So I got back from Tokyo Game Market -Aki- and while I am collecting thoughts and photos etc I thought I would talk about one of the games I bought and have played already. I shall call the game Hero Sakaba from here on out for ease. It is a game by the small company 88 Create, has a play time of around 40min , is for 3-4 players and recommended for ages 13 up.
Ill avoid talking about the tensei story for the game as it feels as tacked on as many iseaki stories where they could just be set in a fantasy world without someone having to be from Japan in the world in the first place (but this seems suited for another talk in another time).
In the game, players are working at different sakaba (酒場) kind of like a pub/izakaya with a focus on food that goes well with alcohol. They aim to compete to become the sakaba of the most renown in the world they are in.
The game is set over 5 rounds and in each round there are 4 phases. Each players completes their turn/turns in a phase before moving onto the next one. The phases consist of..
- Sourcing Phase (調査)
- Tout Phase (客引き)
- Battle Phase (戦闘)
- Cooking Phase (調理)
Before talking about each phase, I should explain a few things that will help understand how the different phases interact with each other.
There is a field area in the game which has monsters divided into 3 types (Lv1, Lvl 2, Lvl 3-4). Each time there will be 2 monsters available of each type on the field. The monsters provide resources that are used to create food. The food available to cook is different in each of the 5 rounds, going from appetizers (前菜）, cold dishes (玲菜）, flame grilled (焼物）, fried (揚物）, Stewed (煮物). Besides stewed dishes, each food type will be available to cook in round it comes out and the subsequent round (however the food card is flipped to its other side). Cooking a dish gives you VP and cooking a dish flipped over gives lower VP and requires you to lose extra resources. There is also alcohol available. Alcohol costs one water resource to acquire, but each subsequent alcohol you want to acquire costs 1 + the number of alcohol you already have. So what is alcohol used for besides VP too?
Well to explain that, I will explain the heroes too. There will always be 4 heroes available and each round you take 1. The heroes are useful in the Combat Phase as by yourself you have 1 die but heroes either give you extra dice or give you a + bonus to your final combat score. They also have abilities that you can use once per round in either the Combat Phase or the Cooking Phase. To use an ability, you need to spend an alcohol (returning it to the common area and able to be used later by players). The top ability requires any alcohol but a better ability can be used that requires you to spend the heroes favorite alcohol (printed on the hero card) to activate it.
So you can see the systems are tied to each other.
Phew still with me? Alright so about those phases.
- Sourcing Phase
In this one , starting with the lead player and proceeding clockwise, you choose one action.
a) Take one monster cards from the field then replace it from the appropriate monster deck or take the top card of one of the monster decks
OR
b) go home.
Players take turns doing actions until everyone goes home.
When players take a monster, they must place it in front of them and in order from left to right. You also may think , hmm so you can just take a monster without dice rolling and no limit on what you take? Well why wouldn't' I just take all the ones I want resources for? Well a couple of reasons. Turn order for the next 2 phases is decided by the following.
1.The smallest total value of scoured monsters goes first and so on.
2.If values are the same, difference is decided by number of monster cards.
3.If it is still a draw, then turn order for those remaining is clockwise from the first player.
Also, more monsters will make it harder to complete the Combat Phase without drawbacks.
2.Tout Phase
Playing in the order decided by the Sourcing Phase, players take it in turns to acquire one hero from the available 4 and then replace it from the hero pile. Very simple phase.
- Combat Phase
This is the phase where you try to take out the monsters you sourced to turn them into ingredients. In the same turn order as the Tout Phase, players create their dice pool from their board, heroes cards, any abilities being used etc. (if a hero ability is used, their card is rotated sideways to show that hero has been used this round). Then they roll the dice and create their Combat Score. Then starting from the left of their monster line players try to take out the monsters one at a time, reducing the Combat Score by the monsters health value each monster they take out. To put it simply, The total value of the Combat Score should be equal to or higher than the total value of the monsters health added together.
If you succeed, you acquire all the ingredients (by moving cubes on your ingredients tracker cards). If you don't take out all the monsters, you move your cube on your Bad Rep (悪評) tracker to the right once for each monster you didn't take out. Now you see why you need to be careful about what monsters you source da ne.
The 5 resources are Meat, Fish, Vegetable, Egg and Water by the way (a rainbow star is a wild).
Also when a player finishes their combat, they turn over their turn order card (I just realized I forgot to mention until now that the turn order decided in the Source Phase involves giving out cards as reminders). The turn order for the Cooking Phase wont be the same as the other so take note. - Cooking Phase
In the new turn order, players take it in turns to choose one action
a) Cook a dish or collect 1 alcohol - to do this , just reduce the resources by the required amount (keeping in mind the exponential cost increase for alcohol), then take the card and add it to your VP pile (it was eaten ...yummy)
OR
b) Close up
Once everyone has closed up shop, congratulations...it is time to refresh the field with completely new monsters, turn over the current food type to its reverse side, add the next rounds food type to the common area and see who the first player will be for the start of the next rounds Source Phase (hint - it is written on the turn order card).
After 5 rounds, whoever has the most VP has the most kick butt sakaba in the realm and will now undoubtably start a franchise and become a big stinky capitalist sell out (h....horray).
I forgot to add , 2 out of 5 bonus conditions are determined at the start of the game such as Meat Specialist Sakaba (肉酒場) that give bonus points based on being the player that had the most meat dishes eaten. These add an extra level of competition to get the dishes you really want....and come on nama ham is pretty good ok.
So yeah that is basically it. If you made it to the end of this rant then maybe you are wondering if this is playable if you know zero Japanese? The difficulty would be the hero skill cards though they all follow basic patters that Google TL or like probably have little problem helping you out with. Besides that and the bonus point cards, everything is shown with icons. It played pretty quick once everyone got the hang of it and we all had a lot of fun and immediately played it a second time.
It wasn't on my radar at TGM but I am glad I picked it up. The art makes me hungry and the character design isn't anything some of you may feel ashamed about playing with....the stars are the food and drinks in this baby...(although you may have to endure chain reaction cries of KAWAIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! to some of the monster art, depending on who you play with).
It costs 3200 yen on Booth pre-order atm
https://booth.pm/ja/items/5316773
and you can find more info about the game on Game Market
https://gamemarket.jp/game/182202
or their twitter
https://twitter.com/yachi58_ringo
Now excuse me, I need to go feed the witch sitting at the end of the bar a warm sake so she lets me roll 2 extra dice so I can kill this steam bull and create delicious nama ham from its carcass...mmmmmmmm