Panda and Baby Panda

 Many board games attempt—often in the rule book—to tell a story. Some go that extra mile to create one or more deep worlds where the game takes creative form. Still others include a special digital program to tell that story along with a set of accents and sound effects along with an atmospheric musical score.

 Only one game I've seen has a cute microcomic about the random trouble of receiving a diplomatic gift in the form of a very hungry panda.

 Takenoko , the creation of Antoine Bose ( 7 Wonders , Tokaido , Ghost Stories ), tells just such a story, immersing people in the magical scene of a Japanese imperial bamboo garden. The gardener, instead of calmly doing his work, has to fight with a magical large-sized eating machine.

 In this game, localized in Ukraine by Geekach Games , players try to manage the location and development of a beautiful bamboo garden while satisfying the voracious appetite of a giant panda. The Chibis expansion even adds Mrs. Panda and a growing family for everyone's favorite black and white creature. The only thing missing is live streaming from the giant panda camera).

 The comic opening sets the stage for a carefree, magical experience that might even inspire a haiku. Did it interest you? I believe so.

BAMBOO SPROUTS

 During training, players receive personal game tablets to store various components and mark selected actions. A tiled pond is placed in the center of the table to prepare a garden, and the figures of the Gardener and the Panda are placed in this pond, presumably to cool their feet.

 During the game, players look at three types of tasks. They are presented in the form of three separate stacks of objective cards. Players are dealt one card of each type at the start to start a fruitful garden of creativity and pave the way for victory points:

• Landscaping by placing hexagonal tiles next to an existing garden
• Irrigation of the land by laying water channels from the central pond
• Growing 3D bamboo shoots in irrigated areas for a cute panda to feast on

 Each turn, players begin by rolling a weather die and applying its effects, which represent a kind of meteorological blessing: a solar bonus action, a rain-soaked bamboo growth, a windy duplicate action, a lightning-fast panda bamboo snack, cloud land enhancement tokens, or any action.

 Usually, players perform two different actions out of five possible:

• Take three plot tiles and place one in the garden
• Take one irrigation channel, use it immediately or save it for later
• Move the gardener to another area to grow bamboo
• Move the Panda to another area to eat a piece of bamboo
• Draw one target card from the deck of your choice

 There are a number of features that accompany these actions to both help and hinder would-be Zen gardeners. The Gardener and the Panda must move in straight lines, which in a six-tile garden means that not every tile is available at any given time. The gardener's work is effective not only on his current tile, but also on every adjacent tile of the corresponding color. Land improvements include enclosures that prevent the pandas from eating, fertilizer that doubles growth, and a well that provides irrigation without connecting to a pond. They can be placed at any time to change the look of the garden.

 If a player has completed any of their objective cards after completing their actions, they may place them as completed. The game continues in this way until a certain number of objectives are reached according to the number of players. The first to reach this number receives a small blessing of points from the Emperor when the scoring begins. The points then depend entirely on the value of the completed objective cards.

 If there is a tie, the winner is the player who fed the panda the best.

BABYS

 The Chibis expansion adds Miss Panda to further frustrate and hinder the Gardener's efforts. As it turned out, the female is not so hungry for bamboo. When it is moved to a Panda space instead of eating bamboo, players receive a Panda token from the supply that matches the color of the tile. Each of the limited number of Pandenyat tokens carries victory points and gives an irrigation token, an enhancement token, or the ability to exchange an objective card.

 On the other hand, Chibis also adds a number of unique garden tiles that lead to a season of abundance. The second pond makes watering easier. Kamis tile grows all three colors of bamboo, creating endless possibilities for any type of target. Sacred hills help each tile of a certain color in the garden grow, regardless of location. The Gardener's Hut provides more variety and control when selecting objective cards.

 With the addition of the Panda family, Chibis adds a whole new way to earn points. By improving the garden, the expansion puts the land on anabolic steroids, the sprouting bamboo is almost out of control; and because Panda is distracted, he doesn't eat as often. The poor gardener must have lost his roof! Is there no end to this unbearable madness?!

 Everyone knows that sometimes expansion is not a good idea. Chibis aren't mandatory by any means, but they do allow you to explore a wild "What if..." scenario by gently nudging some of the game's features. I found this to be a refreshing twist on a game we already love.

VISUAL

 Takenoko , from top to bottom, is visually captivating on the table. The grounds are a beautiful combination of green, pink and yellow with vertically cut wooden bamboo shoots. The garden grows wildly, starting with a small pond to engulf the table in a colorful landscape. The cards feature shades of blue, red and purple to add a spectrum of splashes. The Gardener and the Panda are painted miniatures of the comic book characters. Regardless of the outcome of the game, it's impossible to walk away from a session without admiring the aesthetics. In fact, you'll probably be inclined to take a picture of the garden at some point during the game.

 I already mentioned the comic, but I have to revisit the concept because Takenoko boasts some of my favorite rules. This is the only book in our collection that the kids fight over when the game starts. The illustrations are cute and humorous and immediately draw players into the game's narrative. Throughout the book, the gardener's frustrations come to life as he learns the rules and struggles with his huge, pleasant friend. The subject matter really fascinates me and these characters have personality.

 Takenoko 's base game is a gem. In a two-player game, the speed of the party is insane, often limiting decision-making on fast-track objective cards to nine cards. Three and four players lay out the entire garden and provide more strategy.

 On the more critical side, any game that contains non-reward contract cards is prone to being trashed. In practice, this means spending late-game turns desperately picking up random objective cards—instead of making fruitful moves, mind you—trying to get into conditions that already exist in order to rack up points quickly. Takenoko doesn't hurt to penalize cards in hand at the end of the game.

 Over the years, there has been a lot of commentary floating around regarding the distribution of points on goal cards. The core game prioritizes panda feeding over everything else — especially the objective cards — which can be frustrating for those who like to seek balance, though I never thought the imbalance broke the game. Chibis presents two variants of the rules that brilliantly bridge the gap on the way to general happiness. One suggests banning pandas from feeding on the basal segments of bamboo shoots, which poses several obstacles to a strategy of targeted eating. The second grants a bonus for each full set of three objective cards, suddenly making these previously finicky objective cards very important. Although the expansion was a recent addition to our collection, this second rules mod has been in the game since we first heard about it, partly because I like to reward balanced play.

 The addition of tons of baby pandas certainly changes the physical landscape of the game, but the new scoring path only sees a fixed amount of points available on the table, which sometimes turns out to be the best actions without delaying garden beats. It only takes one try at the Babies, Babies and All Babies strategy to realize that victory does not await those who neglect the core game.

 If you're a frequent visitor to BoardGameGeek (BGG), you know that every game page has a list of game mechanics. Dice roll, tile placement, set collection, and other board terms help seasoned hobbyists describe the game experience. Takenoko has a whopping eleven mechanics. Eleven! There's a surprising amount going on in this lively garden, but not to the point of being overwhelming. The mechanics fit the theme perfectly and I find it has all the relaxation that The Gardener comic seems to want!

 The broad yet light collection of mechanics makes Takenoko a great game to introduce young and new gamers to the ins and outs of the hobby without blowing their minds. From opening the box to testing the finished product, Takenoko immerses the player in the stakes of what's possible in a more challenging version with modular maps, changing landscapes, resource management, and some nice low-consequence decisions. This is a game that shows that you can still do this in board games.

 Despite ten years and thousands of competing games, I'd still say that Takenoko is the peach of a family game. The theme, aesthetics and gameplay are skillfully combined to create a playful and memorable experience. Like many of Bose's designs, Takenoko is relatively light-hearted fun whose greatest gift is the time spent together in another world without leaving the table.

USEFUL LINKS

Takenoko on the BGG portal

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/70919/takenoko

Takenoko: Chibis on BGG

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/174095/takenoko-chibis

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