Designer: Stefan Feld (Amerigo, Aquasphere, Bora Bora, Bruges, Carpe Diem, The Castles of Burgundy, The Castles of Burgundy: The Card Game, In the Year of the Dragon, La Isla, Luna, Macao, Merlin, Notre Dame, The Oracle of Delphi, The Speicherstadt, Strasbourg, Trajan)

Artist: Markus Erdt (Copenhagen, Pioneers, Treasure Hunter)

Publisher:  Queen Games (Alhambra, Amerigo, Chicago Express, Escape: The Curse of the Temple, Fresco, Kingdom Builder, Lancaster, Luxor, Merlin, Shogun, Thebes, Wallenstein)

Genre/Mechanisms: card game, hand management

Funding Status: At the time of this posting, Kokopelli is already fully-funded. Pledges currently total more than 13x the initial funding goal with less than 1 day to go on the campaign!

Player Count: 2-4

Solo Mode: no

Complexity: medium-light

Risk: medium-low

What It’s About: “Each player starts with their own deck of cards, composed of ceremony and spirit cards, along with a Village with 4 spaces. Each ceremony which has been started grants the owner a powerful ability as long as the ceremony is in play. Cards may be played anywhere in your play area, which includes not only your Village but two spaces of your neighbor’s as well. The object of the game to gain as many victory points as possible by utilizing the unique combination of ceremony abilities and by completing ceremonies.”

How It Works: “Play begins with the first player and continues clockwise until a game end condition is met. Once this happens, continue play until the player to the left of the start player plays their turn, then the game ends.”

“On their turn, the active player always perform two actions. For each action, the player either draws or plays a card, or Cancels a ceremony. The player can perform the same action multiple times on a turn. After performing all their actions, the player must return cards in excess of 5 to the bottom of their draw pile, placing them face down in the order of their choosing.”

Player Actions include Starting a Ceremony, Extending a Ceremony, Completing a Ceremony, Cancelling a Ceremony, or Drawing a Card. A player’s board had 4 spaces for Ceremonies, and one of these must be free to Start a Ceremony. The player simply places one of their Ceremony cards in the empty slot, and from then on has access to that card’s special ability. A player can Extend a Ceremony by playing a Ceremony card of a matching suit or a wild, Spirit card. When placing a fourth card in a slot, the Ceremony is Completed. The player who plays the fourth card claims the top victory point tile from the matching selection tile. If this is the first Ceremony of this type completed, the player will claim a 3 VP tile and place a Game End tile on the selection pile; otherwise, they’ll claim a 1 VP tile. The owner of the Ceremony places all 4 cards in their discard in any order they like, and also claims a 1 VP tile. When Cancelling a Ceremony, the player simply moves the cards from a cermony slot to their discard pile. And when Drawing a Card, the active player simply draws the top card from their draw pile into their hand.”

When either a player’s draw pile is exhausted, or when the last Game End tile is placed on a selection tile, the current round becomes the final round. Players return all cards from their hand to the draw pile, and then the player with the smallest draw pile receives 5 VP, and the second-fewest 3 VP. Players receive 1 VP for each space in their Village with an uncompleted Ceremony. The player with the most total points wins.

Comparisons: With players competing to conquer scoring in 16 different Ceremonies each game, Kokopelli reminds me quite a bit of Battle Line (itself a reimplementation of Schotten Totten), except that Battle Line is an exclusively 2-player game. A rather hefty list of light to medium-light card games featuring hand management includes 5-Minute Dungeon, 6 nimmt!, 7 Wonders, Abyss, Arboretum, Biblios, Bohnanza, The Bloody Inn, The Castles of Burgundy: The Card Game, Century: Golem Edition, Century: Spice Road, Dale of Merchants, Fairy Tale, Fantastic Factories, For Sale, Guildhall, Hanabi, Hanamikokji, Honshū, Jaipur, Kanagawa, Linko!, Lost Cities, Morels, Oh My Goods!, Parade, Red7, San Juan, Smash Up, Sushi Go! Sushi Go Party!, Tichu, Unfair, Valley of the Kings, and Witch’s Brew.

What Should I Pledge?:
$65 Kokopelli: includes Kokopelli, the Ceremonies Expansion, the Game Trayz Insert, and Acrylic Kokopelli Tokens.
$177 Kokopelli + Merlin Big Box: includes everything in the Kokopelli pledge, plus the Merlin Deluxe Big Box.

Add-Ons:
$21 (400) Ultra Pro Transparent Card Sleeves

KS Exclusives
None.

All-In Total: Assuming you’re not interested in the Merlin Deluxe Big Box or the Sleeves Add-On, then in the continental U.S. you’re looking at $65 for the Kokopelli pledge plus $14 in shipping for a total of $79.

Kokopelli completes its Kickstarter on Friday, November 13th and tentatively ships in June 2021.