In Tatsumi, you play as dragon gathering elements at sea and providing good fortune for your island. There are four elements, and each element is represented by unique colored elemental ring. There are four dragons, and each dragon is represented by one of the elements. The game is over when the elements at sea are exhausted and your island creators are relying on you to provide protection and good fortune for the coming year.
Your gameplay is influenced by your dragon's elemental alignment, and you will need to gather raw elemental rings from the sea purifying them at elemental shrines. Once the elemental rings have been purified, they are placed onto your island, protecting your creators and also scoring you points. May the best water dragon win.
Tatsumi explores new type of resource drafting that revolves around each player's dragon and its positioning and movement around the board. The 3D board physically holds every gatherable resource in the game, eliminating round to round setup tasks and allowing you to strategically plan ahead. Resources are needed to complete set collections and are then placed onto your island into your point scoring engine.
During your turn, you may perform two actions, one of which is a flying action (you are a dragon). The other action is a choice between gathering resources, scoring resources, or shedding a scale. Flying is single point-to-point movement, often setting up your position on the board for your next action. Gathering is taking two resources from the board as a result of your position and unique dragon. Scoring is transferring gathered rings onto your island and scoring points based on each color ring that you transferred. Shedding a scale provides a unique opportunity to interface with the game, often taken during an awkward board state or positioning, and it provides a short term or long term benefit provided.
When you're done with the game, simply reload the 3d board with rings for storage and affix the lid to enable a quick set-up next time you play.
—description from the publisher
- looks interesting
- good production
- Azul
- Mandala Stone
- Harmonies
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- asymmetrical powers — Player powers differ based on their chosen dragon.
- disc placement — Players place discs on their player board.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- March of the Ants is uh from Tim Eisner. So, same guy who did uh Canopy and some guy who did Leaf. Um, and I have talked highly about both of those games. Uh, this one is a reimplementation of an older game, March of the Ants. This is an area control game, quite an aggressive area control game.
- Now, when you put those two things together along with Board of Dice, you usually expect a very complicated, heavy, oh my god, there's so many rules type game.
- The demo did a good job of teasing me, thinking, 'Wow, this game didn't feel that complicated.' It was It was very in-depth.
- This could be one of the better David Turczi games I've played in recent uh you know tried out in recent um years.
- They didn't want to just make it White Castle with two players because to be honest, White Castle worked best as a two-player game.
- This is a two-player area control game um where basically you have followers, dudes on the map.
- But it's beautifully produced. You got these translucent dice, these lovely artwork cards, these wooden followers.
- Yes. Sorry, there is a spider on one of these pictures. I didn't see that coming, but uh I've seen scarier spiders, but still
References (from this video)
- Dragons collecting rings
- Harmonies
- Azul
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Engine Building — that will also get you a little bit of engine building, that will get you points.
- Movement — you will move it in a straight line, stop, and then collect rings in surrounding places.
- Set Collection — you want various different colored rings so that you can put them on your map on your board and and then fulfill patterns, fulfill cards that will like that need specific patterns.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- If you are interested in new board games that are coming to stores, to friendly local game stores, and other places right now, and you don't have to wait like 18 months to get the game, then this is the video for you.
- I always try to include about 25 different games in this video, and I want there to be something for everybody, right?
- So, if you are looking for like an introduction to worker placement, uh I think this is a good one for that.
- So, yeah. And I love penguins. Love penguins.
- This is intentionally a weird game. Uh it's leaning into It's weird.
- This is a game that combines dice and deduction in a pirate theme.
- This is another one I couldn't really find a lot of information on, so I don't know exactly how it plays.
- So, yeah. And I hope you found something that you like.
References (from this video)
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- This is the worst month when it comes to gaming that we have had in like 10 years.
- It is the worst month we have had in in 5 years at least.
- We played 40 escape rooms. Which means we have played a lot in April, just not a lot of board games.
- But it's games.
- All In Predictions was a cooler game than I thought it was going to be.
- Rising Sun was a surprising how good it still was.
- Farmhand is an amazing game and it still is
- Farmhand is quick, it's fun, it's simple
- Rising Sun was fantastic to get back to the table.
References (from this video)
- very unique
- thick board made of deep wells
- reaching into wells and pulling rings out is cool and different
- Dragons flying across the land
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Bag Building — The reviewer explicitly states 'I love bag building'.
- Dice — The reviewer explicitly states 'I love dice'.
- Ring manipulation — You reach into the wells and pull rings out of them, and then you use those rings in tile placement.
- Tile Placement — The rings are used in a little bit of tile placement.
- Worker Placement — The reviewer explicitly states 'I love worker placement'.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Here are my top five board games of May.
- I love finding unique games, and Tatsumi is very unique.
- I love bag building. I love dice. I love worker placement. I love going up tracks. Alterra has all of those things smooshed into one game.
- I'm going to put out a full video on it in the next few days, but man, I love this game.