Kano Review - Every Brushstroke Matters

0:00 Hey, I'm Alex Rackle from Board Gameco and today I'm reviewing Kano from Monaco. Kano is a one to four player polyomino placement game in which players are gathering various ink pots in order to build a variety of portraits and hopefully win the game. Before we dive into how to play, this channel is sponsored by All Play. More about them at the end of the video. In Cano, players are going to be drafting ink pots from the center display using a kind of a bejeweled style mechanism. Basically, you're going to try to see which paint pot which paint pot can you shift in order to get the things that you most need. And in this case, it's actually not a super obvious choice. There's a lot of things that will let me get two paint pots, not a lot of things that will let me get three. I'll go ahead and I'll say, "Hey, green paint pots are really important to me." So, I'm going to make a shift from here to here, swapping those two, and then taking all the paint pots in a straight line of one color. Not connected, straight line. So, you can't go all around different shapes. Just choose a straight line, row, or column, grab those paint pots, and then put them into your display.

0:54 Wherever you put them into display, you have to follow one main rule, which is paint pots always fall to the bottom. I can't put this here. I have to slide to the bottom. I could put them on top of each other like so, but right now, I'm trying to be mindful of the fact that I probably want to build a variety of those displays. So, I'm actually going to go ahead and put these both over here with the hope and goal of augmenting the two sides of those. I'll show you more how that works shortly. The next play goes ahead and takes their turn. They'll be fill the display. I'm going to go ahead and show you just briefly what they're doing. So, maybe they'll go ahead and they'll grab from the display. They'll try to figure out, oh, look at this. They can actually get three red. If they do this, like so, they can take three red and they'll take those and put them on their own personal board, which I'm not going to mimic right now because we only have uh my board that I'll be showing you. I'll once again refill the display. And then I'll go back to my turn where I'm once again drafting paint pots. So, over here, looking at this board right now, I can actually get three blue. That's perfect. I'll go ahead and swap this one over here and then take those three blue. When I take those three blue, I'm actually going to paint a little figure now because I'm going to take these and I'm going to put them Oh, I think I did this the wrong.

1:55 No, I did it right here. Correct me. I'm gonna do it like over here. We're going to put one over there. And maybe I'll go ahead and put uh one over here like so. And then another we'll just put on top of this over there. Then I'll go ahead and paint paintings. This is something you can do at any point if you're able to paint a painting, but you can only hold on your grid for paint pots at the end of the round. So, anything above that, you're going to have to trade in for various cloud tokens. So, you want to cash them in well before you're above four. In this case, I'm going to go ahead and using these two paint pots, I'm going to paint this configuration, which requires a blue on that side and a green on that side. And I'll take this tile and put it in its uh mode over here. I'll take this and replace those paint pots. And that's helpful because it's one of the paintings. And also because one of the paintings you're going to want for this particular grid over here, specifically that one. In fact, I'll go ahead and I'll cash in this one as well. just to go ahead and show you and I'll cash it in for that painting which is going to put this onto my display. That's basically what you're doing on a term. You are gathering various paint pots then cashing those paint pots in in order to paint various paintings. Why are you doing all this?

2:56 Well, points obviously points is why you're doing all this but more specifically there's going to be a few ways you score at the end of the game. And if you're playing the advanced mode, some of those are going to score in Midame as well. The ways you're going to score is you're going to go ahead and get get points first of all for every single painting you painted. So right now, a size one painting is worth one. So that's going to be one point. A size two painting is worth three. That's three points. A size three painting is worth seven. That's some of these over here. We got some size threes over here. And then lastly, if you build your masterpieces over here, these are going to be worth 12 points. You start the game with one. And when you paint this, you're going to go ahead and cash it in and draw more. Well, you're just going to flip it to go ahead and get your points. And then you'll get more over there. That's one of the ways you're going to score. Other ways you're going to score, though, are going to be for this grid over here. You're going to score for however many unique things you've done that match this. For example, I have two. So, as I built those, I should have moved my marker along this grid to show that I have two different things from these 10 possible options. You're going to have a variety of these. There's a variety of options on both sides over here. And they're all going to give you different ways that you're trying to score, or more specifically, different combinations of paintings that are going to reward you for having different paintings within that suite. So, every game you're trying to go for a different combination.

4:08 Similarly with this over here, you also have a score metric. This particular one wants us to have the sun and the moon at crisscross diagonals in the upper four squares over there. And then also, like I said already, you're getting points for your masterpieces at 12 points a piece. And then finally, at the end of the game, you're also going to lose points. Again, depends which mode you're playing, but you'll lose points for every empty space on your grid. And game end is triggered when one player completely finishes their grid. When you're playing the advanced mode, you're also going to have a midame scoring. Specifically, when you have all these covered, you're going to go to a mid-ame scoring. We specifically score for three things. This grid over here, this over here, as well as however many masterpieces you've done. Those are going to score midame as well as again endame. So ramping those up early on can give you those points doubled. You get two masterpieces done before the midame scoring. You'll be scoring them twice. Two twice at the beginning and then twice at the end as well. Doubling those scorings for 24 points per painting. The other scoring, the endgame point loss as well as the three points of finishing your grid as well as the points for general paintings. That only is going to happen in the in-game scoring. Again, this is in the advanced mode. The basic mode, you just have an endgame scoring.

5:08 Uh, but if you play the advanced mode, which I do recommend. I think it adds a nice little extra layer to it. That's going to be how that works. That's basically how you play Kano. The basic idea is you're going to go ahead and play a little bejeweled style swapping with the paint pots. Put those onto your grid. When you have an opportunity, you're going to cash them in to paint variety of paintings, keeping in mind that you're trying to balance the masterpieces, the particular paintings that are in desire that are sought out in this game, as well as all the other scoring criteria as you attempt to build out the most uh opulent painters canvas. That's the game, which brings me to my thoughts, my opinions, what I like, don't like, and see others not liking. Starting off with what I like to begin with, this game is very cozy. It's got a very cozy, first of all, the feel of it, the art, the look, the the sty the art style over here, all that works really well. This mat over here, by the way, this mat is fantastic. And I say that as somebody who does not normally like things that are not boards. When you try to make a board into a mat and then you try to fold it into a box that there's a visit visible crease all the time. I usually don't like that. It works really well here. I don't know what this material is. Uh but it has one fold down the middle and because of the way the board's structured, it doesn't get in the way of gameplay. I think they did a great job with this with the look, the feel, the paint pots over here. It's like one simple deluxe component, but it's a simple deluxe component that works. And even the player tray. Again, this game is light as far as the components it's added, but they did a great job with those components. Past that, the game is very accessible, easy to teach, easy to dive into. It's got a very light, easy to play polyomino feel to go along with the vibes the game gives you, and it also has that advanced scoring mode, which does add a nice level to the gameplay decisions, trying to ramp up towards both timing the scoring because there's two factors

6:40 there. first of all is making sure you get as many things done early on so they can score twice and secondly is you have control to a certain extent because you can try to ramp up covering the specific symbols if you think it's advantageous to you relative to the other players. So it adds a nice little extra level to the gameplay plus of course the variety that the different scoring options give you from this various uh you know this tile over here as well as the red tiles that gives you a nice little extra degree of different things you're shooting for game to game. As far as things I don't like in the game, there's one thing but it is a notable thing. This game is on the lighter side. Despite the advanced scoring mode, which I definitely recommend you play with if you are in any way looking for something a little bit heavier. And despite the variability of scoring options, the variability is nice, but it kind of changes up the vibes of what I'm going for. The strategy doesn't doesn't change that much. You're just going for paintings and trying to choose which things you're going to grab. So overall though, past those things, the game is light, accessible, cozy, all the plus stuff.

7:31 But along with that, the game is very much on the lighter side. I think it possibly drifts a little lighter than what I'm looking for. As far as I can see, I was not liking players rushing endame is going to be the biggest thing there. This game does have an aspect, and again, you could argue it's part of the strategy, and it definitely is. Uh, but you could have players rushing endame or even rushing that midame scoring through gathering things that are not necessarily most advantageous for scoring, but are are the most advantageous to give them as many pots as possible. Meaning, you might be sitting there trying to figure out the right combination of pots in order to maximize the different paintings you're going to build. But other players might sit there and say, "Oh, great. I can get a line of four red. Boom. I'm going to do that." And it doesn't matter that it's not going for scoring. It gets me more pain pots than other players. And if they're consistently doing that on a regular basis, it can be strategically sound to rush Endgame. But if you're in this for the cozy vibes, think of it as playing ticket to ride with that one player who's always trying to cut you off. It might be the right strategic move. It definitely changes the feeling of the game you are trying to play. As far as final thoughts on Kono, this is the this is an issue for me. The game is definitely lighter than what I typically go for in this uh genre. I like there to be a little bit more variability, a little more different decision space as far as what I'm going for. But I think they nailed the coziness of it. I think they nailed the first of all again the feelings, the components, the art, all of that they did a tremendous job with.

8:43 But then just when you play this, it's such an easy breezy fun game to dive into that this one is still a very solid one despite being lighter than I want. I am coming in at a four out of five. Again, caveat, it is a little bit on the lighter side, but ultimately if it's a game that I want to pull out and play, if it's a game that I'm happy to table, then the rating matters more. My opinion of how much I want to play matters more than the mechanical aspect of it. But just know watching, I really enjoy this. I think they did a lot of things very well, it definitely is on that lighter side if that's not what you're looking for. As far as other game recommendations, definitely check out Canvas. Another game that definitely was a little lighter than I thought. I actually came in at a fairly I think I came in my original score for Canvas when I first reviewed it was like a three out of five and since then it's grown to a five out of five game for me. It's a game that I'm always happy to play. Thoroughly enjoy and think it's fantastic and kind of has that kind of you know artsy building a canvas building a painting but in a different style. And if you are looking for a lighter polyomino game one of my favorites is going to be Baron Park. An excellent game that I also recommend the expansion for. And I mentioned at the beginning of the video that Allplay is a channel sponsor. If you go to allplay.com you can find a variety of games from a variety of publishers including AllPlay themselves. And in the if you're in the US, it's $4 flat rate shipping for anything you get. And check out Junk Drawer. Junk Drawer is a fantastic game from uh Winom Games, I believe, that again gives you a polyomno vibes as you attempt to fill four different uh cabinets all at the same time while trying to be mindful of the various restrictions and scoring modes each cabinet has. In any case, until next time, I'm Alex Radical from Board Game Co. Hope you found this review helpful and as always I hope you have a good