YORKTON - Over the weeks we have reviewed several games by designer Kanare Kato; Estate, Stairs, Lines of Fixation and Iago as examples.
But, this week’s game ‘Meridians’ is just a cut above the rest – as much as Stairs surprised and Iago was an adaptation of the much-loved game Othello.
It seems that the designer, who produces games through kanare-abstract.com, thought Meridians was just a bit special too. Typically games from Kato come in small box format, with neat, foldable cloth boards. They are easy to take on the go.
Meridians is available in what might be called standard format, but has also had a much larger wooden board produced.
The board is a centerless hexagonal one tessellated with triangles with six points to two sides and seven points to four sides.
The larger wooden board makes this one play nicer, as the board is less crowded, so moves are simply easier to see.
So what is Meridians?
It is an abstract strategy game for two players which is territorial in nature, but the goal is to eliminate an opponent's stones.
On each player's first turn, players place a stone of their own colour on any empty point. On each player's second turn, players place another stone of their colour so that their own two stones have a path.
A path is an empty point, or an uninterrupted straight line of empty points that have a pair of like-coloured stones on both ends, which are not part of the same group. Such a pair is said to have a path, noted a description from the designer on BGG.
A dead group is a group in which all stones belonging to it have no path. If any stone belonging to a group has a path, the group is said to have a path.
You remove all opponent pieces which are is dead groups.
After the second turn, the player with no stones of their color on the board at the beginning of their turn loses.
The game rules are extremely simple and are quickly understood once into a game.
Initially, on an open board, placements are rather easy of course, but as the game progresses it gets dicier to know where to place stones to keep your stones alive and also start to ‘choke’ off an opponent in terms of their placement options.
Like any good abstract strategy game there is lots of room to become better at this game through experience, and that is a good thing.
Kato has several games we’ve played worth recommending – but none more so than Meridians.
