Kyoto Review- a quick Japanese themed tile game,

Introduction

Kyoto by Reyner Knizia

To celebrate the 20 years of Möbius Games – a Japanese game publisher -, Dr Reyner Knizia designed a quick tile placement game: Kyoto. One to four players will, in turn, place their tiles to get the highest score.

Will you manage to beat your opponents?

Opening the box

When you open the box for the first time, you will only find a few components: a double side rule book and 8 punch-cards, holding all the material needed to play.

Kyoto – material

Game components

To play Kyoto, you will use the following components:

• • 4 players totems – one of each type
  • 1 starting tile
  • 48 tiles

You will also need a sheet of paper and a pen to keep track of the scores.

Game Setup

Place the starting tile in the middle of the table.

Shuffle the 4 players  tiles and randomly give one to every player. Every player will keep his tile visible in front of him.

Shuffle all the remaining 48 tiles and place side down next to the play area.

You are now ready to start your first game.

How to Play

On your turn, draw a tile and place it in play. Simple rules apply to place a tile:

• The tile must be adjacent to at least one existing tile.
• The tile must be in the continuation of existing tiles: every tile is separated into 2 x 2 squares; your tile must be adjacent to only one tile on the row and column.
  

  Kyoto – illegal move: A tile may not be placed so it overlaps only half of another tile.

You can now count your points and add it to your current score. How do you score points?

Look at the tile you placed and define where you continued a series of the same icon:

Kyoto – first move

In this example, I continued a series of fish and a series of gravel. You would then count the number of tiles in these series, excluding the newly placed tile.

With this move, I score two points.

Good news for me: the fish is my totem tile: the points I make on fish are doubled.

So in total, with this move, I scored 3 points.

Kyoto – second move

On his move, my opponent, whose totem are the autumn leaves, expends leaves and moss, each being on 1 tile only. He also scores 3 points.

Kyoto – 8 points

As the game expands, you will gain opportunity to score higher number of points with one tile: with the move he is about to make, my opponent will score:

• 2 points for the gravel
• 6 points for the autumn leaves

A total of 8 points with one tile: not bad, but you can do better!

Keep on playing until every tile has been placed. After scoring the last tile, the player with the highest score is the winner.

Final Thoughts

Kyoto – packing

This game is really quick to explain, and really quick to play. Setting up and packing are as fast as it can get.

Yet, this game still proves a arduous challenge: over time, you’ll learn that playing this move may score you points, but will also offer more opportunities to your opponents. Think before you play.

As all players get used to the game, it will also become more interesting. This game is now recurring on my table with my group of friends, as it is a very quick filler between two longer games. It’s also a great one to relax while playing after a day of work: I can only recommend to add it to your collection.

Played solo, you will want to beat your highscore. A pinch of luck will always help you, but still, thinking carefully of your moves will definitely be the key to consistent scoring.