Tatsumi

• Designer: Jeremy Rozenhart 
• Publisher: Adam’s Apple Games
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 40 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In Tatsumi, the island celebrates you as their guardian dragon, their Tatsu. Your calling is to restore the elements on your island and renew good fortune for your people. Drafting resources, collecting sets, and scoring bonuses in Tatsumi relies on the position of your dragon avatar on the seaboard, creating a more immersive and believable abstract strategy experience. The seaboard randomizes and stages the entire game’s resources into a 3-dimensional central board so you can strategically look ahead planning when to collect and when to score.

The tile-placement in Tatsumi has a puzzly yet satisfying feel through a clever combination of engine-building, instant scoring, and elemental inspired end game tile-placement bonuses for you to maximize.  Each player may play with a symmetric setup for learning or competition, or a fully asymmetric island and dragon combination for tons of replayability.

Fans will appreciate the intuitive gameplay, elevated componentry, and additional features specifically developed to extend beyond gateway games in this genre for gamers that enjoy solo-play, symmetric and asymmetric combinations, and a multigame feel packed into a single box.

To set up, each player takes an Island board and a Dragon and all the other bits that go with them.  The Seaboard is placed on the table and each well is filled with rings (4 or 5 deep per space).

Wavering Shrines are placed at each edge of the Seaboard.  One Summoning card is randomly placed next to each Shrine.  Each player places their dragon on the corner of the Seaboard closest to them. 

Each turn, in either order, you must fly and choose to either Gather or Offer.

When you fly, you move your dragon as far as you like in an orthogonal or diagonal straight line into an empty seawell.  You cannot go through an occupied seawell. Take the top ring from the seawell you left from.  Rings are placed into the three slots on the side of the player board; each slot can hold an unlimited number of rings of the same color.  As you only have 3 slots, you can only have 3 different colors of rings.  If you have more than 3 colors, at the end of your turn, you must reduce down to 3 colors; placing the unchosen rings onto your board (though you don’t score points).

Whenever you place rings, you must follow a few rules.

• If you place on an elemental rift, you must use a ring that matches the color of the rift
• Your first ring of the game must be placed on an elemental rift
• All later rings must be placed adjacent to a previously placed ring
• Each time you place a ring in an Offering, score VPs equal to the number of elemental rifts of that type you currently have encircled (note, you do not score this way when you place overflow rings)

When you gather, you take two top rings from the seaboard – in a pattern determined by your dragon card.   Follow the same rules for ring storage as above.

When you offer, you must be within range of a Shrine and have the required rings in your inventory. Place the rings onto your island and score each ring placed this way based on the number of elemental rifts you already have encircled on your island.  In some cases you will place one of your summoning scales on the shrine.  Additionally, check your island to see if you have unlocked an island blessing; if so, place the corresponding scale from your island onto any summoning card of your choice.

The game continues until either 13 sand dollars have been placed (these are placed on empty seawells) or when a player cannot legally place a ring on their island.  The current round is completed, and there is some bonus scoring for each of the four types of rings.

The player with the most points wins, ties broken in favor of the player who played the most rings matching the color of their own dragon..

My thoughts on the game

Tatsumi is a game with two different puzzles going on.  You have the challenge of getting the rings you want with your Dragon on the ring board, and then you have the puzzle of putting those rings in the right place on your player board.

In the first step, you are flying around the board trying to collect the rings you need in specific color patterns. You’re racing to complete the set of rings necessary for an offering.  You need to be quick about it because if someone else beats you to an offering, that card flips over and you’ll suddenly need different rings to succeed at that location.

You can’t hold on to too many rings because you only have three storage slots; and while you do get to place rings onto your board when you’re in an overflow situation; this placement is not as beneficial for you as it would be had you made an offering.

When you’re on your board you are tugged between trying to maximize your point scoring (on later placements) by covering shrines, or working towards the interior of your island.  Getting to place your scales is key to success as you can build up a bit of an action engine depending on which cards you get to place your scales on. 

The ruleset is a bit chaotic; so you may need to read it a few times (or set the game up solo and work through the examples).  The examples span the gutter, the columns are of unequal dimension in places and there are lots of different colored examples and cutouts to the formatting.  Overall, it is very confusing to the eye – or at least my eye.  A cleaner format would have definitely helped me understand the game better.  

The components are really well done, and I especially like the way the rings sit nicely in the vac tray – it works for both storage and play.  The artwork for the dragons is also exceptional.  

Once we learned the game, Tatsumi has provided us with a more complex take-and-make game; as there is a bit of a engine building going on here as well as the added complexity of the ring placement on the player board.  Overall, a great game to try for those who like these sorts of puzzles.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y, Ryan P
• Neutral. John P
• Not for me…