Iwari: Deluxe Edition

Players represent wandering tribes spreading across a wild archipelago divided into five regions. On each turn, players play cards to place tents and expand settlements, contesting majority control of territories and building uninterrupted lines of tents along roads to form settlements. Players also use cards to erect nature totems on regions, scoring by totem majorities that influence adjacent territories and by completing small mission goals that grant perks and points during an early scoring round. The game includes variable maps, modular components, and solo/co-op options that alter setup and scoring, with additional deluxe pieces such as extra maps, void totems, ruins, and scenario cards that introduce new paths and challenges.

Players: 1–6 best 3
Playing time: 45 min
Age: 14+
Complexity: 2.4 / 5

7.3 on LudoyaAbstract StrategyNetwork and Route BuildingOpen DraftingHand Management

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About the game

Design: Michael Schacht
Art: Matthew Mizak
Publisher: ThunderGryph Games

Expansions

See them in Ludoya

Iwari: The Storm2020

Iwari: Metal Totem2020

On Ludoya's tables

Full stats in Ludoya

39
Plays logged: 71
Players: 57m 20s
Average play: 19
In collections: 4
On wishlists

7.3/10

from 5 Ludoya reviews

Evan7.2
In this game players play cards to place markers into a region matching the colors of cards. The regions have a limited number of spots for placement and there are bonus points if you can get your placements to link to each other. Scoring for these regions is such that the player with the most markers, gets 1vp per marker in the region belonging to all players. Second place gets 1vp per marker the player who had the most has, and so on. In addition to this, there are totem tokens that get placed into stacks in each region. Availability for placing the totems only opens up once the region has enough player markers to accommodate them. These totems score when you have the majority of totem pieces in two regions that share a region border. The game plays quickly, taking roughly an hour and the scoring mechanism encourages a lot of interesting player interaction. Blocking someone over there, or jumping into a spot for second place. This edition of the game has a lot of additional expansion material that on rules read, seem to detract from these solid central game concepts, but I'm not expert enough in the game to know for sure yet. The map variation is welcome however. ★ Art, Iconography and components functional ★ Clever or interesting mechanisms ★ Reasonably low downtime between turns with mildly AP players ★ Multiple plays stay interesting ★ Low or mitigatable luck elements ★★★☆☆ Raw enjoyment
evilangel7.0
Pte.