I’m intrigued by the latest Kickstarter for Jordan Draper’s Tokyo series of games. I haven’t played any of them, so I was wondering if any of you fine people had, and had opinions on them.
The focus of the Kickstarter is expansions for Tokyo Metro and Tokyo Tsukiji Market, but I’m interested in thoughts on any of the games in the series.
I backed for the first 3 games. Metro, Jutaku and Jidohanbaiki. Jidohanbaiki was pointless. The drinks machine didn’t work. I emailed, got the response it should do about 10%, spent half an hour dropping things in at different angles, speeds and quantities. Not 1 thing stuck in it. I sold it.
Jutaku is fun. There’s a game there. Being dyspraxic I found it a bit frustrating with being all slow but enjoyed doing the building and was happy accepting I’d never win. However my 2 main gaming friends hate dexterity games. So I sold it.
Tokyo Metro though. Amazing. It’s a hybrid train game and worker placement and really unique. The waterfall of action spots is cool. The board is meaningful and the investment side of things really adds some spice and stops my main complaint with WP games. I often find worker placements to be boring because of how linear they are, this game stops that. Really glad I have a copy.
I started to pledge for the metro expansion then saw $20 of postage would make it a $50 purchase. If I was buying more things I’m sure the postage would be fine. But I’m not so it’s not.
I watched the Heavy Cardboard stream of Tokyo Tsukiji Market the other day and was very much intrigued. It seems like Jordan Draper’s thing is to put a unique spin on classic games, the obvious inspiration for TTM being Container. It has a similiar “only other players can use what you produce” dynamic but introduces various markets each with different rulesets. I am still unsure whether I should go for this or wait for the Container reprint that has been teased, but who knows if and when that is going to happen.