Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
Kanare Kato is an independent abstract game designer from Japan who distributes his games through his own company, Kanare Abstracts. His small box abstract games are simple to learn, but pack a big, thinky punch. As a one-man operation without an international distributor, both Kanare and his games may be unknown to you. However, if you love abstracts, do I have some games for you to check out.
Meridians is likely his best-known game. Over on BoardGameGeek, Meridians was awarded the Best Combinatorial 2-Player Game of 2021. It’s a game of area control and capture where each of your pieces needs to be connected by line-of-sight to at least one other of your pieces. If not, that piece—or group of such pieces—is eliminated from the board. When all the territory on the board has been claimed, the player with the majority wins the game.
You’ll start by laying the fabric game board (approx. 8” square) between yourself and your opponent. The board consists of a large hexagon, with three sets of parallel lines that run from opposite corner edges. These lines intersect at 60º angles and those intersections create the placement points for the game.
You then choose to play as black or white, taking all 72 of the matching pieces. Select a starting player and you’re ready to play.
On your first turn, place a token of your color on any of those intersections. On subsequent turns, the pieces you place must have an uninterrupted line-of-sight connection to at least one of your other pieces on the board.
Those pieces must work together to create a network that controls the most territory possible. Your moves will need to balance the push of offense with the pull of defense. Do you exploit a weakness by cutting off an opponent’s piece? Or do you shore up your pieces to claim terrain and ward off attacks? Looking ahead several moves is important as you will need to see how and where the action on the board will shift and where your own weaknesses—or those of your opponent—might develop.
Given the small size of the board, those weaknesses will likely be discovered. All my games have had moments when someone has had to choose between losing a threatened piece—and the associated territory—or place another of their pieces right next to the threatened piece to create a line-of-sight. If you choose to protect that piece, that pairing of pieces rarely stays at two pieces. Typically, this exposes a weakness that continues to be exploited, forcing more defensive moves. The larger your adjacently connected groups become, the more you need to defend them. Knowing when to sacrifice a single piece, then, becomes a necessary strategy.
The rules state you win the game if your opponent has none of their pieces left on the board. While this is possible, it is more likely that both sides will reach a point where you have both claimed all the available territory. You’ll each tally all the intersections under your control. The person with the highest score wins.
Meridians is a stripped-back area control game that takes 20+ minutes to play. Its Go-like attributes are easy to strategize, and the line-of-sight makes for an interesting twist. It’s an easy game to teach, but tricky to play well. I find myself returning to Meridians, feeling I should be better at it than I am. Thankfully, it’s available online at BoardSpace.net and AbstractPlay.com so I can play it as often as I wish.
If you’re looking for a good abstract game that plays a bit longer than most small box games, I highly recommend you look into Meridians. It’s one of Kanare’s best games.
For more information about Kanare Kato’s games, check out his website: https://kanare-abstract.com/en.
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