$57.50

This is the Kami-Sama Kickstarter Edition of the base game, along with both The Awakened and Spirit Way Expansions!!!  Lots of goodness here….

Circular, double-layered game board. Beautiful artwork. Solid theme integration.  Cool bits.  Smooth mechanics.  Fun expansions.

It is GAME ON, people!

This is a fast playing, asymmetrical, area control game that will leave you wanting to play again!! The good people at Kolossal Games (does anyone have a logo as cool as these guys?!?!) have another SOLID game on their hands with Kami-Sama!  And even more impressive is that the game is designed by Kolossal Games team member, AJ Lambeth – their Production Assistant!  Too cool!

Components and Theme

This game exudes theme!! The color palette of the game board and components, the artwork, the individual player powers… and on and on!  The wooden cubes and shrines are well crafted and sit solidly in their recessed game board areas.  OH yes… this is another dual-layer game board, folks!  I LOVE these things!  And this one is well made and beautifully illustrated – win and win!

The cardboard components are of the Kickstarter stretch-goal 2mm fare variety and are similarly very well made.  I should note for my fellow OCD gamers… the die cut on the punch sheet for the cardboard bits is exquisite!  No little cardboard tab tears, no inaccurate punching that inadvertently cuts off part of the artwork, and no partial cutting that ends up with you cutting the chits out with an X-Acto knife!  This may seem like a funny thing to comment on… but literally as I was punching the game I thought, “Hmmmm… this is really nice!” Hahaha. Yeah. OCD. Deal with it! 😉

Game Play

Where to begin.  OK, how about here.  At the end of each round you rotate the main game board so that the corresponding village area in front of you changes!  Of note, the first player marker rotates with the board as well (in a 4-player game), effectively rotating the first player one notch clockwise at the start of each round. It’s simple… but in that simplicity lies its elegance 🙂

During game set up you will choose between two possible characters – each with 3 totally different special actions and their very own passive ability.  As you might imagine, the abilities and actions of your characters will influence your strategy throughout the game.  But choose wisely!  On your turn you will use action cubes to select the actions on your character board and only one action is the same for all characters (adding/removing shrines).  So, this is not an asymmetric game where you can sort of ignore your character’s proclivities and ride the train to victory in your own renegade fashion!  You are going to need those character actions… and well… that means you should probably choose the character whose actions appeal to you rather than choosing a character because they carry a fishing pole and you enjoy fishing! 😉  I mean… do whatever you’d like, of course… hahaha… but you get the idea!

On your turn you’ll mostly be focusing on the village that is in front of you (although some cards and actions allow you influence other villages), placing and removing shrines in an effort to end the year with the most influence in a given slice of the game board (4 villages.  Each representing 25% of the circular board. One section in front of each player representing “their” village for the round). Math!  Live it!

Goals

Each year a new goal is randomly selected for all players.  Each time a player accomplishes this goal in a village, they gain a marker from that village on their character board.  Collect one village marker for each village and you immediately turn them all in for 6 points.  This adds a nice puzzle component to the game as you attempt to form certain patterns with your shrine placement in each village or work to control specific areas within each village (hut, field, forest, etc.).

End of Year – more goodness awaits!

First, we select villager cards.

The player with the longest, contiguous, orthogonal collection of shrines in each village at the end of each year is considered to be the most influential Kami in that village.  In recognition of this esteemed position of influence, that player will be the first to pick from the villager cards.  The other players pick in descending order of influence; with the least influential person choosing last. If you have no shrines in a village you don’t get to pick a card at all that year!  OUCH!

So, for example, beginning with the farming village: Four farming villager cards are drawn, one is taken by the most influential player in that village and the remaining three are given to the next most influential player and so on. These cards give an immediate bonus and often an end game bonus as well.  At the end of each year you’ll have a chance to earn card from each village (as long as you have at least one shrine in that village) so by game’s end you might have as many as 12 cards. Nice.

Then we’ll score our nature and favor tracks.

What? I guess I should have mentioned this above during the game play description… but oh well. better late than never. 😉 During your turn you will be looking to improve the Nature and Favor tracks on your character board. This is primarily accomplished by placing shrines into particular areas on the board, but I won’t get into the details right now.  Just know that when it comes time to score these tracks at the end of each year (3 years, 4 rounds each), you will gain points based on the lower of the two tracks. So, if you have 8 on the nature track and 3 on the favor track – your total “track” score for that year is 3.

I love this mechanism! In fact, this is amongst the top 3 or 4 reasons that I LOVE playing Wendake and Wendake New Allies!  Another great area control game… and if you play the advanced game it adds in asymmetric play!  Hmmmm… Oh wait, I’m supposed to be talking about Kami-Sama. I’m just easily distracted… sorry.

Squirrel! 😉

The Kolossal Team – friendly faces…kick-a&# games!

I first found out about Kolossal games (not surprisingly) when they were getting ready to release Western Legends.  A friend of mine had purchased 4 tickets to BGG CON that year (2017) in hopes that a group of us would be able to go.  As it turned out, I was the only person who had enough free time in my schedule to attend! Ha!  My girlfriend and I packed up our bags and got ready to head to BGG CON… and we had a BLAST!  Although admittedly, I stayed up too late the night before the CON started and was exhausted on day one.  Uh… don’t do that.

Anyway, my buddy ended up selling the two remaining tickets (through BGG of course) to Kira for some of the members of the Kolossal team! Since I was actually attending the con, we were all in regular contact to ensure that things went smoothly.  When we arrived at the con, I went over to the Kolossal booth to say hello… and the rest is history as they say.  Well, there’s not too much history I suppose now that I think about it… but I do proudly wear the Kolossal t-shirt they hooked me up with and I love their games!  And, that LOGO!!!

Kira and the gang are all really wonderful, friendly, and talented people and I could not be happier about their continued success!  GAME ON!

 

Ages: 14+
Players: 2 – 4
Play Time: 60 – 90 minutes
Designer: AJ Lambeth
Artists:
Gong Studios
Publisher: Kolossal Games
SKU: KOLOSSAL 001
MSRP:
€50 or £50 or C$50 for base game only
on the Geek Store.  All sellers are 
located outside the U.S. [ I only mention
this for shipping implications 🙂 ]
$70 for this bundle direct from Kolossal.
Our Price: $57.50
Link to BGG:

 

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Description

Kami-Sama board game with Awakening and Spirit Way Expansions!This awesome bundle includes the Kami-Sama Kickstarter Edition base game plus The Awakened AND Spirit Way expansions!

Back to nature…

A gentle breeze. The soothing sounds of a gently flowing river. The glow of the moon. A bountiful harvest. Basic human emotions such as fear and rage. Even death. They all have an unseen force guiding them. And while these forces work together to make the world what it is, they each aspire for influence over those who believe in them.

Designed by Kolossal’s own AJ Lambeth, Kami-sama is a beautiful and intuitive strategy game set in rural Japan during the Edo period. Two to four players will assume the roles of Kami, the spirits of the land. Using a combination of asymmetrical player powers, area control, set collection, pattern building, and light card drafting, players will work to balance their Favor with the people and their connection to Nature in order to be crowned Kami-sama, the chief deity of the land.

Spirit Way

The Spirit Way add-on expansion introduces four new kami

  • Daikono, the kami of radishes
  • Kari, the kami of the hunt
  • Kitakori, the kami of ice
  • Yuma, the kami of dreams

These kami introduce new interactive strategies through their unique abilities. Additionally, the Spirit Way expansion includes the Merchant villager, one copy per villager deck, as well as the kami-specific components below.

The Awakened

The Awakened expansion will not be available in the initial retail release of Kami-sama! The expansion includes 8 new Kami, 2 new villagers, and the Kamidana variant with 4 new goals.  And yes, The Awakened is included with this bundle!  Of course…

 

Additional information
Weight 4.10 lbs
Dimensions 12.5 × 12.5 × 3.5 in
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