Objective

In Kohaku players will take turns drafting tiles from the central board and adding them to their individual pond tableau's in order to create the most beautiful pond.

Concepts

There are 2 types of tiles in Kohaku:

Koi Tiles - These contain colored koi fish in 4 colors; Black, Red, Yellow, White (each tile contains either solid color fish or fish in a combination of 2 of these colors). Koi tiles also feature baby fish and dragonflies

Feature Tiles - These contain different features found in koi ponds (rocks, frogs, flowers, butterflies, turtles and statues). Feature tiles score player's points, based on what koi are placed in your pond. (see scoring features below)

Adjacency - Please note that for the game of Kohaku, all rules referring to adjacency refer ONLY to tiles orthogonally adjacent, not diagonally.

Koi Colors - several feature tiles score points based on the color of koi fish. For this purpose, the tile will score as long as the koi contains the requisite color, regardless of any other colors on the tile. (ex. if a feature is looking for a Red koi, the following koi will trigger that score; Red, Red/Yellow, Red/Black, Red/White)

The Game Turn

On a player's turn, that player chooses 2 adjacent tiles from the top mat to add to their personal pond. the 2 center tiles of the top mat are then moved to the outer edges and 2 new tiles are drawn to replace the center 2 spaces.

The player then adds those tiles to their pond. The first 2 tiles must be placed adjacent to each other to start the pond. Subsequent tiles may be played anywhere in the pond, so long as they are adjacent to an already played tile. (NOTE: after turn 1, the 2 tiles you choose do NOT have to be adjacent to each other)

The only placement restriction is that koi cannot be adjacent to koi and features may not be adjacent to features.

When there are no more koi tiles to add to the top mat, the game ends. (there is a counter above the top mat that shows how many koi tiles are left in the stack)

NOTE - the tiles on the top mat will ALWAYS alternate between koi and feature tiles, so you will choose one of each on your turn.

Scoring Features

There are 7 different feature tiles that score points in different ways:

Single Flowers - This tile scores 2 points for every adjacent koi that contains the flower's color. As well, if there are 4 adjacent koi that contain the flower's color, the tile instead scores 12 total points.

Double Flowers - This tile scores 2 points for every adjacent koi that contains 1 of the 2 flower colors. If the adjacent koi contains BOTH flower colors, it scores 3 points instead.

Turtle - This tile scores 5 points.

Frog - This tile scores 1 point for each dragonfly shown on all adjacent tiles.

Statue - This card scores 1/3/6/10 points based on whether it has 1/2/3/4 cards adjacent to it

Butterfly - This card scores 2 points for every koi matching the butterfly's color in the same ROW and COLUMN of the butterfly.

Stone - This tile scores 1 point for each baby koi shown on all adjacent tiles.

Coins - Any koi tile that is a single solid color also contains a picture of a coin. these are worth 1 point each.

Final Scoring

Once the game ends, players count their score from all of their features and coins, the player with the most points wins.

In the case of a tie, the player with the most coins wins.

If two or more players are still tied, they share the victory.