Hanamikoji

Today I'm going to looking at a game that I've been having a lot of fun with over the last couple of weeks, Hanamikoji.

Hanamikoji is a two player game in which both players try to win the favours of various Geisha's - entertainers, artists, dancers etc - and they do this by providing each Geisha with their performance items.

There are seven Geisha's each with their own unique performance item, ranging from a flute to a flowery hairpiece, your objective is to provide them with a majority number of their items to win their favour.

Each Geisha comes with a number shown on their card; there are three Geisha's with a number 2, two with the number 3, one with the number 4 and lastly one with the number 5. The number on the Geisha cards denote two things, firstly: the amount of cards showing that Geisha's item that are in the deck, for instance a Geisha with the number 2 on it only has two of the corresponding items necessary to win her favour in the deck, whereas the Geisha with the number 5 on the card has five copies of her necessary item in the deck.
Secondly, the numbers on the Geisha card represents how many points you gain for winning her favour.

Set up

First, place all the Geisha cards in the centre of the table between both players ranging from 2 to 5, as shown above, it doesn't matter what order you put the three Geisha's with the number 2 on them as long as they are the first three in line and the same for the two with the number 3 on them.
Then place one of the seven victory markers on each Geisha to represent that they are neutral and haven't been won over by either player. Shuffle the deck of twenty one item cards and remove one face down, then deal seven cards to each player.

Finally, take the action tiles - there should be four pairs of two - and give each player one for each of those pairs.

Gameplay

Each turn, players must use one of their action tiles to try and provide the Geisha's with their corresponding item in order to gain favour.

Action Tile 1 - Take one card from your hand and remove it from the game face down. At the end of the round, take that face down card and place it in front of the corresponding Geisha. This tile is very useful if you are worried that your opponent will get the majority on a Geisha, you can use it almost as a late game trick to possibly tie for a Geisha or maybe even win the majority.

Action Tile 2 - When you use this action tile, you take two cards from your hand and remove them from the game. Unlike the first action tile, you don't get to put them in front of a Geisha at the end of the round, these cards a removes until the start of the next round. This tile is useful if you know you have the majority of items for a Geisha and don't want your opponent getting their hands on them, so you can get rid of them guaranteeing the victory point of one Geisha.

Action Tile 3 - Using this tile requires you to take three cards from your hand and reveal them to your opponent. Your opponent then chooses one of those three cards and puts it in front of the corresponding Geisha and you get the other two cards and do the same. Using this tile early can give you a good idea of what your opponent might have lurking in their hand and it could create a tough decision for them as they only get one of the three cards.

Action Tile 4 - For the last action tile you must take four cards of your choice from your hand, split them up into two piles of two cards each - the split is completely up to you - then your opponent gets the choice of one pile and puts those cards in front of the corresponding Geisha and you get the remaining pile and do the same. The beauty of this tile is giving your opponent an option between a duo of cards that looks good for them but leaving a great set for yourself, possibly resulting in winning the majority for a Geisha.

The object of the game is to gain the favour of four Geisha's over a number of rounds, keeping the victory point of each as long as your opponent never gains the majority, or scoring eleven points. Points are scored equal to the Geisha you have a majority and therefor have gained the victory point of, for example; if a player wins the majority of the Geisha's with four and five in the corners, that player has scored 9 points, players keep track of their points scored from round to round to make sure the game has an ending point. If at any point both scoring eleven points and gaining the favour of four Geisha's would happen, the four Geisha's takes priority as it's harder to achieve.

Thoughts

Hanamikoji as a whole is a very interesting game that promotes forethought and strategy. It has a lot of replay-ability and has a lot of charm and enjoyment when it comes to the design; compact, colourful and the right amount of challenging that doesn't always punish you for making errors. It's a very easy game to grasp and hard to master and will always vary from player to player as to what cards they want to use with what tiles, but overall I think players will have a lot of fun with this little two player game and get a lot of use out of it.

Hopefully this look at Hanamikoji has inspired you to try it for yourself, in which case head down to your local games and hobbies store and they will be more than happy to demo it for you. Until then however, keep checking back to Game Changers for more gaming news and updates.