Hanami board game review: A flawlessly sharp euro that’s sweet as saké

These days, the word ‘eurogame’ comes with baggage. We expect elaborate table spreads, ten-year turns, and strategic web that gives even seasoned tacticians analysis paralysis. Hanami honors that last part of the genre’s tradition, but it strips away the rest of the chaff. This is the kind of board game that makes reviewers say high-brow words like elegant. There’s not a scrap of wasted space.

This won’t shock anyone that knows Hanami’s history. The accessible strategy game is a remake of Samurai, a popular game created by Dr. Reiner Knizia in 1998. Knizia’s name is inseparable from the world of board games. He’s designed over 800 of the things, and many of his works are considered the best board games in history.

Samurai is among the better-loved Knizia titles, so it’s no surprise publisher Keymaster Games saw value in reviving it. Hanami will feel very familiar to Samurai fans, though Keymaster has added new action tiles, new ability cards, and an entire second map to the area majority game.

It also completely changed the theme. No longer are you Samurai bands vying for the favor of local factions. Now, you’re picnickers competing for the best spot in the park, where you can eat bento and enjoy the blooming of Japan’s famous cherry blossoms.

I adore the concept. Repositioning tourism as a battle for area control sends a stark message about how, in today’s world, we commodify our experience of the natural world. Everyone wants the holiday snaps no one else has, and they’re willing to fight to get it. Once tranquil natural scenes become crowded by experience-seekers (who usually see the whole thing through a second pair of eyes, their smartphone). There’s so much desperation to collect these special moments that we forget to live them.

Japan has seen its yearly visitors grow from 10 million to 30 million in just ten years. Complaints of crowding and bad manners are rampant. One two even canceled its yearly cherry-blossom viewing festival this year because of tourists (Hanami, by the way, is the tradition of viewing beautiful flowers like the cherry-blossom). Japan is far from the only nation suffering from overtourism, but it makes a fitting site for a board game exploring the topic.

While the broader concept hits home, the theme sadly doesn’t always map onto Knizia’s mechanics. That’s because these panicked picnics imply a vicious struggle for space. This is present in Hanami, but its bite is lessened by the game’s symbiotic player relationships.

Let me explain. Each player has a pool of tiles they’ll draw from to create their hand, and they’ll place (at minimum) one of these tiles per turn. The goal is to place your pieces around parks on the board, where cherry blossom, lantern, or bento tokens are waiting.

When a park’s land tiles are completely filled, these tokens are given to the player who placed the most valuable tiles in that ‘suit’. Drop a four-pip cherry blossom tile, and you’re a shoe-in to grab the related token.

Other players may scupper your plans, however, with wild tiles that count towards all token types. They might also throw in a special tile, which allows them to do things like sub in another tile of their choice that’s already on the board, or copy the value of an adjacent tile. Plus, everyone has a powerful once-per-game ability card that can shuffle things even more dramatically.

You can learn to play Hanami in ten minutes, and even full four-player games won’t last more than an hour (at least, not without some serious analysis paralysis). But calling it ‘simple’ undersells the wealth of decisions you have to make. Each tile placed is an opportunity lost or gained.

Much of this is down to Hanami’s unique scoring system. There are only ever three points to claim, and they go to the person who collects the most tokens of a particular type. Ties are decided by the number of tokens in other suits you collected.

This gives you several things to juggle at once. You need to establish dominance in a suit, but you need to block others from doing the same. You also need a healthy backup stock of tiles for tie-breaks. Do you play your most powerful tile now, or save it for when you have a clearer idea of who your main rival is? Do you corner a token with fewer surrounding spaces now or wait? So many questions!

The special thing about this gameplay loop is that players need each other. Hanami’s two boards are delightfully cramped, so every tile placed also helps your opponents further their goals. It’s tough to surround a park by yourself, so you’re often relying on the plays (or misplays) of others to score big.

Here lies Hanami’s delicious tension. Here also lies that unfortunate mismatch in theme. If I stretch my imagination, I can see a more hopeful version of the game, where citizens work together to create a wonderful cherry blossom viewing festival (while also sneakily saving the best picnic spots for themselves). It’s a less seamless ludonarrative, however, and a less impactful one.

This is my only fault with Hanami, however. It’s hard to find any other flaw in Knizia’s airtight design. The new additions by Keymaster only add to the game’s replayability – giving this $40 board game (or $70, if you want deluxe components) tremendous value for money. If the core game wasn’t already almost 30, I’d be hailing its innovations. All I can say is, if this Knizia classic has previously passed you by, Hanami is a must-play. Short, sharp, and sweet, like well-crafted saké.

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A review copy of Hanami was provided by the publisher.

Source: Wargamer