turtles – these are worth 5 points. No buddying up required!

Winning The Game

When the 14^th /12^th round (2/3-4 player) has been played (i.e. when there are no more Koi tiles to add to the pond,  end game is triggered and it’s totting up time!

Each player scores their pond one at a time using their chosen colour Koi token. The score board is on the flip side of the pond board. Note: the numbers don’t snake so don’t jump half a row by mistake  - take your time totting up! The player aids show how each Feature is scored so I’d recommend holding that in one hand whilst counting with the other.

As an end game bonus, any gold coins visible at end game are worth a bonus 1 point each. And in the case of a tie for points; the winner is the player with the most coins!)

I hope this little guide helps you work out if this is going to be a game for you. As you can probably tell from the photos, it’s a gorgeous spatial, placement optimisation puzzle just waiting for you to enjoy!