Paiko Game Deconstruction

Paiko is a strategy board game; while it looks like checkers it is more chess like in gameplay. The main goal of the game is to get pieces all around the board outside of your home spaces, you win by getting a total of 10 all around the board (with the expectation of your home space).  To do this you have to start plotting pieces in the area of your home space, with the piece comes the area that it occupies or attacks. You can move pieces within the space that the previous piece occupies.

The game board is divided into four divisions; one division is your home, where you get an added health point to your pieces in that space. The same goes to opposition when they have pieces in their space. And throughout the board is pattern with squares however at the edges of the board there are triangles at where the board is cut off at- those do not count as spaces.

Each Piece has its version of occupying space; different from chess as the pieces are different from one another it moves differently across the board. Chess pieces can move across the board, only occupying the square its on top of and no more.  When you take your opponent’s piece, the opponent has to choose what piece you can get from the pile; controlling what spaces you can occupy.

Something I found interesting about the pieces is the illustrations on the pieces or tiles or rather the borders of the tiles.  You can see which sides it attacks from by the markers around the main illustration by the dashes it has. Or if it doesn’t attack, for example like the lotus pieces and there are some round shapes that look similar to a “3”, which shows which sides it helps. So if it’s a lotus it has those 3’s all around the sides but it’s a water tile then it has both 3’s and dashes.

The core mechanic I have to say the movement of the pieces as they come in different varieties, some don’t even move or occupy a hazardous space to opposing player. The way you make it across the board to gain 10 points very much depends on the pieces and their functions of taking another piece or gaining strength.

Because of the possibilities of moves you make you could either be a full frontal assault on the board or a very defensive player moving slowly across it to gain 10 points. When I played I choose to be more aggressive as a player because I enjoy friendly competition but there people that like to play it safe and move more strategically than me. Using your pieces requires skill, you have to plan out what pieces you want to play so that it assist one another to take down pieces or gain strength so it’d take more opposing pieces to capture it. And when you get your piece taken you get to choose what piece your opponent gets as a reward, so you can limit your opponent’s movements by choosing either an air piece or a lotus so they cant move around the board.

There’s not a whole lot of use of the game mechanic “luck” because of the huge use of strategy in the game. So I think the only use of luck is if your opponent does not notice a piece in danger, since it usually takes two pieces to take a piece. But the chance I feel are low I my experience of playing the game.

Overall I think this game could use some work as it’s not very clear on some rules, or the exceptions it speaks of  in its rule book (it doesn’t even tell us the what the exceptions are).  But if they simplify the rules I think this game would become a good way to pass the time. I think I would enjoy this game the more I play with friends to practice.