Each of the last 3-4 years, it feels like there’s a tabletop designer or two who is simply everywhere for a few months. (We aren’t counting Reiner Knizia here, since he seems to release or re-release a game every 20 minutes or so. Aaaannnddd…while you were reading this intro, another Knizia design just hit crowdfunding.)
Last year, new games from Simone Luciani seemed to be everywhere–Rats of Wistar, Darwin’s Journey, Nucleum, Anunnaki: Dawn of the Gods, and a couple others all hit at the same time. In 2022, you could make the case that Matthew Dunstan was the guy…between Next Station: London, Village Rails, My Shelfie, and The Guild of Merchant Explorers, it felt like I was reading about a new Dunstan game every month or two.
In 2024, I’m hard-pressed to think of another designer who is getting more love than Dani Garcia. Garcia is the designer of Barcelona and that was a big hit for Board & Dice in 2023. Now? I’ve played three Garcia designs in the last four weeks, including Windmill Valley, Daitoshi, and now Neko Syndicate, a “thinky filler” published by Combo Games.
If my first two Garcia experiences are any indication, it seems like the designer enjoys “point salad” scoring experiences wrapped in whimsical packages packed to the gills with handsome production elements. I still haven’t figured out what Daitoshi is about—I’m building a city, but trying my best to not mess with the environment, and I’ve got a steampunk-style blimp floating around town that has access to the best goodies?—but the game is lush, with lots of rules and lots of ways to score and lots of ways to completely tank your ability to win.
Here’s the setup for Neko Syndicate: as head of a seemingly-nefarious clan of sushi-producing mafia cats, players must lead their clan to build a 10-card pyramid in a game that mixes tableau building, public milestones, simultaneous play, and order fulfillment in what might be the brain burniest 30-minute game of the year. If you love a good strategy game but struggle to find the time (and, frankly, the player network) to get your heavy Euros to the table, you need to run out and buy a copy of Neko Syndicate right now.
Sorry, You Did Say “Sushi-Producing Mafia Cats”, Correct?
Neko Syndicate is a 1-4 player game that should really max at two players. My advice is to play the game solo, because if you don’t, some players will find that the loud murmurs and angry groans of opponents as they try to math out the best way to activate their pyramid structure will be too intrusive.
Don’t worry, those groans are a good thing. Players have a series of Minions cards that run the gamut of the roles any good sushi syndicate should feature: a delivery lady, a good accountant, a cook, even a subway operator. Neko Syndicate asks players to slowly build out a network of Minion cards that feature the right mix of actions across 15 agonizing turns. Each player has a warehouse of 32 cubes, representing sashimi and nigiri orders for customers in the fictional city of Mininogata.
Each card is split into two halves, then split again. The vertical halves represent two parts of town, a lower half and an upper half, with the upper half serving as a holding area for completed orders on that card. The left and right halves of each card feature what might be the best artwork of the year—especially if you have a passion for mean-looking mafia cats who work in the underground sushi industry—and a single action on either half.
Players start with the top card of their pyramid, then build downwards through their structure onto other cards, triggering actions along the way. The hook: each card action can be triggered a number of times based on the level of the pyramid. So, a delivery lady action on the third level of the pyramid allows the player to take that action three times. Place that same card on the fourth level, and bingo—you get to trigger the action four times.
So, you’ve got a spatial element. You’ve got decisions to make regarding where the cards should go. Each card features two of four subway stations—A, B, C, D—and the subway operator can move sushi to the part of town you want if you can string together the right actions. Each card’s upper half is looking for a sushi delivery of between 2-4 cubes, in four different colors. That means you’ve got to both produce the right sushi, then move it to the right place.
And, you’ll lose points for any sushi that wasn’t delivered. Did I mention that nigiri can only be delivered once it has been added to cooked rice, meaning that you need to both move it to the right neighborhood then remember to cook the rice for your customers? That makes for some thinky planning.
Sushi is Scary
Neko Syndicate led to so many agonizing turns that some players might find themselves wondering if the end result could possibly be any fun.
This is fair. The scoring conditions are brutal. Players lose points for a number of mistakes: any cards that are completely unfulfilled, sushi cubes that are just lying around in neighborhoods by the end of play, and any missing cards in the 10-card pyramid structure requirement. Then, scoring is done by the inverse of the powered action mechanic during play, meaning fulfilling orders higher in the pyramid are more powerful than doing things on the bottom level. (This makes sense, since those cards were likely added late in the game.)
But setting up actions in the right order, and getting cubes out of your warehouse and moved to the right locations, is such a great feeling. Turns 13-15 (i.e., the final three rounds) in Neko Syndicate were a joy every time, with lots of tension as one tries to figure out the best way to use the tools of their pyramid to get cubes to as many final locations as possible. It was just as important to not bring in too many cubes that might end the game without a delivery location, so finding the right balance also led to many interesting moments late in each play.
All this worked for me, but I could also see where Neko Syndicate is not for everyone. The difficulty here is real. It’s also a game that I would be hesitant to whip out with four players, especially if one or two of them is a more deliberate decision maker. That would spike the 30-minute playtime to 45-60 minutes or more, suddenly making Neko Syndicate a bigger ask.
For a lover of heavy strategy games, I think Neko Syndicate is a delightful way to kick off an evening. The teach, setup and teardown of the game is so simple that you can play it in almost any space—there is no board, so everything sweeps away into a large deck of cards. And there’s a lot of variety in the box, thanks to the 24 included milestone cards, only three of which are used in each game.
Neko Syndicate has a very specific audience, but it made that very specific audience—me—very happy. If you can get your hands on a copy, it comes highly recommended!
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