Fuji Koro

As the volcano brims on the edge of explosion, it’s time to salvage what we can…

In Fuji Koro you and your friends decided to charge head first into a volcano in the mad hope of reclaiming what treasures you can before it erupts and kills you all, oh and there are dragons, sounds like fun right.

The Hunt Begins

In this game you and your friends are on a mission to take as much as you can from a volcano before it erupts and kills you all, on a mechanical side the volcano does not actually start to erupt until one player has amassed 40 points. Throughout the game there is the strive to amass the most points possible before the volcano erupts from many different paths, which allow players the ability to play most suitably to their style.

You can either decide to work on upgrading your gear to the best of your ability to gain points, and have a better chance at facing your foes, or you can try to hunt down certain treasures on the board for the most points, and last of all you can face the dragons. In the core ruleset for Fuji Koro all of these are balanced rather well and can work together to help you as the player get the best results possible and stop you having to worry about the diverging paths before you. Unlike other games where progress in one area can feel like a diverging path to be taken, here you will have to make small choices but each one should help you to the same goal. I think that this really works at making the game much more inviting combined with how the board plays out to give you multiple choices in the moment, and to make you not have to spend time deliberating your choice of action.

A Dynamic Ever Changing Board

The board itself and how it functions is really unique and fun in all but one aspect, so lets cover the problem then dive into the fun head on. As the board is built up of tiles placed over the game from the centre out to the outer ring which holds the scoring system the biggest problem is how they link together. Each tile is shaped the same with its edges working like a complex jigsaw. When I tried to connect tiles together I sometimes had to encourage them to connect or felt the whole board try to shift as I put the pieces together. It’s a shame that they cannot connect smoothly, but this is the only flaw and does not diminish the strengths. The tiles themselves are beautifully designed and each one becomes a fun mystery to reveal on the board, there is also a well thought out natural progression to the board and its tiles that creates a natural progression from the centre out. From the centre you start with tiles that contain the weakest dragons, after the first ring is made the second ring will give players points for discovery and harder dragons to face, the last ring adds to this as well increasing dragon strength and points as well. What I found playing the game is that it encourages you to go further out from the centre as you will score more points for each time, find better resources and tougher dragons to face.

The other unique element is a very thematic one, to start with nearly half of every tile there are lava sections that you as a player can either cross for a risk or avoid and lose valuable time. As the game goes on into the erupting phase these amounts of lava spots will only grow making more dangers for you to avoid as you desperately rush to escape, as there are only two points at which you can escape and if you can’t reach either by the end of the game, you die. The erupting starts to happen during the end of the game when a timer starts until the volcano explodes. This dynamic creates what is a great example of a push your luck mechanic by having the players decided whether to escape as soon as it becomes viable from the start of the end of the game and gain unique points based on their progress, or wait to the last second to escape, clawing for those final points. I love this part of the game as it can become the make or break of any player, in these moments they can seize the points that give them victory or burn on their own determination.

Resource Management Like You Have Never Seen

Throughout the game you will be collecting resources of 4 types, wood the most common, followed by metal, the hard to come by dragon teeth and the most lucrative of the lot magic cubes. All of these resources are represented by cubes of the most representative colour, wood being brown, metal being silver, dragon teeth being white and magical cubes a see through green. At first you may wonder about the use of cubes and you might find it bizarre but after the concept grows on you, you will find yourself coming up with such crazy ideas.

During the game when you have played a round in which you rested, which is a common occurrence, you can craft using these resources in one of your three gear slots, of weapon, helmet and shoes. How you craft them is your choice as long as you follow the rules, there are incentives to craft in certain ways during the game for better abilities, but you have full creative control. Do you want to wield a longsword with the hilt being made of a dragon’s tooth and the blade formed of metal? Go for it. Each resource does have a benefit to using it with the wood having the weakest strength and the magical cube the most but how you put these resources together is completely up to you.

Slaying The Might Beasts

As with every volcano we know that dragons are very prominent and like to kill any who intrude upon their home, the same is here with Fuji Koro. We also know that dragons are lazy in this game, never bothering to chase their foe and instead staying put (unless you play a variant of the game, more on that later). Instead the player who found the dragon decides whether they wish to fight it and all other players connected to that tile may also join the fight if they wish.

Depending on the dragon, players may be inclined to work together, or go solo, as each reaps its own reward but the higher the reward the tougher it is to kill, with the hardest becoming a dark souls boss if faced alone. Combat is played by determining the initiative with the dragon having their own and player’s being determined by the length of their longest weapon. From there dice are rolled to determine the damage dealt, each dragon has their own set amount, whilst players decide to use as many of their swords cubes as they wish with some sides of the dice destroying the cube, removing it from the game.

Defence is used by the helmet you wear, shedding a cube from your helmet to negate the damage, and if you run out of cubes you lose. Upon defeat players will be knocked off the tile and must miss a turn, upon victory, an immediate dragon tooth and the relevant points for the dragon slain to all involved players.

In the main game players may also fight one another in a similar fashion to how they fight dragons and from this they can steal from one another.

Variants

Seems like a lot right, that covers most of the ground elements of the game and what a fun game it is, but that is not all, in the rule book near the back you will find many variants of the game that will encourage you to come back, not just for the main version but all these fun challenging one. There is one that allows dragons to move, making you have to choose your course of action carefully so as to not wake one that you will constantly have to face. Another variant gets you to play together and work to a certain goal, including finding the secret exit and killing the toughest dragon. There is also a solo variant which is actually a lot of fun. Along with these three are many more that bring so much life into this game, and to top it all off, each playable character has a personal variant of their character making them unique to play to all the others.

Overall

To bring it all into one paragraph is tough with Fuji Koro as it offers so much to the board, and yet it is easy as simply this is a brilliant game, yes the tiles can become difficult to connect, but that is the only downside to this game. With its fun mechanics that combine many game styles, its beautiful artwork that makes it come to life and the optional versions that encourage you back time and again. Fuji Koro is brilliant and worth you and your friends’ time.