Kitsu
- Board's Eye View
- 9 hours ago
- 2 min read
We've commented previously on Board's Eye View about the current vogue for tricksy trick-taking games. Thomas Favreliere's Kitsu is in a similar genre. Tho' it looks Japanese, the card game was originally published by GRRRE Games in France and it's being brought to an English-speaking audience by Lucky Duck and Goliath Games.
Kitsu is played either as a two-player head to head or as a team game with four or six players (ie: two teams of two or of three players). The game represents a contest between two competing clans: Zenko (blue) and Yako (orange). The opposing players or teams each take one clan/colour, and to win they need to advance their clan token along a track ahead of their opponent's clan token.
Players are dealt a hand of six cards. The cards in the deck comprise number cards (1-6) for each clan and three special effect cards. Each turn or trick involves players playing four cards (six if you're playing with two teams of three): one card each player; two cards each in a two-player game. The card for each colour are added up and the clan with the highest value is advanced along a track by the difference between the totals for each colour.
Special effects cards can variously 'destroy' a previously played number card, compel a player to play a card of your clan's colour (assuming they have one) or switch the colour of all the cards played (ie: blue cards are treated as orange and vice versa). In addition, if a clan marker advances by four or more spaces, the other clan gets to take a power marker that can be played for another single-use special effect.
Kitsu is a fast-playing hand management game. Ours plays at Board's Eye View have mostly come in at a comfortable filler-length 20 minutes. The power tokens aren't just a catch-up mechanic, they are powerful enough to affect tactics: in a trick that you're winning you might deliberately play a card that pegs your advantage to just three spaces rather than maximising it and have your opponent collect a power token. The rules expressly prohibit looking through the discard pile unless you have the power token that allows this (and which lets you retrieve one of the cards and add it to your hand) so Kitsu is a game in which card counters will have an advantage: there's a known number of cards of each type and it certainly helps to be cognisant of which cards still remain in play...