Honshu

16th July 2019

It's a Tuesday and the 3rd and final game of game evening at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking is 'Honshu'.

Wikipedia describes Honshu as 'the largest and most populous main island of Japan'.

Honshu the game describes itself as a 'trick-taking, map building card game set in feudal Japan'.

So, there you go!

What's in a game?

• 60 map cards, each card has 6 'squares' and each square represents a type of terrain. The cards are numbered 1-60.
• 6 starting province cards, these are double sided. So you can have identical starting provinces or asymmetrical ones. Like the  map cards, they have 6 terrain spaces.
• 40 resources equally distributed in 4 different colours. These are depicted by tiny coloured wooden cubes. You know it's a proper 'Euro' when you get wooden cubes!
• 8 end of game scoring objectives.
• 5 turn order cards.

How's it play?
The objective of Honshu is to lay down map cards to create your province. When laying a card, generally the objective is to lay cards in such a way that matching terrain types are next to each other.
First thing though, is set up.

• Randomly deal a starting province to each player. This is put into the player's are and is the first part of their province.
• Randomly deal a turn order card to each player.
• Randomly deal 6 map cards to each player.
• Randomly select an 'end of game' scoring card (This is an optional rule, but it's worth mentioning.).

A turn is divided into 2 phases, 'trick-taking' and 'map-laying'.

Trick-taking

• Each player plays one of their map cards into the central area, this is done in the turn order that was randomly determined during set up.
• Once all players have played a card, a new turn order is determined. As explained above, all cards are numbered, the player who put down the card with the highest number is now first, the 2nd highest is not 2nd and so on.
• Once the new turn order has been determined, beginning with whoever is first can now take any of the cards that were played by any of the players.
• This means that the order the cards were put down will not be the same when they are picked up.
• In later turns, players can spend resources (That they have accumulated.) to increase the value of the card they have just played by 60!

Once everyone has collected a card, we go on to the map-laying phase. When players put down their map cards, there are certain rules that must be followed.

• When laying down a map card, at least one of its 6 squares must overlap another of the player's map cards (Or starting province in the first turn.).
• A card may be placed underneath another card instead of overlapping on top of it.
• Squares that contain water cannot be laid underneath other cards.
• At least 1 square of the new card must remain visible.

That's it for map-laying.

Play continues for 3 turns. Then before the 4th turn, players pass their 3 remaining cards to the player to their left.
Once the 6th turn is completed, the players will have run out of cards. 6 new cards are randomly dealt to each player and play continues.
After the 9th turn has been completed, players pass their 3 remaining cards to the player on their right.
After the 12th turn, the game is over and we go to scoring.

Endgame
So once the 12th turn is over, it's time to score. There are several different terrain types and each type scores differently.

• Forests: All visible forest square scores 2 points each.
• Towns: Only the single biggest town district in a province scores points. Each square in the biggest town district is worth 1 point. A town district can be created (And increased in size.) by connecting town squares orthogonically. 
• Lakes: Larger lakes score points, whilst the smallest lakes score none. Each connected square in a lake other than the first is worth 3 points. Thus a lake consisting of 1 square is worth 0 points. A lake consisting of 3 squares will score 6 points.
• Fallow: Fallow squares score 0 points.
• Productions: There are some squares that are called production squares. These squares will produce 1 good in one of the 4 colours as shown on the production square is the map card. A cube in the relevant colour will be placed on the production square
• Factories: Some tiles will have factory squares on them and and like resources, factories come in 4 colours. During the endgame, if players can move resources from production squares to factory squares (Of the same colour.), then they can score points for it, the value of the score is dependent upon the individual factory.
• End game scoring cards: Finally the end game scoring card is scored. There are 8 different end game scoring cards that each provide varied ways to score additional points.

Overall
Honshu is a small game that packs a lot in.
It has a trick-taking mechanic that can be exploited to good use if you're canny, as well a a drafting mechanic​. Which is quite interesting.
The map-laying phase gives the player quite a lot of flexibility when putting map cards down, so you get a lot of choices and decisions to make.

Honshu reminds me a little bit of 'Isle of Skye', both games are broadly divided into a acquisition phase and a map laying phase.
Both games give players options for strategies (And both games allow you take another player's map tile/card!).

Honshu is a little simpler, but quicker to play.
And like Isle of Skye, I think Honshu is a good game and definitely worth trying.