More fun than a bag of eels
TOKYO TSUKIJI MARKET
Designer: Jordan Draper | Publisher: Jordan Draper
We all love good components. Any time there’s a very nice object in a game, we’re more likely to engage with it. Here, at the fish market, we’re overloaded with nice things. From elegantly cut crabs, slightly shiny mackerel, to red snapper and eel, there’s just a lot of nice wooden tokens in this box. Equally, the handpoured (and therefor slightly wonky) resin boats are a delight to touch and move about too. But once you’ve laid out all the pieces, picked the markets you want to use and piled everything else back in the box – what kind of game are you left with?
Tokyo Tsukiji Market is a bit of a slippery fish to get straight in your head the first time you play. It’s a market game when you have two actions to take each turn. These actions can be taking your boats out for fishing, or taking actions on the markets in the centre of the table. You need licenses to fish for certain kinds of fish, so there’s a sense of investment in a plan from the start. When you catch a fish they exist in a barrel in your market space in front of you at the price you set them at. These will degrade over two turns, so you best not price them too high. The only way to get actual fish tokens is to buy them from another player. This is the tricky bit, that once you have it in your head, you’ll wonder why you struggled at the start.
Everything in the game relies on player interaction. Players should be reading the markets – deciding whether to buy red snapper (and therefore reduce the price for everyone) or invest elsewhere. Maybe in eels, a market that increasing in value every time an eel is caught, and reduces when an eel is sold to it. Or maybe the crab market, which uses blind bidding and randomly grabbing an individually valued crab from a bag. At the start, it’s easy to think you want your prices to be punitive to other players, getting the most out of them. But as you’re playing two roles here – as a market seller and the fisherman themselves – you have to think of it as an entire loop of an economy. Sure, they can buy your fish cheap and flip them into bigger points and cash elsewhere in the central markets, but that’s the fuel that lets you buy what they’ve got, and doing the same, but maybe smarter and better.
Soon competitive pricing takes over, taking just enough to make it worth it to the other players, and ensuring that you can nudge them out in the end. It’s a powerful magic once everyone starts attempting to manipulate the markets over several turns. Sometimes it feels like poker and sometimes it feels like a brain-burning Eurogame. And frankly, it is both at once. It’s a game full of deep pleasures, grand strategies and sometimes, simply going with your gut. If you’ve been trawling for an economic game with interaction by the fish barrel, Tokyo Tsukiji Market might be the big catch you’ve been waiting for.
CHRISTOPHER JOHN EGGETT
WE SAY
One for fans of strong economic sims that like over the table interactions. The tactile nature of the game brings direct joy – almost as much as artfully crashing the eel market for your friends before they cash out.
WHAT’S IN THE BOX?
► 6 Double-layered harbour boards
► 12 Port coverings
► 15 Custom resin Japanese fishing boats
► 18 Market boards
► 42 Licenses and extras tokens
► 64 Fishing barrels
► 119 Custom-shaped fish resources
► 60 Yen tokens
► 1 Auction bag
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED POWER GRID…
While a bit heavier than Power Grid, and way more modular, there’s a similar taste of just about beating your friends in bidding wars and pushing the prices up.