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The core gameplay of Tatsumi centers around Flying, Gathering, and Offering. You'll be moving your dragon around the 5x5 grid and collecting various colors of rings. You'll then use those rings to make offerings, which allows you to place the rings you spend during the offering on your island, which can get you a small batch of points when you place them. There is a restriction on the different types of rings (of which there are four) in that you can only ever hold three of any type of the four in your reserve before placing them on your island. If you ever have more than three types, you are required to chose a color and place that excess color on your island without getting the placement points. It's not as damning as it sounds, because while you won't get those points, you can still place them to fill spaces with specific color restrictions on the island mat.
One of the advantages of Tatsumi is that you can pull it out and be playing within a few short minutes because of the ring tray that acts as the central player board. The see-through “Sea Wells” allows you to (mostly) see what colored rings will be available next. I say mostly because, depending on dragon placement and your personal place at the table, sometimes you have to do a little bob and weave to get a good view. Still, the advantage of a super quick set-up and tear down should not be discounted. I adore the look of Tatsumi, with the various colored rings and the how the dragon's slide neatly into those rings. Once you get the hang of Tatsumi, it is a pretty direct abstract. But it requires a few plays to learn the nuances of the Ring scoring layout, working within the restrictions of the islands, and properly using Offering cards to boost your points before end game scoring.
Tatsumi totes that it includes Asymmetrical Powers. However, in the case of the islands, it is more like Asymmetric hindrances. I could go over all the Asymmetrical portion of the various islands, but without the reference points of the different elements, it wouldn't make much sense. Instead, I'll just say it is “You can't place a ring in X area until you have placed one or more rings in Y area.” But you will also be doing this while dealing with the normal “You must place a ring adjacent to a previous placed ring.” restriction. The Dragons themselves also have asymmetric powers. But, it doesn't really change how you play. You are still claiming rings on your turn, it's just a matter of how you are doing it. Which puts it in a weird space of, when playing with either Asymmetric portions of the game, “I was able to score this many points while working within the confines of how the game restricted me.” That's just not a metric I particularly enjoy.
In addition to the great Dragon and Ring pieces, There are wooden scoring/bonus tokens. On the whole, these feel very small compared to everything else. My first thoughts on seeing them was “Yea, I'm going to lose these.” And the lack of heft/size to them was an issue with them being easily bumped and moved. The rulebook was also a a bit disappointing. While it does “get you there” the layout is extremely busy. It reminded me of some BoardGameGeek player aids where they try to fit as much information as possible in a limited amount of space. And you will likely be referencing it quite a bit because the game has some actions that are done orthogonally and others that only need to be adjacent, so they have a tendency to not particularly stick in your head when learning the game.
The more players you have the tighter the gameplay area becomes, so the feel of two-player game is incredibly different than with more players since the amount of blocking (intentional or not) increases with player count.
Tatsumi has a bit of Harmonies and Cascadia and flirts with the edge of something more but, ultimately, never really gets there. Where some abstracts have a long game feel (where you plan multiple turns ahead), that never really materializes in Tatsumi. Instead, the game tends to be more reactive, where your movements have more to do with working with what is available than executing a long term strategy. In the end, it hits as a pleasant distraction but misses as a tactical abstract.
A review copy of this release was provided by the publisher. Therewillbe.games would like to thank them for their support.
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