Honshū asks you to combine trick-taking with City Building which is a first for me!

So let’s check it out…

Honshu is a trick-taking, map-building card game set in feudal Japan. Players are lords and ladies of noble houses seeking new lands and opportunities for fame and fortune.

Honshū Review

My first impressions of Honshū including a brief overview of gameplay followed by my final summary.

Game Summary

For those of you, like me, that didn’t know… Honshū Is the main part of Japan. It’s that larger middle island of the 4 that make up this country.

Image from Wikimedia

Anyway, in this game, you’re asked to put forward a card in order to win a trick to then pick from the cards available. So that means you could be putting a card you want forward, only for someone else to draft it first.

You could put a cube on it to bump up its value in the trick, but that’s one less cube to deliver for points later on.

This is where turn order is crucial. If you’re late in turn order you have a better idea of if you’re going to get your card back. If you’re early, chuck a piece of rubbish in and try and get later in turn order for next time.

But, even if you get a not-so-optimal card you can make it work. There are plenty of ways to score points to make that card fit and benefit from it somehow. Even if all you do is upgrade from a 2-point factory to one worth 3 points, at least you’re moving forward.

Planning the various scoring opportunities while trying to match up your good cubes to your factories was really good fun.

There aren’t too many similar games. I guess Isle of Skye does the thing where you put a tile forward and hope no one buys it.

It also does the placement into an area to score points so actually, there is one similar game 🙂

~ Jesta ThaRogue