Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

As with all my boardgame reviews, I heavily encourage readers to peruse through boardgamegeek.com for a plethora of information, videos, and community posts. Now onwards! Konnichiwa gamers and would-be game owners. I've had my eye on Tokaido for a while and took an easy plunge with it, but haven't really gotten an opportunity to give it a good go until recently. Tokaido is a beautifully illustrated and light boardgame about traveling across Japan's famous 33-stop journey from Kyoto to Edo. This is an essence a "race" game but a strangely counter-intuitive one as you want to cleverly reach key destinations before other players and score as many points by the end of the journey in order to win. The game really exists with a minimum of 3 players, but dramatically increases in difficulty with each additional player as resources become more hotly contested. You'll be cutting each other off for panaromas by going to vista points, visiting shops to buy curios, even meeting strangers or donating money at the shrines. There are a variety of "characters" that play differently and thus require a tweak in your overall strategy, some who will naturally pit certain players against each other with their natural advantages (the Magistrate and the Entertainer for example benefit from Encounters). Without delving into the rules, I'll jump into the skinny of the game. COMPONENTS: This was the driving force behind buying the game. It has gorgeous and whimsical art, simple layout and well thought-out keys across the main board. The pieces are classic wooden "meeples" and all the cards are crisp and printed cleanly. The cardstock itself is thin and may not hold up well to serious play, so consider your playgroup or sleeves which will likely not hold in the vacuum-formed trayliner. Speaking of which, everything packs up neatly back into the box, so kudos for that design! GAMEPLAY: Once you get past the variety of colorful cards, it's very fast to pick up. First round with my mom (total game newb and not a killer-instinct in her body) and my sis (competitive recreationalist) and I (my sis calls me Hannibal and I ask which one, she replies both...at the same time) can finish a session in 35minutes. This is one of those odd games because if you're very hardcore, you'll mentally chalk it up as "light" and enjoy the zen-like quality of the game. If you're a beginner, it will certainly teach you about resource and initiative management as well as blocking and resource denial. NEGATIVES: This game is far from perfect, but that's like saying you're rained on but staring at a rainbow. You really don't mind some idiosyncracies or sometimes the perceived character imbalances. However, for veteran gamers, I can understand why they seldom would play this more than once: points. Everything you do generates points and sometimes it feels like clever maneuvers to block your rivals really didn't account for much. Even though there is an on-board points tracker, it seems like too many surprise points awards can sometimes thwart what you might have played as a stellar game. Thankfully the designers offered a few variants to give it a try, but I would add a couple of house rules namely no ties for objective awards so this limits collusion. Get this game: -because you enjoy aesthetic displays, seriously it's beautiful to non-gamers as well -it's thematic and very light game, good for beginners -you'll enjoy it win or lose without fretting over all the power-eking and power plays Don't get this game if: -the lightest game you'll play is Twilight Imperium -you prefer casted soldiers over wooden meeples -you don't like eurogames or non-combative themes