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Whenever Vital Lacerda has a new heavy game on Kickstarter, backers (and prospective backers) often inquire about his other games when considering add-ons. While I have yet to play Weather Machine, I have enjoyed several plays of Kanban EV thanks to Eagle-Gryphon Games graciously hooking me up with a copy of it. Considering Kanban’s history, I’m sure many people are already familiar with it. However, I'm sure there are also plenty of people out there who are either unfamiliar with Kanban or flat-out intimidated by it, so I wanted to highlight some of the features the new deluxe edition brings to the table.
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Kanban EV is a challenging worker-placement game where 1-4 players compete as EV-factory workers, carefully managing their time and resources to produce cars as efficiently as possible, while trying to impress factory manager, Sandra, and stand out at board meetings. At the end of a series of rounds, the player with the most Production Points (victory points) is the winner of the game.
Kanban EV, as with previous editions of Kanban, shines with its unique theme and clever, puzzly worker placement and time management system, which works in conjunction with Sandra who moves around to block spaces and
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Assembly department in action
• There's a Design department where you can grab design tiles that can be used in Research & Development to upgrade specific parts or to move cars into your garage for testing.
• You can stock the warehouses with kanban orders and collect car parts in the Logistics department.
• In the Assembly department, you provide the parts needed to complete the assembly of cars and watch them roll down the line.
• You can also micromanage other departments from the Administration department.
Factory manager Sandra gradually makes her way down the departments and when she gets back to her desk in the Administration department, the week comes to an end and end-of-week scoring occurs. As the game progresses, meetings will periodically occur giving players the opportunity to claim objectives and score points using wooden speech bubbles they've collected.
As someone who’s played the original edition, the updates in Kanban EV are really well done. The new game board layout and art alone make Kanban EV more functional and smoother to play, thus more enjoyable. Between the art and graphic design updates and the new-and-improved rulebook layout, it is a lot more accessible for new players to jump into. Let's not forget, underneath all its deluxe components, art and graphic design, it’s still a total brain-burner Lacerda game, so anything that contributes to making the gameplay more accessible is welcomed.
The large Kanban EV box is filled with high-quality components all well-organized in insert trays. There are really nice, dual-layered player boards and tons of wooden components including painted wooden cars. Eagle-Gryphon Games also offers a set of metal cars an upgrade, but I think the painted wooden ones look great, so this will come down to personal preference.
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While all the components are excellent, the standout, to me, is the massive, new-and-improved game board. The game board is laid out with a center alley that has worker placement spaces with the factory department areas on either side of the center alley. It is a lot to look at initially, but once you understand the layout, you'll quickly discover how clean and easy it is to navigate when you're playing the game.
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Besides all the updates to the components, art, and graphic design, there's also an upgrade pack available for Kanban EV that includes two mini expansions, which were included as stretch goals in the Kickstarter edition. The upgrade pack includes the SpeedCharger and Special Garage Tiles expansions.
I found the new SpeedCharger expansion to be a great addition to Kanban EV. It gives players an opportunity to unlock permanent special abilities and offers a new way to score points. I’m sure many will think, why add more stuff to an already complex game? I would usually ask the same, but in this case, I believe it adds an interesting dose of variety and spice to the game, while being easy to integrate.
During setup, you build a limited supply of charger tokens based on the player count, and then each player gets a special charging player board. When you work shifts in the Administration department, you can spend one shift taking a charger token from the supply and placing it on an open space on your personal charging board.
The special abilities are easy to understand and the perks are great. For example, if you unlock the R&D ability, every time you work in R&D, you can upgrade a design with a car part from the supply. Likewise, when working in the Logistics department with that charger ability unlocked, you can bank two shifts instead of one when placing a kanban card.
In addition to unlocking helpful special abilities, each charger token on your charging board is worth 1 point for each car in your garages at the end of the game. This can be a nice little boost to your score at the end of the game and it makes the Administration workstation spaces very competitive in a good way.
The Special Garage Tile expansion includes seven special garage tiles that can be used as a gameplay variant to give each player a different bonus for their 5th garage. This is yet another minor change that adds more variety and also adds a wee bit of asymmetry to each player's player board.
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Plan and Selection decks
Kanban EV also features a solo mode designed by Dávid Turczi. What a great way to beef up your skills in between multiplayer games!
In the solo mode of Kanban EV, you compete against 2 AI opponents appropriately named Mr. Turczi and Mr. Lacerda. The bots are driven by two decks of cards: Plan cards and Selection cards. There aren’t a tremendous amount of rules for the solo mode, but there’s definitely a bit of a learning curve when you’re just getting started with it. The good news is, the overall system flows smoothly once you get used to it and familiarize yourself with the crazy-looking iconography on the Plan cards. Here’s how it works…
During setup, you’ll designate separate player areas for Mr. Turczi and Mr. Lacerda. At the beginning of a round, three Plan cards are revealed in a column. When it’s Mr. Turczi or Mr. Lacerda’s turn to choose a department, flip the top Selection card to determine which Plan card to take (top or bottom). Then you place both the Plan and Selection cards in the corresponding bot’s player area in preparation for the work phase.
During the work phase, the bots first advance once on the training track of their current department. Then perform additional actions for the department as specified on the Plan card chosen in the department selection phase.
For each department's actions, Mr. Turczi and Mr. Lacerda perform the same action slightly differently. For example, in Logistics, Mr. Lacerda issues a kanban order, then collects parts once (or twice if certified). Alternatively, Mr. Turczi simply collects parts once when working in Logistics. These variances make the bots feel more like human opponents which keeps things unpredictable and challenging.
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Speaking of challenging, there are also Difficulty cards you can throw into the mix if you’re a Kanban expert, or a glutton for punishment like me. You randomly select two of the nine Difficulty cards before you start the game, or you can choose any number of them to play with. The Difficulty cards are varied and can change the way the bots take certain actions, increase the amount of points they score, and more.
As far as scoring goes, Mr. Turczi and Mr. Lacerda do not score points. Instead, you lose points anytime they would gain points. End game scoring is pretty much the same for you as a normal multiplayer game, but then you subtract points the bots score for cars, parts, design tiles, and their training track progress. If your score is positive, you win the game. There’s also a five-tier ranking system which you can evaluate yourself on assuming you don’t let Mr. Turczi and Mr. Lacerda crush you.
Kanban EV has a lot to offer long-time Kanban fans while also being an accessible entry point for new players who are looking to get into a heavy, highly thematic, euro game that will not only look great on your table, but will also give your brain a workout for years to come.
I still have yet to play Lisboa and a few of Lacerda's other beasty gems. I'm also very much looking forward to checking out Weather Machine. If you're looking to get a better feel for Weather Machine, my friends Monique and Naveen from Before You Play posted an excellent playthrough video that's worth checking out:
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