💎 BGG rated 7.6/10 w. just 640 ratings 💎
💡 Designers: Mathieu Bieri and Alex Fortineau
🖨️ Publisher: Merle éditions
📅 Released: 2024
🧑🏻🤝🧑🏿 Players: 2 (1 vs 1)
🎂 Age: 10+
⚖️ Weight: 2.05
⏱️ Time: 20 minutes
Naishi is a brilliant 1 vs 1 tableau builder set in the Imperial Court of feudal Japan.
Players are rival architects assembling a ten-card province: two rows of five, one public, one hidden. That hidden row is where the mind games begin.Naishi is about timing and precision. Get the right card in the right slot at the right time and the points cascade. The Naishi herself (a court lady) scores only from the middle. Advisors want to sit beside her. Horsemen ride stronger when crowned with Banners. Forts prefer corners, Sentinels guard beside them.
Your two emissaries let you meddle, swapping cards or burning options. Used well, they’re the game’s sharpest tools. But the real tension lies in the once-per-game (not per player) Imperial Decree - a bold move that lets you swap one of your opponent’s cards for your own.
Beneath its serene surface, Naishi is a real duel. Gorgeous artwork, clever mechanisms and satisfying scoring combos make for one of my favourite 2 player games. I can’t wait to get my hands on the upcoming expansion.
🇫🇷 Philibert (Europe, affiliate link)
💎 BGG rated 7.7/10 w. just 588 ratings 💎
💡 Designer: Jacobo Rufete
🖨️ Publisher: PIF Games
📅 Released: 2023
🧑🏻🤝🧑🏿 Players: 2-5
🎂 Age: 8+
⚖️ Weight: 1.33/5
⏱️ Time: 10-15 minutes
Welcome to the best new card game I’ve played this year...
In Japanese folklore, yokai are spirits that meddle in human affairs. Yokai Pagoda channels that same mischief into a tense, strategic card game about making the right offerings at a haunted pagoda.
Each round, you play cards onto one of two offering piles flanking the pagoda deck. Match suit or number and you can dump a second card into another player’s hand. Play higher and you draw from the deck or the opposite pile. Play lower and, if your hand total is 3 or less, you can end the round outright.
Scoring is super-interesting as only your lowest card in each suit counts. A single ‘1’ cancels that lingering ‘9’, so low numbers spread across many suits are gold.
It’s fast - 15 minutes at most - but layered with subtle traps and timing plays. Tight, inventive and quietly brilliant, for its length I’m yet to find a game that offers more strategic depth.
Buy a copy:
🇺🇸 Riftgate Games (North America)
🇬🇧 Chaos Cards (UK)
💎 BGG rated 7.3/10 w. just 686 ratings 💎
💡 Designer: Luís Brueh
🎨 Artist: Luís Brueh
🖨️ Publisher: Brueh Games Inc.
📅 Released: 2021
🧑🏻🤝🧑🏿 Players: 1-4
🎂 Age: 14+
⚖️ Weight: 1.96/5
⏱️ Time: 30-45 minutes
Yokai feature again in this tableau-building area majority game that’s a cross between Wingspan and Perch.
In Night Parade, players lead asymmetric clans of mischievous Yokai (cats, foxes, bears and frogs). The action unfolds in two main locations: your personal player area, which has three rows (”Parades”) of yokai cards, and the main board of tiles depicting Japanese islands.
Each turn, you choose one Parade and run that row of cards for its action icons (think Wingspan, but reversed). These actions allow you to put out or move meeples on the islands and gain valuable tokens for buying new Yokai cards.
As soon as you have amassed the number of meeples shown on an island tile, you can sanctify it for your Clan by placing a torii gate there. First person to place five gates triggers the end of the game. Points come from torii gates and hidden objectives you get at the start of the game.
The components are top-notch, the artwork is vivid and the gameplay is an interesting mix of mechanics. The first time I played this, we didn’t stop laughing from start to finish. There’s just the right amount of joshing without the “take that” elements ever feeling too spiteful.
💎 BGG rated 7.1/10 w. just 208 ratings 💎
💡 Designer: Yasushi Nakaguro
🎨 Artist: Maud Chalmel
🖨️ Publisher: Bonsai Games
📅 Released: 2020
🧑🏻🤝🧑🏿 Players: 2
⚖️ Weight: 2.08/5
⏱️ Time: 50-75 minutes
I’m not usually the biggest fan of war games, but this one definitely hits the spot. Set during the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905, Port Arthur is 2 player naval strategy game. It plays in less than a hour, which is refreshing for a war game.
It has a lot in common with some of my favourite 2 player games such as Watergate - namely that it’s light on setup and rules, but you still have deep decisions to make.
Players can either take on the role of Russia or Japan. Japan must safeguard its supply lines to Manchuria while landing armies on the mainland. Russia must disrupt them and hold key waters like the Yellow Sea and Tsushima Strait.
Unsurprisingly, combat takes place via dice rolls, but somehow the game still manages to feel fresh. The artwork and the components help elevate this to an hour very much well spent.
🇫🇷 Philibert (Europe, affiliate link)
💎 BGG rated 7.0/10 w. just 964 ratings 💎
💡 Designer: Marco Teubner
🖨️ Publisher: Grail Games
📅 Released: 2021
🧑🏻🤝🧑🏿 Players: 2-4
🎂 Age: 10+
⚖️ Weight: 1.57/5
⏱️ Time: 45 minutes
Dinner at a teppanyaki grill is part meal, part spectacle and Hibachi tries to capture that same sizzling chaos. Players are rival chefs tossing poker chips onto a central board to claim ingredients and complete recipes. The board is the grill, the bowls are ingredient space and every throw matters.
What makes it interesting is that the poker chips have values, ones that you try and conceal from other players. In effect, you’re secretly bidding for ingredients. The highest chip total in a bowl gets first pick of ingredients, but must pay the full value of their chips. So how much are you willing to pay to guarantee yourself what you need?
It’s raucous fun, but beneath the chaos lies genuine tactical depth as well-aimed chips can manipulate the market or starve rivals. It ensures that Hibachi bridges the gap between party game and something more.
Buy a copy:
🇺🇸 GameNerdz (North America)
🇬🇧 Zatu (UK, affiliate link)
🇫🇷 Philibert (Europe, affiliate link)
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