LeiriaCon 2025 - Game Review - Nippon
by Ian. Wed 9 AprI was very lucky this year at LeiriaCon 2025 to meet so many great designers and test some games in various stages of development.
It is one of the best conventions out there.
I will try to post separately some photos and a little bit of info on each game that I played.
First up is Nippon: Zaibatsu which reimplements the 2015 game Nippon.
This is the same design team as before, which is Nuno Bizarro Sentieiro and Paulo Soledade.
I was lucky enough to have played a copy of this, kindly lent to me by Paulo at the con this year.
Note that the version we have played is subject to change and is a pre-production copy.
What a great game though. I am coming at this from not having played the original so I guess by view is from a new player.
The game itself at heart is an area control gam,e but instead of "dudes on a Map" it is about producing goods in your factories and shipping those goods to the various region,s which will score. The goods can vary in value based on the type and the amount.
For example cotton can be worth (I think) 1, 2, 3 depending on if you ship 1, 2 or 3 crates of it whilst clocks are 5, 6 or 7 if you ship 1 to 3. Each region has a variable setup as well so some areas might not need fabric whist others might need two lots.
You get the different goods by building factories, which require various resources for. Some resources are obtained by actions (Coal) whilst others (steel) is obtained either via placing a good on a map or by a reset phase.
Your actions are determined by various coloured workers that are across the top of the board. Each "action" has 3 workers, and when they are empt,y they get refilled. When the refill area is empty that is one round gone. This essentially is the game timer.
So your actions are:
Build a factory - These will give you either a one-time bonus or an in-game change. This is how you also build more lucrative goods.
Build 1, 2 or 3 Trains - These are used to give you a +2 for area control in each region.
Increase knowledge - You need this to build better factories.
Produce Goods - Uses coal, and then you produce what your factory can.
Get Coal - See above.
Ship Goods - Take goods from your warehouse and put them on the board (and get area bonus)
Buy Boats - This helps with boosting your income bonus and adding another worker.
Add Automations - Allows you to produce more goods in factories.
There are a couple of mid game scoring rounds which check for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in each region. You get influence in those regions by shipping goods of a certain value.
Finally there is a reset action where you get income. This is quite clever as you get up to 2 bonuses based on the colour of meeple you took and where they are on your order on the board. However, you have to pay income based on the total different colours you have. Ideally, you just want two colours but that might not be possible based on what choices you have.
The game itself looks amazing and feels very good to play. Initially, I thought we would have too much time and end up doing everything, but the game speeds up towards the end and its clear you can not.
This is one I will back on Kickstarter when it comes out later.