Planepita

• Designer: Eisuke Fujinawa, Kazunori Hori 
• Publisher: Szpi lab
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 15 min
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Planepita is a dexterity game where players flick discs onto a central playing area. Discs in inner rings are worth more points than discs on outer rings.

Each player takes 4 Alien discs in their choice of color and a Launch pad. A jammer disc is placed in the center of the board. One side of the discs is magnetic, as is the board. After a player flicks their disc, they may turn it face down, so that the eye of the piece is not visible and the disc is more firmly attached to the board. A face up disc is more valuable than a secure face down disc.  Also, discs are worth more when they are closer to the center of the board.

To start the round, each player places a disc on their Launch pad and then sends it ito the board.  They can start from anywhere in their area (evenly split based on board markings). It is acceptable to hit other discs out with yours.  Once your disc stops moving, the player decides if they want to flip their disc face down – this makes the disc harder to move but also reduces its power.  Note that you cannot flip your disc in the same area as a Jammer disc.

DIscs that straddle two areas are always considered to be in the inner area of the two. A disc that is completely off the board are placed on the black hole card.  If the Jammer disc is knocked off, the active player replaces it anywhere within the 5pt (innermost) ring. 

The last player to play has a special Last player token on their disc.  This disc cannot be flipped over.  Also this disc always has a Power value of 1.  Now that all players have flicked their discs, any discs that are face up in the same ring as the Jammer are removed from the board and placed on the Black Hole card. Then, by ring, players score points for having the most value of discs present – 2 power for a face up disc, 1 power for a face down or last disc.  The player with the most power in each ring gets the scoring token for that ring.  Ties do not score and the scoring token for that ring carries over to the next round.

Continue this for four rounds. . The player with the most points after 4 rounds wins. Ties broken in favor of the player with the most 5pt scoring tokens.

My thoughts on the game

I’m a huge fan of Crokinole, so any sort of disc flicking game is guaranteed to get my attention.  Thus, Planepita ended up on my Essen scout list with a high priority.  The idea of having magnets in the pieces is really neat, and the strength of the magnets is just right.  The flipped over pieces definitely stick to the board, but they can be jostled/moved with a strong enough flick.   It’s a risky play to try to move a stuck piece as the resistance is such that the hitting piece usually caroms off wildly due to the amount of force needed to move the magnetized piece.

The scoring rules make for some high pressure rounds near the end as it is likely that ties occur, and it is quite likely that scoring tokens will be held over from round to round making some sectors particularly valuable by the end of the game.  The least likely ring to tie is the outer ring- simply because it’s not very wide, so many discs that reside there touch the line and extend (and are counted for) the middle ring.

I must say that the rules are most excellently translated, and they are super clear.  This is also helped by having multiple illustrated examples.  This is always my fear with Japanese games (though with the advent of Google Translate, this is much less of a problem than before)

My only complaint with the game might be that at 4 players, the board is just really too small for all the discs.  Sure, you’re likely going to knock a bunch of them off as you go, but there just isn’t a lot of space for maneuvering.  You often have no visible line of sight to discs on the other side of the board – so your options are only what’s right in front of your rocket ship launching pad.

But, for a nice dexterity change of pace, Planepita brings a lot to the table and the addition of magnets to the game give it a feel unlike any other flicking game I’ve played recently.

Until your next appointment,

The Gaming Doctor