First Impressions of Tatsu

Today we’re going to talk about Tatsu!

“Bless you!”

No – no, Tatsu.

“Bles –“

Tatsu is the game! And quite a cool game it is too, coming from the same minds that brought you the excellent Hive (I should write a review of Hive sometime…). Let’s simplify things and say it’s Backgammon. Basically. It’s basically backgammon… but awesomer. There. That was easy. What, you want more?

Fine. So the best part of backgammon is moving your little discs past your opponent’s discs, trying to keep things protected from being landed on, but never quite able to protect everything, while also trying to pounce on any enemy discs that are themselves exposed. It’s a game of risk and reward, of making the best of the dice that you roll. Tatsu takes that awesome element of backgammon and makes it the entire game.

Putting things on a circular track means that escaping any carefully laid trap is only a brief reprieve, a skirmish won but with the war far from over, as eventually those pairs of discs will meet again as they travel around the board. Even more excitingly, the pieces are all carved with different types of dragon, and it’s a scientifically proven fact that dragons make everything better.

You have green dragons, that when they land on a piece trap it in place until your opponent wastes their dice freeing it. The blue dragon pieces send a piece back to their off board storage area, from which they will need to be recovered by landing on the spawning points around the board. If a player is ever without pieces on the board, they lose. Finally, you have the brutal orange dragons, that with righteous fury destroy the piece they land on! If all the pieces of a single colour are destroyed… you lose the game!

If you’ve played Backgammon before, you’ll pick up this game in no time. If you’ve not, then you’ll still pick it up in no time because it is an elegant and simple system. The movement rules are all about making the most of dice rolls, and thus avoid the typical sense of dismay that rolling and moving so often entails. It’s about creating opportunities, anticipating your opponent and maybe having a little bit of luck… but it’s a short enough game that you don’t have to feel too bad when it goes wrong. Tatsu might not be quite as elegantly perfect (nor as spilt-beer resistant) as Hive, but it is a damn close call!