This is a series of posts where I play 100 boardgames.
Game: Tokaido
Designer: Antoine Bauza
Year: 2012
Country: Ranska
Publisher: Stonemaier Games
Along with Azul, Tokaido is one of the games recommended to me when I asked people about beauty in boardgames. It’s a contemplative, simple game about traveling on Japan’s scenic East sea road, stopping at inns and taking in the sights. The game is about tourism in the least crass, most aesthetic way possible. Witnessing the beauty of the world is a spiritual experience.
Design-wise, Tokaido’s board presents the road as a single line composed of stops at which different game mechanical effects occur. At one you can buy souvenirs and at another relax in the hot springs. There are multiple ways to accrue victory points, for example by collecting pieces of scenic vistas you can assemble in front of you from cards as you play.
One of the game’s most distinctive mechanics is that it’s always the player’s turn who’s last. If you jump ahead on the road, other players may take several turns before you get to play again. This promotes dithering, which in some other game might be a negative quality. Here, it feels thematically appropriate for the setting. Who wants to rush when traveling the East sea road?
At least when we played it, the turn order mechanic had a powerful equalizing effect, and we were very close to each other in point tallies pretty much all through the game.
You have some tactical options for blocking the play of your opponents. Perhaps someone needs money and you can occupy that space instead, keeping them penniless. In some games, sabotage is in the spirit of the experience but here it feels unsportsmanlike. I did it and I felt bad.
One of the pleasures of playing Tokaido is that it invites you to contemplate your journey and the various tokens of your experiences you have accrued. Eventually you’ll have a cluster of cards, from meals to people met along the way, in front of you. It resonated with the way traveling in new countries and regions feels like, as you gather impressions which then become part of you.