Miyabi Review

Another solid game from one of the best Family and Kids game publishers, HABA. Miyabi is a Japanese themed tile laying game, marketed for players aged 8 and up. The game is for 2-4 players and lasts from 30-60 minutes (depending upon the number of players).

HABA have been releasing extremely high-quality children's games for years and years. Their most popular is probably Rhino Hero and its sequel Rhino Hero Super Battle, but you may have heard of others like Monza, Animal Upon Animal, Orchard, Dragon’s Breath, Dancing Eggs, Hammer Time, the list goes on and on! HABA’s child friendly games range are recognisable by their bright yellow boxes. If you have kids, particularly younger kids, I urge you seek out some of these games. I have played dozens of them, and HABA’s games are a big reason why me and my family love playing board games together. Now HABA have a growing line of ‘family games’, which whilst still suitable for older kids, are aimed for the whole family. 2016’s Karuba was an excellent example, which is well worth checking out. Miyabi is one of HABA’s more recent family games, designed by Michael Kiesling the designer of the smash hit Azul.

Set Up & How To Play

To start off with, every player gets a thick-paper board with a 6x6 grid on which you place your tiles. This board acts as your garden for you to design. On the left-hand edge of the board there are pictures of garden ‘features’, such as stones, bushes, trees, and pagodas. At the top of the board there are 6 small spaces, in which you place little lantern meeples whenever you lay a tile with a feature in the corresponding column. The game comes with a set of 96 tiles, divided into four sizes: single squares, 2x1 rectangles, 3x1 rectangles and a 3 square tile in a ‘c’ shape 90-degree angle. Each of these tiles has a feature upon one square, with the number of objects in the feature equating to the size of the tile (e.g. a 2x1 bush tile will have two bushes on one of its squares). Finally, you then place the scoring board in the middle of the table, which is like the one you might have seen in Carcassonne.

On each round, a set number of tiles gets moved from the box into the middle, the number and type depend on the player count. Then on every turn, a player will choose a tile from the pile and lay it on their board. Now as you might imagine, the game would be rather easy if you had to fill the board with the relatively simple shapes included in the box. However, the twist is that you can lay your tiles on top of one another to build your garden. There are some tile laying rules: each row can only contain the feature depicted on the far left of the board; tiles placed on top of one another must be entirely on top of existing tiles (i.e. you cannot make bridges with gaps below the tiles); and you can only place a features in one column per turn. Whenever you place a tile, you must put a lantern meeple into the corresponding space at the top of the column, this is to remind you that you cannot place another feature in this column in that round. Then once you have placed all the tiles in that round you move the lantern meeples off their spaces and overturn a new set of tiles for the next round. You play six rounds in a two-player game, five for three-players and four in a four-player game.

The scoring of the game is where things get interesting. There are several different ways that you can score points. Firstly, whenever you place a tile, you get points for the number of objects on the tile. For example, if you started the game placing a 3x1 tile, you would get three points. However, the number of points you get for each tile equates to the number of objects on the tile multiplied by the layer in which it is placed. So, if later in the game you placed a similar 3x1 tile on the fourth layer, you would instead get 12 points. Additionally, you get bonus points for being the first player to place a garden tile on a fifth layer, with bonus markers for each feature. Also, at the end of the game, you will score bonus points for having the most objects of the different features in each row. Finally, there are optional expansions, like the challenges in Barenpark, which give you extra-scoring opportunities, if you choose to play with these.

Review

I am going to start out with saying that I do like Miyabi, I think it is a good family game and if you gave it a try, I am fairly certain you would enjoy it. The main problem, however, is that there are now so many similar games that I am not sure that Miyabi stands out from the crowd.

There is something inherently enjoyable about tile-laying games like this one where you will have those great moments when you find the ideal piece for your board. These moments come particularly towards the latter half of the game when you can get loads of points for tiles placed on a large stack in your garden. Although this can be fun, it is less satisfying than other top-tie tile-laying/polyomino games. The upward stacking puzzle never has those moments of head-scratching or tension about choosing and laying your pieces. Nor does it have those enormously satisfying moments in Patchwork or Barenpark when you lay the perfect piece for your board.

One issue I found with the game was the scoring. I found the scoring of points whenever you lay a tile to work fine; however, the bonus points of getting as many objects as possible per row felt a bit unnecessary. The expansions also add to the variability and replayability but additional layers of complexity might not be for everyone.

This game has worked much better for my kids than for me. Although it is not marketed as one of their ‘for kids’ games, they sell it as a family game, I think it works best playing with children. My four-year-old can play the game, although he does not understand all the strategy, but my 6-year-old is more than capable of playing the game well. The game is quite light, but there is more to it than is initially apparent. You might have fun playing with older children or in an adult group, but I would go for something like Barenpark, Isle of Cats or Patchwork (if there are just two of you).

Finally, I do not put much weight upon the appearance and theme of games, but I will give it a quick mention. The theme is quite nice, but light. Unfortunately, this is not particularly realised by the artwork and components, which are really basic looking. HABA normally produce great looking games, but Miyabi is pretty plain. It does not bother my enjoyment of the game whatsoever though!

So, to sum up, this is solid tile-laying game, but there is not enough to make it stand out from other similar games. However, if you already have some of the classics like Barenpark and Patchwork, and want another light tile-laying family game, then you will not be disappointed with Miyabi.