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The subject matter of the game — recycling — is tightly integrated into the gameplay, with you delivering four types (colors) of recyclable products (cards) to four factories and picking up the raw material waiting at the other end of that factory. When a factory has enough product on it, the factory clears and the player who added the final amount scores a token from this factory, with the points for these tokens generally increasing over time. You score for a color only if you have at least two tokens in that color, and if you collect too much raw material in your hand, you lose some of it as negative points.
R-Eco is brilliantly designed, being thematic and highly interactive with lots of meaningful choices in a twenty-minute timeframe, and I'm dumbfounded that the game is no longer on the market.
I've enjoyed other Kawasaki titles over the years — Master of Rules, Robotory, Gauss, Stack Market, Traders of Carthage/Osaka, Discovery of World Ruins, and more — and I'm amazed at the breadth of both subject matter and game styles present in his catalog.
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Now Kawasaki has a huge project in the works courtesy of co-publishers Arclight and Max Factory: Dragon Gyas, with "Gyas" being pronounced with a hard "g" and a long "ee". Here's an overview of the gameplay:
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While Dragon Gyas can be played by 1-4 players, the game is primarily designed to be a two-player game in which one player represents the Hexgyas and its seven supporting knights while the other player controls the Grandragon and its seven Dragonewts. All of the characters are represented by both miniatures and cardboard standees with you choosing which to use.
The Hexgyas and Grandragon are much larger than the other characters, and they're the most important figures because if you lose your main character, then you lose the game.
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To set up, players choose a starting configuration for their large figure and seven smaller ones on their half of the game board. The Hexgyas and Grandragon stand in one of the five large hexagonal spaces, while their supporting characters occupy the smaller hexes that form a network around these larger hexes. Each player positions three pieces of armor around their large figure, designating two other positions around their perimeter as a weak spot and a critical weak spot. Players also customize a control deck for their large character with three attack cards and three special cards that are added to their six movement cards.
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The game lasts at most five rounds, and each round consists of four phases. Players first choose initiative from a hand of five initiative cards and program three control cards for their large figure. During the control phase, players carry out their actions, moving their large figure and attempting to inflict damage on the opponent. The command phase allows the supporting characters to attack one another, but also to infiltrate the opponent's giant to discover weak spots and possibly inflict damage or pull control cards from their hand.
Deal ten damage to the opponent's larger figure, and you win instantly. If no one has been taken down after five rounds, then the Grandragon wins, having overcome the initiative advantage wielded by the Hexgyas.
The Hexgyas and Grandragon are much larger than the other characters, and they're the most important figures because if you lose your main character, then you lose the game.
Grandragon figure
To set up, players choose a starting configuration for their large figure and seven smaller ones on their half of the game board. The Hexgyas and Grandragon stand in one of the five large hexagonal spaces, while their supporting characters occupy the smaller hexes that form a network around these larger hexes. Each player positions three pieces of armor around their large figure, designating two other positions around their perimeter as a weak spot and a critical weak spot. Players also customize a control deck for their large character with three attack cards and three special cards that are added to their six movement cards.
Mock-up components and game board; I laid down the cardboard standees for easier viewing
The game lasts at most five rounds, and each round consists of four phases. Players first choose initiative from a hand of five initiative cards and program three control cards for their large figure. During the control phase, players carry out their actions, moving their large figure and attempting to inflict damage on the opponent. The command phase allows the supporting characters to attack one another, but also to infiltrate the opponent's giant to discover weak spots and possibly inflict damage or pull control cards from their hand.
Deal ten damage to the opponent's larger figure, and you win instantly. If no one has been taken down after five rounds, then the Grandragon wins, having overcome the initiative advantage wielded by the Hexgyas.
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A sampling of the game's dragonewts
I'll note that I received a mock-up version of Dragon Gyas in order to preview the game ahead of its June 2020 Kickstarter campaign (KS link), and the components shown in this post and the video below are from that copy of the game. The miniatures might be final and produced, but the cards, game board, and other components are not production quality. (BGG and I have received no compensation for this preview. I'm a Kawasaki fan, so I was curious to take a look at the game, even though it's outside my normal gaming wheelhouse.)
To fill out the overview above in more detail, at the start of the game you craft a deck from the cards available to you, giving you a deck that suits your playing style while also not allowing you to have access to every possible counter to what the opponent does and to whichever situation you happen to be in. The attack and special cards often have a cost, with a colored circle being one of your life points and a circle with a black dot being an exhausted life point. It's perhaps odd that you'd choose these cards given that you must be damaged in order to use them, but after having played two games (both with two players), I can guarantee that you're going to be damaged plenty, so you'll have those resources to spare.
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Mock-up cards for the Hexgyas player
The Grandragon has ten life points, while the Hexgyas has seven life points and three soul points. The difference in these tokens comes into play with deck choices since some of the Hexgyas cards require an expenditure of soul (or exhausted soul) in order to play them. Additionally, in the right circumstances the Grandragon can sometimes hit for an additional soul damage on top of other damage — and while extra damage is usually good, if the Hexgyas player has the right card in their deck, they can use that damage to power up.
Dragon Gyas includes a mix of programming and tactical battles, with the programming taking place when you lock in three control cards to determine what your large figure will do on a particular round. Guess poorly, and you'll shoot fire at nothing while the enemy rains blows upon you (or also shoots at nothing). My approach in these types of games tends to be of the wasting turns variety with me being unable to anticipate what someone might do. Part of the issue, of course, is that if you don't know which control cards the opposing player has, then you can't anticipate what they're trying to do — and even if you do know all of the possible cards, that player is using only some of them, so you still won't really know what's possible until they use it against you.
A sampling of the game's knights
At the end of a round, you discard the three control cards you played, then take any two cards from your discard pile back into your hand. Want to keep a certain attack card? Then you might have to lose the ability to step right. Which cards will you choose?
The tactical battle aspect of the game comes from the conflict of dragonewts and knights during the command phase. Depending on the initiative cards played, players might each have four actions (in a 2-2-2-2) pattern, might have 4-3 actions (2-2-2-1), or might have 5-3 actions; in this latter case, the player with an initiative advantage of at least 7 takes all five of their knight/dragonewt actions prior to the opponent, giving you the chance to chain together moves, effects, and attacks. Each knight/dragonewt has two different effects, and after moving a figure you can use one of its effects.
The video below gives detailed examples of both the programmed movement and the tactical battles, in addition to other aspects of gameplay:
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