Review #20: Kanban

# of Players: 2-4
Playtime: 2-3 Hours

Core Mechanic: Worker Placement

Theme: Factory
Type: Euro

Weight: Heavy

Year: 2014

Rating: 8.5*

Over the last couple years, the designer Vital Lacerda has been popping up more and more when I am looking at new euro games that I want to try. From the Gallerist to Vinhos to Lisboa, there are numerous games that look interesting, look heavy, and look like my cup of tea. However, as previously mentioned there are so many heavy euro games out there that I also want to play and only so much time to do so. Luckily, Kanban was available on the Boiteajeux website and so far this super heavy game has been punishing every time, but also extremely enjoyable.

In Kanban, each player is a worker in the same car factory. Players will be moving from workstation to workstation each round to complete different jobs in the factory all in the hopes of having the most Productivity Points at the end so that he or she can be declared the winner. At each workstation, players will be able to take a number of actions depending on the number of shifts in the action space they took and the number of shifts they have banked. These banked shifts are key to the game as you will want to use them to complete more tasks, but you will also want to save some of them for the Factory Manager to evaluate.

There are two versions of the Factory Manager, which leads to two different game experiences. First is "Nice Sandra", also known as the newcomer friendly version of the game. In this version, players will start at 0 Productivity Points and players who are doing well will gain additional points throughout the game when "Nice Sandra" conducts departmental evaluations. On the other hand, "Mean Sandra" is the harder of the two variants and while players start off with 15 Productivity Points, players who are doing poorly will be penalized during departmental evaluations.

Onto the core of the game play itself, the game is extremely dense and there is a lot going on. There are five different workstations players can choose to take actions from. In the Design Department, players will be able to select car designs that they can use to upgrade cars or claim cars. Players will be able to issue orders for car parts and subsequently collect car parts in the Logistics Department. Car parts are necessary to build cars in the Assembly Line Department and upgrade designs in the Testing & Innovation Department. Cars that were built the former department can be claimed off the test track in the latter department as well. In addition, in each department players can use their actions to train instead and become certified, which unlocks additional bonuses in each department and moves you further along the certification track, unlocking more bonuses and putting you in a better position for the meetings, discussed below.

If things already sound complicated, hold on tight. I have already mentioned departmental evaluations and meetings without going into much detail of what they are. These are actually two of the four scoring events that happen throughout the game - the other two are end-of-week scoring and final scoring. First up is departmental evaluations. During the Department Selection phase when each player selects a workstation, the Factory Manager automatically moves to a new department as well. At the end of the each round (also called a day in the game), depending on the Factory Manager you have decided to play with, players will gain or lose points depending on how many time shifts they have banked and how high they are on the training track for that department.

Next, meetings occur throughout the game determined by how many cars are claimed from the Testing & Innovation Department. During meetings you will score Productivity Points by reaching performance goals, of which there are two types, public and private. At the start of the game, there will be four public goals and each player has three private goals. Of the private goals, at every meeting each player will need to choose one to play this meeting, choose one to select as a public goal for the next meeting, and choose one to discard. When meeting these goals, whether public or private, each player has to use one of their four earned seats at the table to score points. Seats can be earned in a variety of ways, but mainly through training, accomplishing factory goals, and assembling models in demand. Finally, each performance goal can only be met a certain number of times and each subsequent time they are worth less points, so turn order during the meeting is important, which is determined by the certification track.

Third, there is end-of-week scoring. As mentioned earlier, the Factory Manager automatically moves to a new department each round. At the start of the game, she starts at the Administration department, then slowly starts moving through the departments each round until she ends up at her desk again, which triggers the end-of-week-scoring. Here, players will gain points based on cars in your garage and upgrades that have been made. Finally there is final scoring at the end of the game, triggered by a combination of the weeks that have passed and the number of cars that have been produced, where players will score points based on a variety of factors including achievements, shift banks, cars, designs, and training.

As can probably be seen, there is a large number of things to keep track of and to get out of these scoring rounds with a decent score requires very careful long term planning with your lone worker. There are even different turn order tracks to keep in mind - using the workstations happen from left to right, including selecting future workstations, while turn order during meetings happens from right to left along the certification track. I've been playing this game for awhile now and have only just begun to create a semblance of strategy for balancing long term and short term goals. As this slowly becomes clearer, I can start to see why these very heavy euros have such a dedicated following.

Of the Vital Lacerda games I have been following, this one had a less interesting theme than the others, but the execution is perfect. I really do get the feeling that I'm doing my best to run a car factory and manage different goals. Still, because of the theme and how heavy the game is, I think this game has a somewhat limited audience that I happen to fall into but most would not. For now, I think it could belong in the Heavyweight collection as probably the heaviest game in that collection. Until I play another one of his games, I think it belongs in the Collector collection as well. Currently the depth of strategy, rules, and scoring is unmatched and the game is really growing on me.