Top 5 Unique Game Mechanics From Asia!

0:00 As a person who's collected a lot of board games for a long time, I'm always on the lookout for new, interesting, and innovative mechanics. They don't have to be like groundbreakingly new, but they can be, I guess, twist on regular mechanics that are presented in a more interesting and unique way that kind of challenges, I guess, a niche part of your brain that you don't often dabble with. And so in this video, I want to share with you five interesting weird mechanics that express through games from Asia. Hi, my name is Danny. I'm an avid modern board gamer from Australia. Love sharing my passion for this hobby with you, my friends, and my family. Come and join me on this journey, and don't forget to subscribe for more wholesome board game content.

0:55 Now, a lot of people are familiar with tile laying games where basically you draft tiles, you build a maps. If you're familiar with Carcassone or even land versus sea, a lot of these games require you to place tiles in a certain way to complete regions and get scoring bonuses. The usual kind of rigmmorall that you see in a lot of games. This next game has an interesting twist to the idea of building a grided map, an array, a 6x6 array actually. And this one is all about lining up species of trees. The game is called tree line avenue. And the twist in this game is that you are all building on a shared map, kind of like in Carcasson, except you're restricted with the parameters of this map and how far it can go. Uh so this game uses a King Domino style drafting mechanism where uh there are three to four cards on display. They're ordered from uh lowest number to highest number and whichever card you pick in that order. So if I pick the third card, that means I will be third to pick in the next round. And so the order of or player turn order or drafting order changes based on I guess the more valuable card that you choose. So, the more valuable the card you choose, the later in turn order you're probably going to go in. But the twist in this game that I find interesting is actually the tree lining mechanism, where the ultimate goal of this game is to line up

2:27 trees of the same species in the same row and column as your gardener. Now, across the game, you'll have access to about two or three gardeners, and you can choose to put out these gardeners whenever you like. And when you place a gardener out, at the end of the game, that gardener is going to score for that column that it's in and the row that it's in. And you're trying to place out these tree species so that they all line up, I guess, in perpendicular fashion. At the same time, all the other players are also doing the same thing in the same area. So you might be going for these uh orange maple trees and another player might be going for like the sakura trees. And so what happens is the different places where you put the different species of trees is going to really impact not only you but the other players. There are also project cards in this game where if you have certain animals on the same tiles where your gardener is and you have particular, you know, like structures like pavilions uh in the same row and column, you can get extra project points. So, there's that extra little frill there. But the fact that you are all trying to compete to complete project cards and maximize the number of identical trees in your row and column makes for interesting spatial puzzle. It's almost like multiple game boards are layered on top of each other and intersecting all at the same time.

3:59 Now, at the beginning of the game, a couple of tree species are placed out, usually the one value tree species, but there's also animal tokens that are placed on the perimeter of the 6x6 grid. And when you place your gardener out, you actually attract the animal that's uh in the column and in the row that your gardener is placed. So, you have a little bit of selection about where you want to place your gardener. You want to think about what animals you're attracting. And you also want to make sure that you're positioning everything in the right place. Now, some of the cards also have action icons on it which allow you to redraw new tree cards or move a pre-existing garner that you've already placed. That gives you a little bit more flexibility kind of to pivot. But there are very limited number of turns. It's a very super tight game.

4:45 It's probably a very um focused competitive puzzle compared to a lot of these other kind of tile grid building games. And I really enjoy it because it's one of those games that gives you the sense that okay, here is the optimum way to play because at the end of the game, wherever your gardeners are, the number of trees in that column and row will act as a multiply. So, you really want to make sure you line everything up well. um it just always has that like raise the ceiling effect where you can never get a perfect score because of all the other people that are trying to do exactly the same thing in the same zone. Whilst I'm someone who is born in Australia, my parents were actually born in Vietnam. Uh they lived in Vietnam for about 20 years and then the Vietnam War kind of arrived in the early '7s and they both had to leave. My mom actually lived in Saigon which is now known as Ho Chi Min City. She actually rode a bicycle with her sister across the border for several days and nights into Thailand in order to escape. Uh my dad who lived uh in a place called Sock Trang a little bit uh down south along the Mikong River, he actually left one night. They left on a fishing boat. Uh they turned their lights off and they basically were on the ocean for 3 days and three nights and all they had to eat was like a bowl of rice, one per day,

6:17 and a cup of water. And they managed to survive. They ended he ended up in Malaysia with his brother. Uh, and they both my mom and my dad did know each other at the time, but they ended up both in Australia. I was actually supposed to be Canadian because my dad actually was accepted into Canada. Um, but his brother was accepted into Australia and so he followed him here. Uh, although my my dad's brother now lives in uh the United States. And so Vietnamese culture is actually something which is really rich in my cultural history. And so this next game is a game that is a twist on trick taking. It's a game that is themed around Hut Boy, which is a kind of traditional Vietnamese uh opera. And basically, it's I guess Vietnamese opera is slowly slowly being forgotten because of modern technology, modern music, modern culture, western influences. And so this is a game that really encapsulates that cultural history of Hut Boy in the 1600s. And so the game I'm talking about is called On Stage. It's a trick-taking game where the box itself is unfold into a theater stage. And you're basically trying to hire different performers for your Hatboy performances. And at the beginning of the game, all of the performers are lined up in a queue. You divvy out all the cards. The cards are

7:48 like from one to nine. And basically it is follows the regular trick taking um mechanic of someone plays a card. If it is the uh the lead suit, people need to follow by playing the same suit. Whoever has the highest number of the suit then wins the trick. And if you don't have a card of that particular suit, you can play another card which is off suit. And that kind of just is a card that you're just essentially really giving away. There's a few frills in this game that I really like. Each of the performers holds a bouquet of flowers and each uh the amount of flowers ends up being the amount of points that you get when you win the trick because if you win a trick, you actually claim that particular performer. Also, the number of flowers on stage because as the round progresses, more and more performers are going to appear on stage uh from various card abilities and things like that. And also uh you might be able to play around where there is no trump suit. So you're not going to claim a performer, but basically the performers as they aggregate on the stage are going to um the trump suit is going to be determined by the amount of flowers that particular suited performer might have. So if it is the uh black performers and they have five flowers, then they'll be the trump suit if they've got the most on stage.

9:06 And so you're vying for um their attention, their prestige, and their singing and oporatic acting skills. And so what I like about this is you're playing to try and claim the trump suit of the performers that are currently on stage. Uh you're also some of the cards, the ones, the fours, and the sevens have abilities where you can take a performer off a stage. You can add a performer to the stage to change which one becomes the trump. There's even an ability where you can swap a performer on the stage with one that's in the queue. And so the queue kind of gives you this idea of what suits are going to be um dominant as the game kind of unfolds. And because you deviate all the cards at the beginning of the round, your hand of cards slowly dwindles. So you get to think about when it's most advantageous to play different types of suits. And I really like the idea of the performers are determining the trump suit because of the number of flowers they have or because other performers have been, I guess, hired into people's collections and they're the ones remaining. When I was younger, I used to own a Nintendo 64. Actually, it's still out in my game area. Uh, but I haven't really played with it for a long time. Many years actually. I used to have a game called Diddy Kong Racing where you could kind of It was like an offbeat Mario Kart basically where you

10:37 play through different characters like Banjo Kazouie, Diddy Kong Conquer. You could drive, you know, a car, use a hovercraft or fly a plane. It was basically a racing game. And this when this game came out, it did remind me of a game called Wave Racer 64, which was where you use jet skis and race other players. And I really like the idea of having the splitting the cathode raid TV into four little small screens and you had to look at where you were as you use the really weird Nintendo 64 controller. But this game really has an interesting mechanic which is basically laying out where you're going to go by giving each player a deck of cards. The game is Tornado Splash and it's from Japan by Arkite Games. And basically at the beginning of the game, you'll set up a little course. Each player will choose a character and a jet ski. And each of the jet skis has a different weight class. So the lighter jet ski can go really fast but in a straight direction but has really not so good turning capabilities but the bigger or heavier jet skis have excellent turning capabilities but aren't very good at going fast. So on your turn basically you'll play cards from your hand and then move your little players jet ski up to three spaces. Now, the amount of cards that you have in your hand will depend on whether you're coming first in the middle of the pack or last. If you're first, you'll draw less cards. If you're at the back of the pack, you'll

12:07 draw more cards. And that is an interesting way to kind of equalize the game a bit. Now, in saying that, when I played this game, there was one player who started off right at the edge and ended up doing this big kind of light bulb circle around. And we're like, where are you going? But what was interesting is as he curved out, he then was able to angle it so sharply inwards with his cards that he ended up, you know, coming uh, you know, in top top two position because the other players had already exhausted all their straight and narrow cards. And that's what I find really interesting about Tornado Splash is you get to track where your character has progressed around the circuit. And the game comes with lots of different configurations for different circuits and different future circuits that you can kind of create and ways to actually construct them. But the fact that the curves and the way you play at your cards really carves out the game area as the game progresses, it's a really cool and unique visual representation of racing that I actually haven't seen in many other games before. In fact, I don't think there's any other game in my collection that does what Tornado Splash does. The next game is one that is super quirky because um this is one where I initially kind of distanced myself from it because it seemed quite abstract and I I don't know sometimes how I feel about abstract games. One of my friends is really into like chess and old school

13:38 wooden style board games and you know really got me thinking oh I wonder if there are any cool little twists to older games and you know things like that and I feel like this game has a very old school feel to it yet it's a very modern design and it's a game called Tiger and Dragon. This game really really surprised me. Now, I play this at the two player cap, but you can definitely play it with up to four players or five players, I think. And there's different little scenarios that kind of change the values that you use. Now, in simple terms, Tiger verse dragon is a game where you'll be attacking and defending using mahongl like tiles. Um, basically at the beginning of the game, you'll get a certain set of tiles. Uh, the number tells you how many copies uh there are of that tile. And there is also a blue dragon piece which can block all of the blue numbers and a red dragon piece that can block all of the red numbers. So the red numbers are the odd numbers and the blue numbers are the even numbers. So if you have a red one there's only one copy of that tile in the game. If there's, you know, blue eights, then there's there's eight copies of that in the pool. And we don't use all the tiles each in every game.

14:54 And so the idea of the game here is to basically shed your hand, shed all of the different tiles that you have in your possession. So on your when it's the active play's turn, they'll pick a tile, they place it, and they say, "I attack you with this." So it could be a seven. So I attack you with a red seven. And the next player goes, "Do I defend or do I pass?" And if they defend, they must defend with a a red seven or the red dragon. And if they lets it through, then it passes onto the next player and so forth. And if no one is able to block it, the person who started the attack gets to put a faceown tile from their little pool for free. And that kind of gives them that extra way of getting rid of the hand, but it also narrows down the choices they have in order to win the game. Whereas the other players who still have like their full hand will have more options to try and block. Now, the interesting part here is deducing what has been played and what is yet to be played. And so, if you want to play a red one, you know, it can't be blocked except for the by the red dragon and someone's already played the red dragon, you know that that one is going to be unblockable. So, this game has a lot of nuances behind it. the idea of do you play a high valued tile because there's a higher chance that other players also have a copy of it and they can block in and they can seize the opportunity to be that active attacking player or do you hold back? Do you keep them? And it's this really interesting tension of

16:27 internal conflict of do I reveal what I've got or do I don't? And there was one round where I kept my red one because uh in this game, every time you complete a round, depending on what your last tile was, if you win that round, you get points uh according to the scenario. And once you get to 10 points, you win the game. But if you finish with a red one, you get 10 points automatically. It's like a auto win, which I managed to be able to pull off. I thought it was going to be impossible, but I actually did it. So this two and fro and guess using open and closed information and kind of secondguing what the players will do or how they react or knowing that you've got a certain combo of like oh I've got all the red threes. No one can block if I play my threes. So there's that huge cool element of when do I play my dragon if I get one. and the fact that if you attack with a dragon or tiger, they can be blocked by any tile of that particular color. The final game I want to talk about is incredibly strange, but it uses some very classic Japanese mechanics. And that is inspired by uh poker and basically in a lot of Japanese games, they often like to use poker hands as a way of determining strength and who wins in a game. Um, and so the game I want to talk about is called Mana Kind Collection, which is actually by Rhina Canitia, believe it or not, but it

17:58 is a game that is probably only available in Japan. I got my copy off Amazon Japan, uh, but there are some copies floating around. What I really like about this game, and yes, it is adorably cute with the uh Nico cats and the lucky cats and all the different suits of cats that appear in this game, but what you're going to be doing is there are three different platforms. And at the beginning of each round, you'll be drawing two cats from a bag. They come in six different colors. You'll be putting two of them on these two little cushions, zabatsu cushions, I think. And they'll be on three different platforms. And what you'll do is you'll have a hand of three different cards which feature the six one of the six different colors.

18:44 And on your turn, you can play a card to any one of the four platforms that matches your little space that you've been allocated. You can play maximum of three cards up to each platform. And when each player has played all their three cards, you'll then resolve the poker hand strength ranking order, which is the mechanism I want to talk about in a few minutes. So, what are you essentially trying to do? Well, the two cats that are currently sitting on the podium or the three podiums, they are two cards of a suit of five. So, if you imagine, you know, five cats of the same color, if they're two of the same color and you play three more cards of the same color that match it, you will have the strongest hand, which is called a cat flush. Uh, you can do four of a kind. You can do three of one color and two of another color, or two of one color, and two cats of a different color. There's a lot of combinations that will allow you to rank the power of your hand against each of the different little platforms. And so what you're trying to do here is to create the strongest hand against each platform.

19:46 Because if you win the strongest hand, you come first or second, you get to lift these little zabatsu cushions that these cats are kind of sitting on like this. And then underneath there are some scoring mechanisms or scoring tiles. So, there's tiles that just give you straight up point values. There's tiles that give you points per gold cat that you or gold cat that you have at the end of the game or tin food that cancels out negative tiles. Yes, there are some tiles with a negative value. So, you might not want to win that particular um podium of or hand of cats because you don't want to get the negative points. And so there's that interesting eb and flow of trying to go, okay, what is the biggest hand I want to make? Which of these podiums will the hand of cards I currently have help satisfy? You can even play two cards to a particular podium as long as they're two of the same color, which helps you to build out that hand a lot more quickly and stop another player or deter another player from going, "Oh, you know what? I'm going to go for five of a kind." And so Manakine collection is that interplay of that feeling of playing poker but in a way which is a little bit more tongue and cheek, a little bit more open. So you're kind of playing your hand openly as you go, ooh, on this podium I've got three of a kind already. Can anyone else beat three of a kind? Oh, at this other one I've got two of one color, two of another color. Can you beat that one?

21:15 And so it becomes like a three parallel way competition for getting the best hand for each of the podiums because if you win the podium, you also take one of the cats and then some of the cats have tin food and some of the cats have little coins which uh I guess point multiplies if you have the particular tiles and so you create a cool little manind cat collection in front of you at the end of the game. It has superb table presence. This this game is beautiful. Um, I'm really sad that it probably doesn't have a wider distribution, especially because it's designed by Ryan Canitia, but honestly, this is a fun, beautiful game. So, what did you think of those five unique mechanics? Is it something that you've seen before in other board games? And do you think that some of these uh mechanics are used in some of these games from Asia could kind of meld and bleed into games from Europe as well? or are there, you know, traditional Euro games that you've seen use these same mechanics in a different way? I'd love to start a conversation with you. So, if you uh post a comment, I'd love to have a chat with you. Now, if you found this video super helpful, super insightful, please consider like and subscribing to my channel.

22:26 Otherwise, I hope your next board game experience is an amazing one, there are lots of other videos on my channel for you to check out. Uh this is Danny Sun. I'll see you again soon.