Hanamikoji Review – The Agony of Handing Your Opponent the Winning Cards

Hanamikoji (also known as Jixia Academy) is a two-player card game that is small in size, and on components, but massive in terms of decision space. It puts you, a Japanese restaurant owner, against a rival restaurant vying for the attention of seven geisha.

Note: This review was based on the original release of Hanamikoji. At some point, the publisher re-released this game under the title Jixia Academy. While the gameplay is the same, it features different artwork.

While the theme amounts to a more expensive version of luring kids into a van with candy. It does Hanamikoji a disservice to focus on it. Not because the artwork isn’t absolutely gorgeous, or the theme itself isn’t worth talking about. But because the gameplay doesn’t tie itself to the theme.

In reality, this is an abstract game where the gameplay is so phenomenal it could be about winning over dung beetles by offering different types of poo, and I’d still give this a raving review.

How to play

Remove one gift card from the deck and then deal six cards to each player. These gift cards have both a number and colour corresponding to one of the seven geisha, and can only be given to geisha with the same combination.

Players take turns using these gifts to blackmail the geishas by doing one of four actions. These actions will let you score cards, put gifts towards a geisha, discard cards, or remove gifts from the game. You can only perform each action once, and the round is over after both players complete all four.

The actions:

• Secret – Save one card from your hand face down, scoring it at the end of a round.
• Trade-Off – Discard two cards from your hand face down.
• Gift – Offer your opponent three cards, they score one, while you score the other two.
• Competition – You offer two pairs of cards, your opponent scores one pair and you score the other.

At the end of a round, the player who scored the most gifts against a Geisha wins her favour. Moving her token towards the player who won. If players have the same amount of points, the geisha remains unphased and her token stays where it is.

You win if you have four Geisha tokens. However, each geisha has a number of charm points, and if you win over Geisha with a total of 11 or more charm points. You win regardless of whether the other player has four geisha or not.

If neither player has won, then a new round begins. Only this time the geisha’s tokens are not reset to the middle and stay with their respective restaurateurs.

A sharp, well-crafted knife

This is a MacGyver game. If designer Kota Nakayama was trapped with 21 cards, and some cardboard tokens. Not only would he escape, but he would also create an incredibly well-designed card game in the process.

There’s an immediate and sustaining tension throughout Hanamikoji. With only four moves, each must be executed to perfection to win. Making this difficult is the ‘I split, you choose’ mechanics. These create heartbreaking choices where no matter your choice, you’re ceding ground to your opponent.

While Hanamikoji may only have four actions, when you use an action is equally as important as what action to use. This is because each action uses several gift cards in your hand.

So, with each passing turn, you have fewer cards to play with but get a better understanding of the board state. Leaving you with a choice to make early trades with a lot of options in hand without much information, or waiting until you know your opponent is plotting but then not having so many options.

Another point for consideration is the two victory conditions: 11 charm points, or four geisha. You might think it’s a safe bet to just go for the geisha worth the most points, but these geisha also require more cards to win them over. So investing in these geisha, make the others easier to be won over.

You can see that despite there not being too many actions within Hanamikoji, the amount of thought required is monstrous. Deliciously so.

Beautiful artwork, zero theme

Hanamikoji is like a sharp and well-crafted knife, it knows its purpose and excels at doing it. Meaning, that if you’re not into deep-thinking games, you’re not going to enjoy it. It’s missing the joviality you can find in other games like Galaxy Trucker, or Cockroach Poker. It’s more like an unfaithful mathematician – a very calculated affair.

Then, as I mentioned in the intro, there is no theme to Hanamikoji. Or, at least no evocative theme. The game is abstract. While I appreciated the beautiful artwork, you could cut and paste just about any theme onto this game and you wouldn’t have to change the mechanics.

However, there is one oddity with this theme, and that’s the geisha number four’s obi (traditional Japanese sash). It’s tied at the front, and according to Memoirs of a Geisha and Google, this is usually reserved for prostitutes and the elderly.

You see, a true geisha is helped into their clothes, with a helper tying their obi knot for them. Since number four is not old, this leaves one explanation, and I don’t think your kids are going to like it.

Better every round

Hanamikoji is one of my favourite two-player games, a genre that hasn’t received too much attention. While it’s great as is, it gets better in the second round. Where each geisha you’ve won previously doesn’t need so much to entice them. It ramps up the strategy of the game to levels previously unseen and brings in mind games.

However, as it stands Hanamikoji is a clown car of a board game. It looks tiny on the outside, small box, and minimum components. But once you start playing you find an immeasurable wealth of decision space.

On top of that, it’s got fantastic artwork, and the rules are easily understandable and quick to explain. For such a short-playing game, that also tests the limits of your strategic thinking, this is unheard of. This is why I love Hanamikoji and it’s one of my all-time favourites.