Matagot Takenoko Board Game | Bamboo Farming Game | Panda Themed Strategy Fun Family Game for Adults and Kids | Ages 8+ | 2-4 Players | Average Playtime 45 Minutes | Made by Matagot

My 6 year old son loves playing board games with me when I get home from work every night. Unfortunately his idea of a good board game is Candy Land. I've been trying to find a game that has some strategy but that's simple enough for him to follow. I discovered "Sushi Go!" which is really a fantastic game that I would highly recommend. We've been playing that for the last month or two and I decided to look for something new. I found this and it got great reviews but it sounded pretty lame. Take care of a panda bear and please the emperor. But it got 4.7 stars so I gave it a shot. Here's what I think. Pros: + The length of the game is perfect. It takes us about 45 minutes to play through a full game. + It's challenging but easy enough for a 6-7 year old to pick up if they're patient and have played a couple board games in the past. This might be a little tough for a 6 year old that's never played a board game before. + There is a surprising amount of strategy involved and planning ahead. + The game itself and the pieces are really is beautifully made. + There's no text to read, just pictures. This is huge for a child new to reading. + It's fun for adults and children. + I really enjoy playing the game with just two people but I can see how it would be even better with 3 or 4. Cons: - Are there any? I'm struggling to think of something I don't like. If I had any complaints at all I'd say that for an adult only game the strategy is a little light. Here's a basic summary of the game-play. You're tasked with taking care of a garden and panda bear to please the emperor of Japan. You're given some cards that have different point values on them. They have different tasks on them to earn the points. You can pick more cards as the game goes along. For example you can grow a specific amount of pink and yellow bamboo to get the points on one card, you can have the panda eat bamboo to get points from another card, or you can create different shapes in the garden for the last type of card. You can't just grow bamboo anywhere, you need to have water. The water comes from a lake in the middle of the board and you need to run pipes to the areas of the garden where you want water. You can also move the panda and the gardener around the board where they will either grow or eat bamboo respectively. There are some modifiers you can add to each piece of the garden to give it a pond, make bamboo grow twice as fast, or build a fence so the panda can't eat bamboo there. Each round you also roll dice which affects the weather and adds some additional complexity to the game. For example, if there's a lightning storm the panda gets scared and runs somewhere random and eats bamboo wherever he lands. If it's sunny you get to take 3 actions during your turn instead of the normal 2, etc... Overall this is a great game. I'm really glad I found it and so is my son. Highly recommended 5 stars!

I'm doubly impressed with this product. First off, it's a great board game. The pieces are cute and of great quality. The dice is wooden and solid, as are the individual player chips. The bamboo pieces are wood as well. The tiles that comprise the board are thick and sturdy. The whole game feels of good quality. The concept of the game is creative, and the gameplay is simple to learn, but still has lots of room for strategy. Even the rulebook is fun to read; it's formatted like a little comic book. This made the game fun and easy to learn. I love playing this game. It's one of my new favorites. However, there's another reason that this game is a great purchase: the customer service is excellent. The copy of Takenoko that I received had a broken panda piece inside. One of his ears was missing. I was disappointed, so I emailed a picture to Asmodee's customer service. They were excellent; they responded very promptly to my email. They then mailed me a new panda piece completely free of charge. I have a lot of respect for a company that stands behind their product like that. I'm very impressed that they worked so quickly to replace the broken piece. I felt that showed a lot of integrity. I will definitely purchase from Asmodee again! Great game, great company.

I saw the game Takenoko being played on Will Wheaton's show on YouTube called Table Top. Amazon had it on special before and I hesitated to buy it before it had sold out. This time when it went on special I did not hesitate to buy and am glad I didn't. I like the game because you can play the game with two people and it is still fun (up to 4 people can play). Most of the time, it is just me and my wife that are playing. Sometimes it takes a while before I can convince her to play a new game (she is used to few of her classic favorites). But because this had a cute little panda character with it, I think that helped convince her that it would be fun. The game is beautifully made and colorful. This is definitely a quality game. The pieces in the box are organized well, the pieces are colorful and sturdy, the game cards are intuitive to use, and the instructions are fun to read and look at. The whole game concept is very well thought out. The game states it takes 45 minutes and I can see that after you get used to it, it can be played in that short of a period of time. However, when you are just learning it, plan on it taking significantly longer. Not only are you learning the game and the rule nuances, but since it is a strategy game you are figuring out the strategy also. I have played this two times so far. Once with just me and my wife. She liked the game so much that when my daughter and fiance were over she suggested that we all play it. It takes a while to explain the concept and the rules and you really have to just start playing it. After we had been playing it a while, my daughter audibly expressed an "Aha" moment. From then on she took over. She ended up finishing her goal cards first, which essentially ends the game and you then tally points. My daughter and I ended up in a tie, but she won the tie breaker. Overall, it was a fun night and they asked the next day the name of the game, so that they could buy it. She said it was addicting. You will find it that way also.

After befriending some board-game-aholics, I've recently been reinstating family game night at our house; this time, however, we have branched out beyond Monopoly (thank God). Takenoko is a cute, fun board game with lush, cartoony artwork by one of my favorite board game designers, Antoine Bauza, and slightly complex but easy to pick up rules. It is a set building game, which I love, so every gameplay the garden ends up looking different, which gives the game a lot of replayability. The basic premise is that the Emperor of China has gifted the Emperor of Japan with a panda; the panda roams the Imperial Gardens, and the poor overworked gardener has to do his best to prevent the panda from gobbling down all of his hard-grown bamboo. There are three types of goals to accomplish: panda goals, which require having the panda eat certain amounts and colors of bamboo (of which there are three); gardener goals, which require you to grow a certain number and color of bamboo with specific growing conditions; and emperor goals, which require you to place the garden tiles according to the emperor's aesthetic preferences. Each player gets to complete two distinct actions on their turn out of five possible actions, which varies from placing garden tiles to having the gardener grow bamboo. Starting on the second turn, players get to roll a weather dice that basically gives you an extra free action. The first player to complete eight goals starts the "endgame" aka last turn, and he player with the highest points wins. There are complexities in the rules, like the placement of the garden tiles, the movement of the panda and gardener, and watering the garden, so I highly recommend that at least one player watch the tutorial video under the Watch It Played series or the Tabletop video to get an idea of how to play. As for the learning curve... My mom is clever but doesn't adapt very easily to games with intricate rules. This one took her three attempts to fully understand, so it may not be the best game for board game novices. However, the general verdict seems to be it's SO FREAKING ADORABLE and THERE'S AN ACTUAL PANDA?! so most people, swayed by the cuteness of the illustrations and bright colored bamboo, and cute moveable panda and gardener figurines (whom my mom thought was a woman) will work extra hard to master. Buy it because... PANDAS.

Takenoko is gorgeously illustrated, quickly taught and learned, and is a fun blend of mini-goals and a dash of getting up in each other's biz. Basically, it's one of the best light board games out there! The player mat (which I looooooove) pretty much explains all the things. Each turn starts with the rolling of a weather dice, in which different things may occur depending on what you roll. The weather may cause extra bamboo to grow, allow you to take an extra turn, or other such modifiers. All of the weather action are technically good things, but sometimes they can throw a wrench in your plans. At the start of the game, you get three objective cards (one of each color), your two action tokens, and a player mat. Actions include placing a plot, irrigating, moving the farmer, moving the panda, and drawing new objective cards. The farmer grows the bamboo and the panda eats the bamboo. Placing irrigation also grows bamboo. The board develops as you play and as players decide where to place the new plots. Bamboo grows based on how the different players irrigate and place the farmer and how the panda eats it, which is also controlled by the different players. You score points by completing the objective cards in your hand, which may be to feed the panda certain bamboo colors or achieving a certain layout of plots on the board. If the objective is completed on your turn, you place the objective card immediately so everyone can see where the score's at. End game is initiated when a player has laid their 7th objective card. That player takes the Emperor Card (worth 2 points) and every other player gets another turn. Top score wins. The rule book is super short and features a little comic which is pretty sweet. It also features the most important fact about the panda: he's a stress eater aka my spirit animal. Takenoko is definitely straight forward with the rules, but has a lot of fun variation based on the objective cards you draw. I did notice that there were some objective cards that seemed much more difficult than others and were worth less points - but I have no doubt that could be a totally different situation in another game with different players as well. For instance, in our game, the four of us ended up going for plot objective cards points and not so much the panda eating cards. Our end of game score was: C - 30, Me - 26, A - 19 and R - 18. This is definitely a great game to bust out with new groups, as a palate cleanser, or just because you feel like looking at a gorgeous board and enjoying a straight forward, quick, enjoyable game!

Great game that my 7 and 10 year old love to play. Great for both kids and adults. It's theme is kid friendly and the rules are simple enough for young kids to pick up, but it provides enough strategy that adults can enjoy it. I saw that there were sessions for this game at a local game convention and not on the kids track, so their seems to be a community of adult fans. If you are looking for a game for kids 1st grade and older, that is less common, and much more fun than most of the more mainstream games out there, you can't go wrong with this game. In terms of how old the kid needs to be, it depends on the kid. I bought this for my youngest sons 7th birthday. We played it from a borrow shelf at a local game store months before. He picked it up quickly and was reminding me of the rules. But we also play a lot of board games in my house. Also, I do think that an adult will need to teach the rules to kids this age, many/most won't pick it up reading the rules on their own. My son is at that level of development where he still enjoys shoots and ladders (which he plays with his mom, because that game drives me insane with boredom) and Candyland, but also can play and enjoys chess. Long games like Small World bore him. Takenoko seems to be at the sweet spot of the level of complexity and length of play that he can enjoy. However, he hates playing with his older brother as the level of tactics can put younger kids at a disadvantage. But he has beat me...not sure what that says about me. I'll continue to claim bad luck.

I've had a few dings of bad luck with getting the game, but I really enjoy the game. I ordered it directly from Amazon, and my copy wasn't in English - the box was different from the one pictured. I poked around the interwebs, and sounds like some people have had the same thing happen, and others received the English copy just fine. So when receiving it, possibly take a second to take a quick peek at the box, make sure it's in English. The front is very visual but there is writing on the back. I noticed before I opened the box and had no problem returning it - not sure if Amazon would have had issues if I had opened the box. I ended up picking up a copy instead at a local game store. Everyone I've played with so far has really enjoyed it. You have three types of objective cards to try and meet -- land squares being in certain pattern, panda eating certain bamboo, and bamboo being grown in certain ways. You get two actions per turn to try to further those goals, but a "weather dice" roll gives a little variation to your turns. It's not too involved of a game, but enjoyable. My parents and sister tend to like the lighter, less intense games, and this is one they ask to play frequently. I did notice the first time playing it that the surface of one card was torn and sticking up. Again according to the internets, some people seem to have some issues with cards being damaged. I looked at my cards closer and found several others that had small pieces of the surface had ripped off other cards as well, was just harder to see in the lower lighting. It sounded like Asmodee was very responsive in dealing with those issues so I contacted them through their website, and they were very quick to respond and are in the process of replacing the damaged cards. As far as card sleeves, mine fit into Mayday mini euro sleeves, though a few mm too long.

I just started getting into board games after getting introduced to Ticket to Ride and Settlers of Catan by a friend. I was looking for a game that was relatively quick while being easy to teach. The first time I played with my friends, I had already read the rules ahead of time so I was ready to teach everything. It took maybe 15 minutes to get everything across to my friends. The first game took maybe 45 minutes and each game after that takes about 30 minutes. I find that the gameplay doesn't really get too cutthroat. For the most part, players are just trying to complete their own objectives and there isn't a whole lot of sabotage going on. However, the Emperor card that grants a bonus 2 points for being the first player to finish the set number of objectives still keeps the game competitive. The game is fun enough that my friends and I will play 3 or 4 rounds together in a single sitting. What really strikes me is the artwork of the game. Everything is beautiful from the artwork on the land pieces to even the rule booklet. All of the wooden pieces are not just painted a specific color, but there is also small accents on all of them. The most impressive thing is how detailed the panda and farmer pieces are. They are really well done! As shallow as it might seem, having a game that just looks good gets people to want to try out it out. Having good gameplay makes people want to keep playing it. Takenoko has both of these characteristics, so I highly recommend it.