IELLOKanagawa Yokai Game

I love Kana Gawa for its unique style of “painting” pictures and collecting designs. This expansion Yokai adds 3 new types of cards- parasols, lanterns and kites plus the Yokai which can give you positive points but most likely negative. Using the original game, you select the types of cards from the original set of 4 (houses,animals,people and trees) plus some from the expansion and shuffle the cards together. One aspect I have noticed is that it’s harder to get some of the end diplomas when you use the expansion because there’s not as many things available (like the directional arrows) when you use the new cards. I still enjoy playing both the regular game and the expansion and the 2 boxes are designed to fit next to each other and extend the front cover picture.

I always judge and rate expansions based on whether I feel they really enhance and make the base game better. In this case Kanagawa is already perfect; you aren't going to get a lot of anything new or exciting when adding this one. I still enjoy owning it, for games we love as much as this one we do like to have all the content for it, but it is one that falls short of expanding the game.What you get with Yokai is three new card sets kites, parasols, and lanterns. You pick two of the new card sets with their accompanying diploma rewards and mix them with two sets from the original game to form your new deck. This really adds nothing to the game, it does add new cards that freshen things up but it does so at the expense of you not playing with half the deck, and each game requiring you to pull out and shuffle in different cards each time to change it again. I really do not like expansions like this, the extra setup and takedown time to pick out all the cards is not fun, nor is just using half your available cards fun. In my opinion this is less of an expansion and just some additional cards.There is a new mechanic though which are the Yokai spirit bottles, the Yokai symbols appear on cards as you place them in your portrait or your studio, and when you draw these cards you must take one of the cursed Yokai tokens. Collect all three of them though and you can grab an extra point scoring diploma. Any time these symbols come up you always take the bottles from other players and at the end of the game they are in fact negative points that you must accept for having the bottles. This is not bad; it also though doesn't really add much to the game, a few more choices perhaps as to which cards to pick but not enough to make it stand out.There is nothing wrong with Yokai as an expansion but there isn't a lot right with it either. It doesn't expand the original game in a good way and actually makes the fast replayability take a hit when having to pick out and shuffle the deck each time.The art is still very attractive and goes along well with the original cards, we're happy to own it and actually ignore the rules and play with all the cards and diplomas in play at all times and it works just fine. This is an expansion for those who love the base game and just want more content for it, for the regular average player of the game, take a pass on this one.

Great little addition to an already good game but this expansion adds a bit more depth. Love the artwork in this and the base game Kana Gawa. Good for 10+

Disappointed