Joraku

• Designer: Iori Tsukinami
• Publisher: Moaideas Game Design
• Players: 3-4
• Ages: 12+
• Time: ~45 minutes

Times played: 2, with review copy provided by Moaideas / Taiwan Boardgame Design

Joraku is a new release from Moaideas, a publishing house which has had a lot of interesting games in the past few years: Guns&Steel, Flip City, League of Hackers – just to name a few.  Given that track record, I was immediately interested in their new release for this year.  It was described to me as a “trick taking card game with a strong area-control aspect”.  That pretty much clinched it for me.  In this game, players are trying to march their armies to Kyoto.

The game has a board which shows a stylized map of Japan that is split up into 7 segments – the left most column is un-numbered (representing Kyoto), and then the next six are numbered from 1 to 6, increasing as you go to the right.  At the bottom of each section is a chart that shows the scoring for each of the three rounds in the game.  In general, the highest scoring areas in the first round are on the right, the highest scoring areas in the second round are in the middle, and the highest scoring areas in the third round are on the left.  In the game setup, each player is dealt a daimyo card, numbered 1 to 6, and each player places his daimyo figure in the column matching the number drawn.   Each player gets 10 Samurai cubes, but these all start off the board.  A start player is chosen, and this player receives the Kachikoki card.

As I mentioned earlier, the game is played over 3 rounds.  Each round follows the same three phases:  1) Recruitment (dealing cards), 2) Skirmish (playing cards), 3) Prestige (scoring)

In the Recruitment phase,  the battle deck is shuffled, and each player is dealt 5 cards.  The battle deck is 21 cards, made up of 3 suits, each numbered 1 thru 6 as well as a Ninja card.  Once the hands are dealt, each player examines his hand and each player simultaneously passes two cards to his left hand neighbor.

The game then moves to the Skirmish phase.  The starting player chooses any card from his hand to start the trick.  Following players must match the suit of the lead card if possible.  If they cannot match, they are free to play any card.  After you play your card, you immediately resolve it – this is slightly different depending on what sort of card you played.

The different cards and the 3 suits

If you played a numbered card (1-6): you either take 0-3 Samurai cubes from your supply and place them on the board area that matches the number of the play OR  you get action points equal to the number of the card to use.  (2 AP = move your Daimyo token to an adjacent area; 1 AP = move a Samurai cube to an adjacent area;  1 AP = remove an opponent’s Samurai cube from the area where your Daimyo is.)

If you played a Ninja card: you may place 0-3 Samurai cubes from your supply and may place them in any area or areas on the board.  You do not get any AP though.

Once all players have played, the trick is resolved.  The winner of the trick is the player who played the highest number, regardless of suit.  If there is a tie for the highest number, the winner is the most recently played card.  There is one exception though – if a Ninja is played, it automatically wins the trick if and only if someone else played a 6 value card.  Whichever player wins the trick is given the Kachidoki card.  The new holder of this card immediately looks at the area where his Daimyo is – and scores VPs for his control of the area.  If he is in first place (1 control point per samurai cube and 2 points per daimyo) – he scores 3VP.  2VP for being in second place, 1 VP for being in third place.  If there is a tie, the player scores from the next lower rank.

Kachidoki card

The holder of the Kachidoki card then leads a card to start the next trick, and this continues until players have played all five cards in their hand.  Then the game moves to the Prestige phase.

Starting at the right of the board, each of the seven regions of the board are scored.  Each player’s control for each region is calculated –again 1 control point per samurai cube and 2 points per daimyo.  Points are awarded per the chart at the bottom of the board.  If there are ties, all tied players score for the next lower rank – so, if two players tie for the lead, they both score second place points.  At the end of the round, all cubes and Daimyos stay where they are on the board.

The game continues for two more rounds following the same pattern of phases.  At the end of the game, the player with the most points wins.  If there is a tie, the player who was dealt the Daimyo card with the higher value wins the game.

My thoughts on the game

Joraku is a fascinatingly complex game – I feel like I understand the rules after my first two games, but I definitely do not think that I understand the strategies needed to be successful at it.  Is it better to always be fighting for the highest scoring areas?  Or should you just focus on second tier areas where it might be easier to lock in points?

There is an interesting flow to board play – as the the highest scoring areas in the first round are on the right, the highest scoring areas in the second round are in the middle, and the highest scoring areas in the third round are on the left.  There are enough points in the first round to make it worth placing cubes on the right, but if you do, then you have to figure out how to get them to the left of the board by the end of the game!

Also, you have to decide how quickly you want to introduce your cubes to the game.  You are limited to a total of ten cubes for the whole game – and if you put them all on the board in the first round, you’ll not have the ability to drop them in where you want in later turns.  Of course, you could get some cubes returned to you as people kick your cubes out of areas on the board – but managing your cubes is a big part of your success here.

As in many card games, you will tend to do better if you are dealt good cards – but the interesting thing with Joraku is that all of the cards can be useful to you.  The higher numbered cards will give you more AP, but there are definitely times when you’d rather be able to drop your Samurai cubes into the lower numbered board areas.  The Ninja cards give you no action points, but a smart play can win you a trick and possibly lead to 3 victory points from the Kachidoki bonus scoring – and in this game, 3 VP is nothing to sneeze at.  The Ninja card is also the only way to directly place one of your cubes in the left most area on the board.  There is a bit more strategy than I had initially thought when trying to figure out which cards you want to pass at the start of the round because you not only need to consider what cards you want for the trick taking portion of the round, but you also need to consider the possible actions that you’ll get from those cards.

There are also six advanced rule cards included in the game but we have not yet played with them.  If you choose to play with them, you draw two of these cards, and the special rules on these cards supercede the regular rules.

This is a game that I really want to get back to the table, but I’m running out of time before Essen!  A full review will come later in the winter after more plays – but for now, this should at least help you get a feel for the game.  This one is definitely heading for a permanent space on the gaming shelves here.

Until your next appointment

The Gaming Doctor