A few solos from my recent acquisitions
More Casinopolis: I think I am up to 7 or 8 games of it now.
Next up: Let’s Go To Japan
I saw this first on Kickstarter. I was already burned by quite a few lame-ish Kickstarters and decided this would not be one I fell for. Then I played it on BGA and thought: “This is kind of nice, I wonder how it plays on the table.” So I waited for the German edition because this is the kind of game that has lots of flavor text and my occasions to play this other than solo would prefer a German text … I’ve played this about 2 or 3 times on BGA and now twice as a solo on my table and I must say it’s as cozy on the table as I had hoped. My partner might enjoy this, too. The big Japan trip is the last remaining item on our “bucket list” of travels …

More Japan: Shinjuku
I first stumbled across this on some post on BGG or maybe it was Spacebiff or … I really don’t remember. It was a small printrun and quickly unavailable and also my occasions for “train”-y games are rare. Then the German translation appeared … and I looked at it again. It does not have a solo mode, I simply played 2-handed to learn this. I labeled it “teachable” in my geekgroup.app

This game is about Shopping in Tokyo and your goal is to collect sets of customers to get the most points. To that end customers with 4 different needs (food, electronics, books and clothing) appear in the queue and get placed in the various districts. You get to collect customers from a district by sending them to one of the shops you built via the trains you and everyone else built. Thus 5 actions, 2 of which you take on your turn.
So on your turn: take all customers from the first card in the queue and put them in the district the card shows. Then take the card. Move the queue and add as many customers as you just added to the district. (Customer in queue placement is simple, just add it to the card where that type of customer already is or to the next free card).
Then do 2 different actions:
- Build 1 (no card cost) or 2 train sections (pay with card from one of the districts involved)
- Build shop (pay with card of the district)
- Upgrade shop an on a ‘square’ station to department store (satisfies all needs gets you a few joker customers and moves the arc of the game forward) → return a customer to the queue and pay with a card of the district)
- Put all customers from a district on a train and have them travel as far as you want along any trainlines. You may not circle and if there is a matching shop at the start the first customer gets out there and you can stop if you want. As customers pass stations with relevant shops they stop. Owner of the shop collects the customer. If you used any trains other than your own, that player gets a free Income action. Customers who didn’t find a shop stay in the district of the last station you chose for the trip.
- Income–draw up to 4 cards or draw 1 card if you have 4 (kind of the Verlegenheitsaktion, as you get a card each turn and if things go well, other players might use your trains giving you free income)
One more thing: cards of districts where you have shops are wild Now you can play. Sets of 4 customers net 10 points, 3 customers 6, 2 customers 4, single customers give 1 point. There are gold customers who shop for 2 and jokers you get from upgrade to a department store. Everyone has 2 of each shop and 3 department stores. The game ends when there are no more customers in the queue. That’s about it. I don’t expect to get to play this often but I am definitely hoping to find a few occasions for it. If not, even 2 handed play was fun. At first glance there seems to be a nice amount of tactics involved. And on a shared map like this interaction is a given.