Pre-Order NIPPON

PRE-ORDERS are open for NIPPON !!!!

Option A) Buy a copy now at the special “preorder and pick up” price of € 39,00 and pick it up at Spiel 2015, Essen, Germany (8th to 11th October, 2015) (Halle 3 Booth M-100)

Option B) Buy a copy now at the special “preorder and get it shipped” price of € 44,00 and get it shipped at your address. Worldwide shipping costs included.
Shipments should start approx. mid to end October, 2015.

If you are preordering the German version, please write it in the notes in the check out page.

PRE-ORDER HERE

Sneak Preview 2 - Trains, Ships, Coal, and the Emperor himself

Welcome back everyone, today I am bringing you Part 2 of the sneak previews for Nippon. In Part 1, I already covered a lot of information, so I would suggest reading that first if you haven’t already.

In this part, I’m going to be telling you a bit more about some of the other actions in the game. If you remember from Part 1, you have 9 actions to choose from in your turn (or you consolidate). I already covered a lot of those actions earlier. Building a new Factory, running that Factory to produce Goods, and then either supplying those Goods to a Japanese city, or exporting them to fulfill overseas contracts.

The next two actions I’m going to explain are building more mines and increasing your technological knowledge, because they work in a similar way.


Mines and Knowledge

This is a picture of your Player Board. Except yours wont have all the red text on it. On the far left of your player board is your Coal track. You start with a marker on the bottom slot of this track and it indicates how much Coal your mines produce when you consolidate.

On the far right of your player board is your Knowledge track, and again, you start with a marker on the bottom slot, representing you have a knowledge level of 1. If you remember from Part 1, you need higher knowledge levels to build bigger and better factories.

You can increase the markers on these tracks by choosing the appropriate action and spending lots of Yen. Increase these levels early in the game is useful, as you will get more benefit from them. However, there are lots of other things you want to be doing too.

You will also notice some star symbols at certain points on these tracks. These are relevant during endgame scoring.



Trains and Ships
The Meiji period was a time when railroads really took off, and the railroad network gradually spread across the country. Also, at that time, the four leading Zaibatsu directly controlled one half of Japan’s shipbuilding.

This is represented in the game by your Train and Ship tiles; you have 6 of each at the start of the game on your player board (see earlier image). When you take the “Trains” action, you can build up to 3 of your Trains, at a cost of 5,000 Yen each. You take them from your Player Board and place them in an empty slot in one of the regions on the Game Board. If you place more than one Train at the same time, they must be in different regions.

The Ships are built the same way, through the “Ships” action. Again, you can build up to 3 of them at a cost of 5,000 Yen each, and you place them on the Game Board in different regions.

Both Trains and Ships are relevant during the Scoring phases, but in different ways. Trains increase your Influence in a Region (as long as you already have Influence there), and Ships will score you extra VP if you have the most or secondmost Influence in a Region. More challenging choices of what to build and where.


Consolidation
I’ve mentioned this a couple of times now, so I think I should explain it a bit more. Remember that on your turn, you have two options. Take a worker and perform an action, or consolidate. Your player board has a maximum of 6 spaces for workers, so once you have performed 6 actions, you must consolidate on your next turn. You may however, choose to consolidate sooner.

The first thing that happens when you consolidate is that you reset your Coal and Money depending on where the markers are on your Coal and Money track. And by this, I don’t mean that you simply gain more Coal and Money. If your Coal level marker is at 5 for example, and you currently have 2 Coal, you will only gain 3 more Coal. If you had 6 Coal when you consolidate, you would lose 1 Coal. So, you want to try to consolidate when you have no Coal and no Money to be the most efficient as possible.

The next thing that happens is the Emperor’s Reward, and rewards are always nice


Emperor’s Rewards

On the Game Board, there are a number of Reward Tiles, in columns depending on the level of the Reward (from 2 to 5). In each column, there is a choice of 3 different Rewards. As you can see in the image, the front side of the rewards are the same no matter which column it is from, but on the other side of the tile is a multiplier, which is equal to the level, and higher multipliers mean more points at the end of the game, so you generally want to try to get the highest level reward you can.

The number of workers on your Player Board indicate what level of Reward you can take. For example, if you consolidate when you have 5 Workers, you can take a level 4 Reward.

The Reward does two things. First, you gain the bonus printed on the Reward Tile, which is either 5,000 Yen, 2 Blueprints or 2 Coal. The tiles are limited (2 of each in a 4-player game), so as the game goes on, you will have less choice over which tile to take.

The Reward tile is then flipped over to reveal the multiplier side and placed onto one of the achievement spaces of your Player Board. I will explain these more in Part 3, but it is endgame scoring.


That’s all for now, but tune into Part 3 for details about how to score VP.

Paul Grogan

Sneak Preview 1 - Game Overview

Hi everyone, and welcome to the first in a series of preview articles for the game Nippon, available at Essen Spiel in 2015 from What’s Your Game. The game was designed by Paulo Soledade and Nuno Bizarro Sentieiro, who have previously designed games such as Madeira and Panamax (with Gil D'Orey).

This week I’m going to be telling you about the idea behind the game and giving you a basic overview of the main mechanics. Please note that these previews will only give you an introduction to the game; I will not be covering all of the rules, but hopefully giving you enough information to decide if it is the kind of game that you will like.


THEME
The Meiji period (1868-1912) was an era in Japanese history in which society moved from an isolated feudal society into its modern form. During this period, the government counted on the support of the Big Four Zaibatsu; the largest industrial and financial conglomerates in the country.

In the game, you play as one of the Zaibatsu, and are helping to modernize Japan, by building and running factories, producing goods and supplying the major cities, or fulfilling foreign contracts. You also build rail networks and establish shipping routes, whilst also trying to keep the Emperor happy. Sounds easy doesn’t it?


OVERVIEW
Nippon is played by each player taken a turn and then going clockwise. There is no round structure as such, but at certain points in the game, a Scoring phase is triggered. After 3 scorings, the game is over. Count up the points, and the one with the most wins and gets to celebrate (preferably by buying Sushi for everyone).

On your turn, you only have two choices. See, I told you it would be easy

You either take a worker from the game board and perform an action. Or you Consolidate.

Try not to think of consolidating as passing, because that is when you get your income of money (Yen) and Coal from your mines, and you get to take a reward from the Emperor. The more workers you have when you consolidate, the bigger your reward will be.


Anyway, onto the first choice, which is the thing you will be doing a lot of in the game - taking a worker.

At the start of the game, three workers are drawn at random from a bag and placed on each action slot of the game board. The meeples come in different colours, but you can use any meeple to perform any action, the colour is only relevant when you consolidate.

You take one of the workers from any of the action slots and place it on your player board. The leftmost four action slots give you a choice of two different actions, and the one on the right only has one possible action - so there are 9 actions in total. Lots of options means lots of challenging decisions.

You can have a maximum of 6 workers on your player board, so once you have done this 6 times, you must consolidate on your next turn. You can however choose to consolidate sooner.

“But what happens if there are no workers in the action slot I want to use” I hear you ask. Well, that can’t happen, because any time one of the action slots is emptied of workers, it gets refilled from another part of the game board. So you always have a choice of the 9 actions.


FACTORIES
Everyone loves a game with factories in it don’t they? I know I certainly do! They are certainly important in this game, and a lot of the actions are about the factories.

First of all, one of the actions allows you to build a new factory. There are 24 factories in the game, 4 each for the 6 different goods. Silk, Paper, Bento, Lenses, Clocks and Light Bulbs. Don’t know what a Bento is? Go look it up, I’ll go get something to eat

All factories are available at the start of the game, you can build any of them, as long as you have the money (6,000 Yen) and the required level of Knowledge. Silk and Paper factories are relatively easy to build and only require a knowledge level of 2, Bento and Lenses require knowledge 4, and the Clocks and Light Bulb factories are even trickier, requiring a knowledge of 6.




Each factory shows the amount of coal needed to run the factory, which is another action. There is also a storage area where you put the goods that the factory produces. And there is a unique bonus on the tile. This one for example allows you to keep 1 Coal when you Consolidate (normally, you lose them all)

Factories can also be upgraded by adding machinery (another action). This makes them more efficient and when you run them, they produce more goods.

So, now that you’ve got a Paper factory, and produced tons of it, what do you do with it? There are two uses for the goods you have produced. You can either use them to meet the needs of the people in the Japanese cities, or you can sell them to other countries.


LOCAL MARKETS
The rightmost action on the game board is where you can supply a city with your goods. There are 8 cities in the game, 2 in each of 4 Regions. City tiles are randomly placed onto the cities at the start of the game which determine what goods that city needs.





This city for example wants Silk, Lenses, Light Bulbs and Bento

If you provide the city with goods, you get to put one of your Influence tiles next to that side of the city. The value of the Influence tile you place depends on the type of good and the amount of that good you provide, but the higher the better. The Influence tile is important during the scorings.

The number (if any) on the slot indicates the Influence of the overseas companies. You see, until Japan starts to produce goods itself, the cities must import things from elsewhere. So, in the city above, the influence of the overseas companies starts at 6. However, once you supply Silk as shown in the image, your Influence rises to 3, and the influence of the overseas companies drops to 5. Influence is important for scoring.


FOREIGN CONTRACTS
Instead of using your goods to meet the needs of the local cities, you can instead send them abroad. At the start of the game, you have 8 contract tiles. Here are three of them as an example.

To fulfill a contract, you need to send the goods shown on the tile. The number of cube icons shows how many different types of goods you need to send, and the number in the cubes is how many. So, to fulfill the contract highlighted, you need to send 2 cubes of one type of good, and 1 cube of another type.

Each contract tile has a different bonus on it. The highlighted one gives you 2 Victory Points and you increase your money marker up 2 spaces, representing a deal that you have secured with the foreign country.

So, that’s probably enough information for now. I’ve covered a number of the actions already, but tune in next time for the next exciting installment.

Paul Grogan

Playtesting...

Advanced prototype

Playtesting Nippon

Development

Everything is on track for an Essen Spiel 15 Release :)