The board is double-sided, to pare the game down for two players. While two player is good, it’s at its best with three or four players. The extra competition for the shop spaces, and the extra choices with each turn, really bring the game to the boil. It’s so nice to see so many different, lost skills and jobs represented too. Hiring a puppeteer, Buddhist sculptor – or my favourite – the trumpet candy peddler, isn’t something you get to do in many games. Iki takes you on a journey through the famed street of old Tokyo, known as Edo. Hear the voices of Nihonbashi Bridge’s shopping district, meet the professionals who carry out 700­-800 different jobs, enter the interactivity of the shoppers and vendors and become one with the townspeople.

Edo, what is now known as Tokyo, was a thriving city with a huge culture for shopping. Edo’s main district Nihonbashi was filled with shops peddling their wares. Rice, kimonos, fish and many more vendors opened their doors to attract customers and entice them to spend their hard earned money. Twenty-one long years ago, I sat down in an otherwise empty movie theater to watch a movie that I knew virtually nothing about. To calculate the Nagaya harmony bonus, you see if there are multiples of any colour of worker in the sets of stalls. You count how many of them they are (for example if there were three red workers, it’s three iki per worker), and each person who owns a stall gets extra points based on how many of that type of worker they have. So in the red worker example, if someone owned two of those red workers, they’d score 6 points. The other person with a red worker in that Nagaya would get 3 points. And you calculate this for all the Nagayas that have multiple workers of a colour.

Thoughts

The goal of this game is to become the annual Edoite, best personifying what is known as "IKI", an ancient philosophy believed to be the ideal way of living among people in Edo. Knowing the subtleties of human nature, being refined and attractive — these are all elements of a true IKI master.

Iki is a worker placement and set collection game for 2-4 players. I found out about this game when it was nominated for the Kennerspiel award this year and I was intrigued as it’s such a pretty game and I love games with Japanese themes and aesthetics. I’m glad for how well it’s taken off as it could’ve got lost in the sea of games. It’s an excellent game that has so many satisfying components from completing sets to increasing the experience of your workers. I can’t think of many other games like Iki, there’s a lot to love about it. Going To Market Once I finally got the game to the table, I became even more enamored. At first glance, Iki didn’t seem much different from a hundred other games I’d experienced before. But that feeling of sameness soon passed as the game’s intricacies revealed themselves. Subtly complex, like the lines of a well-written haiku, Iki’s inherent beauty becomes apparent the longer you contemplate it. Here’s What You Need To KnowI played a game of Iki with some friends at the UK Games Expo, and we were talking about the game when something dawned on me. I can’t think of another game that’s anything like Iki. Lots of worker-placement games share the same DNA, and I’ve played any number of polyomino tile-laying games. While it’s true that neither set-collection nor rondels are new, the way they’re combined in Iki feels like something new. The artwork is bright and beautiful Iki was originally released in 2015 with very different artwork and this recent re-release has jazzed up the graphics and tightened up some of the rules. I love the new artwork so I’m a big supporter of that, but from what I gather the core gameplay is the same. You’re competing to gain the most iki (effectively victory points), which come from a variety of different actions like getting sets of workers, buildings, sets of fish and tobacco pouches to name a few. The artwork of the fish and tobacco items are also very nice.

Iki is a wonderful light to mid weight euro game that gives your brain a good workout. The game length to decision space is spot on. The game length is around 60 to 90 minutes and for that time you have varied and interesting choices as well some tense gameplay moments and enough time to execute a strategy. Payday is indicated by a little money bag and occurs after the 3rd, 6th and 9th month. On payday you get the bonus stated above each of your little bois on the main board and the circle in the top right corner of any retired workers you have. You also calculate the Nagaya harmony bonus (which I’ll go into later) and then you have to feed all your workers on the main board (not the retired workers but we don’t think about that). If you don’t have enough rice to feed the workers in the stalls, they die, which isn’t great so it’s good to think about rice. At first glance, Iki seemed like a very unassuming game, or at least it did to me. Recruit some characters, move around a board and gain some resources/money etc. There didn't seem like much to the game. But I will admit when I am wrong and I was so wrong on this one. Iki is a wonderfully deep game with a lot of interconnecting parts and tough choices. Yet there is a feeling of elegance to the gameplay.Once all players have taken their turns, the round marker proceeds to the next space. If the game is still within the same season, new merchant cards are introduced. If the season has come to an end, though, an end-of-season scoring occurs. First, all merchants produce, for their owners, whatever is on the next space in front of their Kobun meeples. Secondly, players may earn harmony bonuses if there are matching types of merchants in the various Nagayas. The total number of matching types is multiplied by the total of each person’s Kobuns that are on those cards to determine those players’ scores. There are a few resources that will score you points if you have any left at the game’s end: koban (the big coin) will get you three iki, wood will give you one iki and every four mons will give you an iki. There’s one fewer Nagaya in the 2 player game. And the worker in the middle stall of each Nagaya can be interacted with from both spaces adjacent to it. End Game Scoring Then after you decide who goes first (the person who was most recently in Japan), the last player takes the four starting worker cards and takes one. This continues until the first player gets a starting worker. Then all players place their starting worker with a kobun at the outermost edge of each market (there can only be one in each Nagaya).

Aside from workers, buildings can also be put in the stalls. Once a small boi is placed there they can’t be removed, so it’s a long term investment. Some of the buildings have ongoing effects so sometimes it’s worth it to get one early. Others will only score you points at the end. Throughout the year there are some special events including payday, fires and the changing of seasons.Iki is a 2 – 4 player card drafting, set collection rondel game from designer Koota Yamada and publisher Sorry We Are French. In Iki players are trying to become the best Edokko by helping the city and ensuring the well being and prosperity of its people. Recruit characters from various trades, send them to work on the streets of Nihonbashi and let them gain experience and eventually retire. Iki is a 2 - 4 player card drafting, set collection rondel game from designer Koota Yamada and publisher Sorry We Are French. In Iki players are trying to become the best Edokko by helping the city and ensuring the well being and prosperity of its people. Recruit characters from various trades, send them to work on the streets of Nihonbashi and let them gain experience and eventually retire. If you build a building, you pay the resource cost and place it in an empty stall. You don’t do business with buildings and they can be burnt down in fires. Nagaya Harmony Bonus Iki is a wonderful game. The artwork and presentation throughout is beautiful, and the graphic design is clear and understandable. For each season, when the cards and collectables refresh, there are more cards than you need, so you’ll always get a fresh combination of artisans to hire. There are so many neat little touches which add to the experience. Take, for example, the Harmony bonuses at the end of each season. Players who group like-coloured buildings together in a quadrant all benefit, so there’s this really juicy communal co-operation to exploit. Players will then move around the rondel, visiting a shop and activating a character. If the character belongs to one of your opponents then the character gains experience and will eventually retire. There is a final phase in which various events may take place such as fires, feeding your characters, refreshing characters, fish, pipes and tobacco pouch tokens and gaining income depending on the month.