Nanatoridori

• Designer: 荒尾 俊樹 (Toshiki Arao)
• Publisher: Arclight Games
• Players: 2-6
• Age: 6+
• Time: 15 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In ナナトリドリ (pronounced “Nanatoridori”), you are a guide at a castle where a bird party has just concluded. You are helping the birds return home. The goal is to play all of the cards in your hand quickly and not be the last remaining player to have unplayed cards. You cannot rearrange the cards in your hand. You may pass to pick up a card from the deck to place anywhere in your hand, or choose to pick up the most recently played card(s) when you play your own.

You can play any number of cards with the same numerical value as long as they are adjacent to each other in your hand. Not only is the hierarchy of cards based on the card’s rank, but hierarchy is also stronger with more cards in the set.  Ending a round as the last remaining person with cards loses you a penguin meeple; lose both meeples and you lose the game — everyone else wins!

The deck is 63 cards, 9 sets numbered from 1-7. The whole deck is shuffled, 8 cards are dealt to each player, and the remainder is placed on the table as a draw deck.   Each player chooses a player color and takes the two penguin tokens in their color.  It is important to remember that you may NEVER rearrange the cards in your hand!

Play goes clockwise and continues until one player has cards left in their hand – they are the big loser for the round. .

On your turn, you can either play a valid set of cards to the table or you can pass.  

To play a set to the table, you must play a stronger set than the previously played set.  If the table is empty, then you are free to play anything.  Cards must be directly adjacent in your hand to be played together.  Cards must have the same rank to be played in a set.   As far as strength goes, more cards is always stronger.  For sets of the same number of cards, the higher rank on the card is stronger.   Example: 2 < 5 < 3,3 < 6,6 < 2,2,2 < 1,1,1,1

Once you play a set of cards, you can then choose to either add the previous set of cards to your hand (keeping them together but in any location in your hand) or you can discard that set.  If you cannot play or do not want to play, you pass. If you pass, you draw one face down card from the deck and either add it to your hand in any position or discard that card.  If all players on the table pass in succession, the player who played the current set of cards discards them and the next player becomes the new start player and can play anything he likes (or pass I suppose).

Again, the round ends when only one player has cards left. They are the loser and must give up one of the penguin tokens.  That player becomes the start player for the next round.  If a player loses their second penguin token, the game ends and that player is the ultimate big loser. All other players are considered to have won.

My thoughts on the game

I wonder if “nana” in japanese is a stem for “do not rearrange your hand” as Nana is another card game that uses a similar mechanism.  I should go and check what the Japanese name is for Bohnanza!  

OK, bad jokes/analogies aside, this game offers a variation on the climbing game – and to me, it feels a lot like Scout in that you cannot change the order of the cards in your hand.  In this game, when you play, you must decide whether to add the previous play to your hand or not. This gives an interesting snowball effect to the hand as players keep adding combos to their hand, generally making larger and larger combos as they add them to cards already in their hand.

Also, when you pass, you draw a card at random from the deck which you can then add to any position in your hand.  Around here, it is not uncommon for players to pass a lot early on in the hand hoping to draw cards to fill in their hand and give them better combinations to play in the later stages of the game.   Sandbagging like this seems to be a valid strategy because the goal of the game is different than most climbing games – here, you don’t care if you’re the first person out, but rather just not being the last person out.  

Hands tend to take a few minutes, and we’ve had a surprising number of games only last two hands!  (Maybe this is a direct reflection of the skill of certain players at climbing games?!)  In any event, it’s a good filler, and it offers some interesting twists on the climbing genre, and it feels different enough from some of the other recent climbers that have hit the table.  It is definitely worth a look if you’re able to get a copy.  As of Spiel 2023, Arclight was looking for a distributor, and I hope this one makes it to a wider market soon.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y
• Neutral. Mark Jackson
• Not for me.