You’re going to hear me talk a lot about Kado in comparison to another game. And that might be a good thing and it might not for Kado. But it’s always interesting to come across a game that has some similarities to a game that I’ve already played. This one I learned on Board Game Arena (BGA) and it’s a pretty fast play there. But does that mean it’s one that I’m going to pick up in real life?

How To Play Kado

Kado is grid building set collection game. You want to get the same colored ribbons in columns of your three high by four wide grid. And you want to get like “presents” in your columns to score you points. If you get all of a color in a column you score the highest point card in that column. And for each row you get points for the total on the present you have the most of or that will give you the highest point total.

How do you get your presents, well, it’s a method that is used in Biblios. That method is that you draw cards one at a time and determine if you want to keep it, or you give it to another player. You will keep or give it all the players including yourself.

After that each player, until someone gets it right or they all pass/guess, guess what you kept for yourself. If they guess the color or the present correctly they take the card and you draw a random new one. At that point once you either gain a random new one or they all have guessed or passed, you place your tile. Then the first player moves and you do it again until 12 rounds are complete.

What Doesn’t Work

The scoring in the game is not great. You might complete a column but get two points for it. While someone else might complete a row and get 14 points for it just based off of the cards that come out. So the column scoring feels like too little, and the row scoring can feel like two much, and it just comes down to the luck of the card draw.

The choice isn’t all that interesting either. I give you a card that you don’t want, if I can. And then I hope to get one that I want. But you can maybe guess that I gave myself that and steal it. But it might not be a card that you want. So you might as well just hand out cards.

What Works

The game is fast and pretty easy to understand. You look at a card and make a decision, do I keep it or do I give it away. And if playing multiple players who do I give it to. But it’s limited decision making throughout the game or throughout the big part of the game.

And I think that the guessing is interesting. You might go for a strategy of trying to guess what the other player wanted and maybe got to mess that player over. But that might backfire if you steal something from them and they draw something better. So often times it’s better to try and guess to get something that you might have wanted that they are keeping away from you, or they got with the last pick.

Who Is Kado For

I think this will be a fun game for people getting into the hobby. The theme is pretty fun, you are giving gifts. Of course it breaks down as you are keeping gifts of your own. But for more seasoned gamers, or people who have played Biblios, this is going to feel like the game is lacking. But it’s a good game when you want to move past that Uno, Skip-Bo, from the Wal-Mart/Target shelf sort of game to something that feels a little bit different.

My Final Thoughts on Kado

I’m very meh on this game. It feels like it tried to take what Biblios does and create a game from that one mechanism. Then they realized that they probably needed something more so they added in that guessing element to the game. But that element and the randomness of the draw just makes the game a very big luck fest.

And I talked about it in what doesn’t work, but the scoring is rough in this game. The rows are the way to score you points. The columns at best score you five points. And most rows you should score well over that. So while you might luck into getting a column to score you points, it isn’t worth trying for them. At that point, why even have that element of the game. It again feels like this game had one mechanism to start, we want to do that Biblios draw a card and either keep it and give it, and then they tried to create a game around that.

Now, I said that I’m very meh on this game. This isn’t a “bad” game perse, it’s just a game that offers much interesting in the way of choices. You draw cards and the game itself, the shuffle of the cards, that decides what you do and where you place things. So it’s almost like you a conduit for the game versus something playing the game.

My Grade: D+
Strategy: D-
Luck: A

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