Tokaido is one of our favorite games. We've found it to be especially good for engaging our non-gamer friends and relatives, thanks to the uncomplicated game play and stunning graphics. This is great, but honestly, we don't have very many non-gamer friends. The vast majority of our board gaming time is spent with just the two of us, and Tokaido (like most worker-placement games) is a much better game with three or more players, to the point that if you play it with only two you have to use a third "dummy" player to maintain the competition for optimal spaces on the board.
The dummy player is fine, and it doesn't interfere with our enjoyment of the game, but what if there were a version of Tokaido that was designed for two players? Enter Tokaido Duo, the game we didn't know we needed.
Having recently played Tokaido's sequel game Namiji and rejected it for being too similar to Tokaido, we were naturally a little wary of introducing yet another variation on the theme. But in this case, we found the game to be different enough from the original to keep us interested. It has too many small parts to be Travel Tokaido, but it is a version that works well for two players and can be played in a shorter period of time and on a smaller table.
Rather than each player choosing a single character with a unique ability, Tokaido Duo gives each player the same three characters: an Artist, a Pilgrim, and a Merchant, each of whom uses a different part of the board. The Pilgrims travel around the perimeter of the board, which works in much the same way as in the original game, with each space offering a particular benefit that usually racks up points exponentially, so the more often you move your Pilgrim to the same type of space, the better. The Merchants travel the paths between mountain villages, where they buy items, and coastal towns, where they sell them, with each town only interested in a specific item.
The paths between the mountain villages and the coastal towns also form the borders to the different areas of the board where each player can move their Artist. The more other character pawns there are in spaces next to the area the Artist ends up in, the better, introducing a more tactical level of movement than the more single-minded race of the original game.
Who gets to move when is determined by three dice, one for each type of character. At the start of a round, one player rolls the dice and chooses one, indicating which character moves and how many spaces. Then the other player chooses one, and so on. After the third dice is chosen, the other player rolls them and chooses one, becoming the first player. The game ends when any of the characters of either player complete their task: either the Artist gives away all their paintings, the Merchant fills their board with gold, or the Pilgrim visits a temple or garden a certain number of times. This adds another layer of strategy to the game, as players will want to try to manipulate things so that the game ends when it is to their best advantage.
Even though it's meant to be a two-player version of a game that we already have, Tokaido Duo feels like a new game, and will be great for those times when we don't have enough players, enough time, or enough space on the table for the full version.
- Tokaido Duo official website
- Tokaido Duo on BoardGameGeek