Koryŏ

“Caught in a unichronian politico-steampunk universe, you must learn to navigate the treacherous political landscape and wild power shifts that come with the Koryo universe. Do your best to manage, manipulate and covertly steal power from those around you and you may come out ahead in Koryo!”

Koryo is a quick card game set in a steampunk universe that has decent depth for such a short game. The games lasts eight rounds and in those rounds players are trying to lay down as many cards of the same type as they can to have the most of that type to score the point value on the top of the cards. Each round card dictates how many cards a player may have in front of them. This is where the strategy comes into play. What to keep? What to discard? Fighting for majority of a family with limited space to hold these family cards is a interesting dynamic to the game. At the end of the game, the player with the most of a certain type, scores that point value and adds all their winning families together to see who wins Koryo.

The phases are:

The Card Distribution Phase – Each player is deal a number of cards according the Seasons card for that round

The Order Phase – In turn order, starting with the first player, each player must lay in front of them facedown, any number of identical cards to be played this round. All cards not played from the players hand during this phase get discarded and shuffled back in the draw pile.

The Action Phase – In turn order starting with the first player, each player reveals their cards and plays their effects dictated by the cards powers.

In the Koryo card game, there are nine families of cards. Each family has its own distinct power to allow the players to manipulate their turns to their advantage… or so you hope. Each character has as many cards in the deck as dictated by their point value. Let me lay them out for you.
•The Omniscient: Point Value 1 – The Omniscient allows the player who has it in their player the ability to break ties with other families. There is only one Omniscient in the game.
•The Spy: Point Value 2 – The Spy has two powers to use. Power 1 is if the player has the majority of spies out, that player may steal a victory point token. Power 2 is Spies also protect against lobbying events.
•The Senator: Point Value 3 – Senators allows players having the majority to keep in play by 2.
•The Priest: Point Value 4 – Priests allow the majority holder to destroy one of their negative effecting events cards, either Lobbying or Barbarians.
•The Ship Owner: Point Value 5 – During the Order Phase, the majority owner may play two cards of 2 different types instead of playing any number of cards of one type.
•The Banker: Point Value 6 – Each turn a player has the majority, they gain one victory point token.
•The Guardian: Point Value 7 – The majority holder may not be targeted by a Barbarian event.
•The Broadcaster: Point Value 8 – The majority holder allows the player to draw one additional card in the Card Distribution Phase.
•The Merchant: Point Value 9 – This card has no special power but is worth 9 points to the player with the majority at the end of the game.

Koryo in and of itself is a very simple card game to learn and play out of the box in 10 minutes. That makes it perfect for many gaming situations and great for new gamers in general. There is some depth to this game and the strategy shifts from round to round as majorities change and the closer it gets to the end of the game, the less a player can do. This makes the early game crucial as you don’t want to get stuck with low cards or lots of events which count negatively against the player.

Koryo is a nice filler game that fits very well into the beginning of a game night when people are still waiting for others to show up or at the end of the night when people are winding down and down want a heavy game. It is a light strategy filler game that for me personally doesn’t really feel like anything else I have played so I like it for that reason alone. Koryo also has a decent re-playability factor.

There isn’t much to the game but the artwork is beautiful and the cards stock and finish are both well done. The victory point tokens are thick cardboard so they will last awhile and should resist getting dirty easy if played a lot. The rule book is small and the print is very tiny so it can be hard to read. That is my only knock against it though. It was well organized and the rules were easy to understand and implement immediately.

The steampunk theme is nice, but really isn’t of major impact in such a quick, light game. The cards are beautiful to look at, easy to discern and that is really the effect in its entirety.

Koryo is a solid, well thought out light weight game that won’t amaze you but will certainly be a decent addition to your game collection. Like I stated earlier, it is so short it really does do a nice job as a filler and has just enough strategy to keep you engaged without getting bored. This game is great for people who like social games, don’t mind a bit of antagonist play as majority power plays do happen just about every round and aren’t really into long games or are distracted easily. You don’t have to pay a lot of attention to stay in this game.

Club Fantasci Scoring (Based on scale of 10):

Artwork: 8
Rules Book: 7
Re-playability: 7
Component Quality: 7
Club Fantasci Overall Score: 7.25

I am giving Koryo 7.25 out 10 stars. It is a nice, light weight game that fits many styles and personalities of play.

The game is Club Fantasci Certified!

Club Fantasci Certified

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Note: A review copy of this game was provided to me.

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