Abstract Strategy

User summary
ことりファイト! (Birdie Fight) is card game about birds trying to achieve dominance in the forest. Each bird is a different colour in the game.

Players are forest spirits, trying to secretly guide their chosen bird to success. The cards are numbered 1 to 7 in red, blue, green and white. The players lay a card from their hand to a 5x5 grid after nut tokens (points) are laid out for each row and column.

When the grid is full of cards, the rows and columns are checked. The colour with the highest total in a line takes the nut token for that bird. Colours with tied totals are ignored, so a low value card can win the nut token for that bird.

When the nuts are totalled up for the birds, the players reveal their final hand card. That card is the bird they favoured (so more than one player might be helping the same bird), and for each player, the number on the card is added to the nut total to identify who has the dominant bird.

Since the players choose which bird they favour by leaving it as their final hand card, they can delay this choice until they see how the game is panning out.

The game rules come in Japanese and English, the game itself being language free. The game includes rules for 2-4 players or a solitaire/co-op mode for 1-2 players.

War Chest is an all-new bag-building war game! At the start of the game, raise your banner call (drafting) several various units into your army, which you then use to capture key points on the board. To succeed in War Chest, you must successfully manage not only your armies on the battlefield, but those that are waiting to be deployed.

Each round you draw three unit coins from your bag, then take turns using them to perform actions. Each coin shows a military unit on one side and can be used for one of several actions. The game ends when one player — or one team in the case of a four-player game — has placed all of their control markers. That player or team wins!

—description from the publisher

Kodama Duo is a two-player standalone version of Kodama: The Tree Spirits and a 6th player expansion. You will grow a tree by placing branch cards in clever arrangements, making a happy home for your Kodama!

Kodama Duo is a card placement game for 2 players that plays in 30 minutes. Players will turn over one Decree card per season to set the unique conditions. During the Growing Phase, players take turns revealing branch cards and splitting them into two piles until each player has added four branch cards to their tree. In the Kodama phase, players will each choose one of their Kodama to score and live in their tree. The game last 3 seasons (12 turns) and whoever cares for their Kodama best will be remembered for generations!

There are a couple of cool twists on the original Kodama rules for Duo.

First, instead of a display of branch cards to choose, each turn one player (the splitter) will reveal three branch cards from the deck. They will then split those cards into two piles. The other player (the chooser) will select one of the branch piles. The other pile will go to the splitter. Then, both players will add one of the branch cards they received to their tree. The player who received two branch cards will discard the extra card.

Second, Duo introduces spirit tokens, which are tokens with the six features from Kodama. After the player that received two branch cards discards one, the other player receives a spirit token from the discarded branch card. They pick one of the features from that card and take the corresponding spirit token. That player then places that token over one of the icons on their tree. This allows interesting scoring interactions as feature chains can be shortened or lengthened to increase the scoring potential for future branch placements.

Additionally, most of the new Kodama cards and Decree cards interact with the spirit tokens and splitter/chooser mechanic. All of these changes provide an interesting twist on the core mechanics you already love about Kodama.

Duo also introduces the ability to play Kodama: the Tree Spirits with six players. With this update, we've included new rules for branch selection. Each player will secretly choose from four branch cards simultaneously in a draft format. Players will also be allowed to place and score their branch cards simultaneously. This will shorten the downtime that could have been added by including more players.

You are the mayor of a tiny town in the forest in which the smaller creatures of the woods have created a civilization hidden away from predators. This new land is small and the resources are scarce, so you take what you can get and never say no to building materials. Cleverly plan and construct a thriving town, and don't let it fill up with wasted resources! Whoever builds the most prosperous tiny town wins!

In Tiny Towns, your town is represented by a 4x4 grid on which you will place resource cubes in specific layouts to construct buildings. Each building scores victory points (VPs) in a unique way. When no player can place any more resources or construct any buildings, the game ends, and any squares without a building are worth -1 VP. The player with the most VP wins!

-description from publisher

Shadows in Kyoto is a two-player abstract game based with the background of Hanamikoji in which players take control of the Oniwaban, a group of undercover spies, secretly protecting the Shogun, or an intelligence agency of the Meiji Government, funding with the advanced technology of the Western Industrial Revolution.

As the commanders, the players must secretly gather key intelligence from the opponent while protecting their own interests. Through movements, conflicts, and tactics, players have three different paths to victory:
1). Capture 2 enemy agents who possess real intelligence.
2). Let your opponent captures 3 agents of your own who possess fake intelligence.
3). Succeed in the escape of 1 agent of your own who possesses real intelligence.