Revisiting Tokaido: Duo

We continue our #RoadToEssen series - where we revisit games from SPIEL22 to see if they still hold up - with something smaller and lighter this time: Tokaido Duo!
I guess this one remained a bit less popular and less played by people, but I like it. It might not be the best game out there, but it’s a fun fast playing low-stress experience for 2 players. It’s “Zenness” is further aided by its gorgeous art-gallery-like-white looks. 🤩 Plus I think this game has the best looking cardboard coins ever! 😄

In Tokaido Duo it’s all about dice 🎲 drafting! There are 3 dice, 1 corresponding to each of the meeples that players have - the 🖌️Painter, the 📿Pilgrim and the 👘Merchant.
Each round one player will draft 2 of these dice and the other player 1, then they switch for the next round.

Depending on what color and value die you pick, you can move the matching character as many spaces. Each character has different rules of movement, which is the core of the fun puzzle:

🖌️ The Painter moves in the inner areas, either painting landscapes or selling completed paintings.
📿 The Pilgrim walks clockwise on the outer edge of the map, visiting temples and gardens, raising their values on his board as end game multipliers.
👘 The Merchant walks on roads between the inner areas, either drawing ware tiles out of a bag, or selling a type of ware in the outer villages.

Every character does its own thing to score points, with the goal of having the biggest sum of points - whenever a character’s scoring condition is maxed out, the game’s end is triggered.
There are also some upgrade tiles you can claim with the Pilgrim that modifiy rules in your favor - but it can be taken from you later.

There is some randomness - sometimes dice might be worthless in your situation, or you could draw wares you don’t need with the merchant - but I still feel you need to make clever decisions. The primary thing you decide is which dice to pick and which to leave to your opponent, but I think that is just enough to keep you engaged until the end of the game. 🙂