In this Shelfside Review, we review Takenoko, a wonderfully cute game in a Japanese bamboo garden with a panda running around. Everyone assumes the role of managers of the garden, moving the gardener, rolling the weather die, and placing plots to move towards their goals. Its labeled as a family game, but has deep strategic depth with the objective card deck, with the mechanics of action points, dice rolling, and tile placement.

Takenoko is a popular game and has even won the 2012 Golden Geek Award from board game geek, but we wanted to delve on why its not as popular as it can be, with its incongruence on how it is versus how it displays itself. It's a family game, but is really tricky for newcomers to get a hang of because of there being an unclear direction players don't understand the objective decks. The objective decks of plots, panda, and gardener should get memorized for mindgame potential, so newcomers are left to just casually meander around a bamboo garden without knowledge of the decks. We had to cover this game because there has always been a weird divide on the game, where some people love it to death, and others dismiss it in both the categories of strategy and family.

Is Takenoko the right family game or mediumlight game for your gaming group? Watch through this fertile review!

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Table of Contents:
Intro (0:00)
Overview (0:42)
How to Play (1:09)
Pros (4:18)
Cons (11:56)
Recommender Score (12:44)
Ashton's Personal Score (19:17)
Daniel's Personal Score (22:49)
Conclusion (24:53)

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