Takenoko

Takenoko is a game about Japan, China, pandas, bamboo, gardening, and a whole lot of cute. In this game you compete against one another to meet objectives as you cultivate plots, irrigate them, move a panda around to eat bamboo, and move a gardener around to grow bamboo.

The game is created by Antoine Bauza and published by Bombyx and Matagot. This was our third time playing Takenoko and we decided against playing with the Chibis expansion this time. We had previously combined the expansion cards into our deck so had a little bit of a confusion trying to take the cards out.

The artwork in this game is really lovely - with a main colour palette of green, pink and yellow that corresponds to both the plot tiles and the wooden bamboo shoots.

Our play time was 53 minutes which was a little long, a little on the long side due mostly to us taking our time as we haven't played this in a while. Our scores at the end of the game were Danny (45) and MB (39). 

Danny:

Overall thoughts: A fun and fairly simple game which is still quite challenging. The components in this game are amazing and there are a lot of choices about gameplay.  

Best bit: Drawing an objective at the end of the game that was already achieved and getting a bonus 4 points in the final round.

Worst bit: The game can be quite random and luck-dependant, for example I  drew an objective card at the end that gave me an extra 4 points. 

Next time: I wouldn't change anything I was happy with my strategy. I base it off what cards come out and was mostly going for the blu objective cards that are based on plot patterns. 

MB:

Overall thoughts: Love this game - it is reasonably simple but has heaps of different actions and choices to make which adds a lot of variety. Even though we had played it before I had forgotten a little bit so Danny had to reteach me which was great (thanks Danny) but also meant I only figured things out part way through at which point I changed my strategy (which was a bad idea).

Best bit: The components are really nice, the cats seemed to really like it. The game art was pretty cute too and I liked the colours they chose.

Worst bit: I knocked over the bamboo (which are stacked up to four high) heaps of times with my sleeve, and the irrigation action is so slow and boring.

Next time: I would pick one strategy and stick with it. I want to play this again with more people and with the Chibi expansion because I really like the Mama Panda addition and some of the new variation in objectives. 

Overall Rating: 15.5/20 (Danny rated 8, and MB rated 7.5)

We want to include ratings in our play recaps but we also want to make it clear that these ratings are based just on how this play went for us rather than a rating of the game itself - as it is quite hard to rate the game after just a few infrequent plays.