Just chill
❓️ What is your go-to game for relaxing?
I always liked the clean white look of Tokaido, but because we mostly play 2p that game wasn’t a viable purchase for us. When I first heard about Tokaido Duo and that it was designed by Antoine Bauza (who also did 7 Wonders Duel) I was really intrigued. Fast forward to SPIEL22 and we finally have this game. 😁
The rules are simple: in each round you roll 3 dice and draft them to move your 3 meeples: The Pilgrim, The Merchant and the Painter:
🏮The Pilgrim moves around the edge of board in a clockwise direction, activating effects of the location where you stop. Red and green spaces are temples and gardens that move your trackers on the Pilgrim board. At game end you multiply the two values to get your Pilgrim points. You can also get the hot spring token that allows a double action, unlock passive abilities or get money if you land on a town spot.
🧮 The Merchant walks on the lines between the towns of the board. Mountain towns allow you to draw wares out of a bag, moving to Coastal towns allows you to sell wares you have collected. Each Coastal town is only looking for one certain type, so it’s worth it to collect bigger sets for a bigger payout. Every 10 gold you collect will be exchanged to a gold slab which unlocks end game points on the merchant board.
🖌️ The Painter walks on areas of the board that are created by the roads between towns. Wherever you land you can either paint paintings (as many as meeples are around that area), or gift a painting if your area matches your top-left-most painting to unlock end game points.
The game goes on until one of the characters is maxed out, then you finish up the round and sum up the scores from all 3 character types.
Some actions are pretty basic and simple to perform, but the meat of the game is in choosing the dice on your turn. When you choose you try to get the ones that you desperately need, but also try to deny your opponent as best as possible.
💬 This is a very relaxing game all-in-all, not too complicated and also great for casual gamers! We enjoy the game and it will stay in our collection.🥰
