Saggyhead is fighting and cycling her way around Taiwan in Kung Fu, Kung Fur Fight & U Bike Tours: Taiwan from Taiwanboardgamedesign!

by Saggyhead

Kung Fur Fight

Po-Jen Hsieh, Yunus Hsieh ~ Age 10+ ~ 2 Players ~ 20-30 mins

In a purely two player game, there is often a tug of war style heads up battle. This is turned up
to 11 in Kung Fur Fight. Do not be deceived by the cutesy cartoon art style, this is cut throat.
The game is a duel for control over three different arenas to gain cards. These will either be new
fighters for your hand, items of fruit for special one time or persistent abilities or one off event
cards that will benefit you and hurt your opponent.


One player plays as the cats, and the other as the dogs and you go at it smashing each other to
come out on top. These characters play very differently, the cat player is all about getting hidden
weapons or as I call them “secret stabs”. The dog player is rougher and more powerful, they
have higher strength cards, but the sneaky feline character can win easily with some eyes-up
smarts. Each player has their own asymmetric deck of cards which represent their kung fu
fighters. These each have a strength value as well as a special ability that is active if that fighter
is the “leader” in that arena. You can play up to 3 cards to each arena to try and wangle a win
and take the card for yourself. The whole game is similar to Hanimikoji where you are trying to
second guess what your opponent is likely to want to gain control of. If you can guess where
they will place their strength then you can get yourself control of other cards and maximise your
attack power.


If you are looking for a two player duelling game where you are constantly trying to keep two
steps ahead of your opponent, then this could be the perfect one for you. This is a step up in
what is going on than your typical card game, drawing elements from Isle of Skye and
Hanamikoji to come up with a unique blend.


Kung Fu

Zong-Hua Yang (Bob) ~ Age 8+ ~ 2-5 Players ~ 20 mins

Kung Fu from Good Game Studio is a dice rolling martial arts frenzy that is played over three
fighting rounds. This two to five player game combines drafting with action selection and dice
rolling to attack each other and reduce their health down to zero.


The game starts with a drafting phase where you will curate your ten card hand. These ten
cards are multi-use, they will determine player order, build your engine and determine your
actions. Once you have drafted your hand of ten you will move your counters on your player
board according to the icons in the top left corner. These will let you get additional attack or
defence points as well as offering you more options to manipulate your dice rolls on either the
attacking or defensive parts of later rounds.


Each round consists of an attack and a defence phase for each player. The players each
choose three of their cards and these are revealed simultaneously. Each card will have actions
on the lower half of the card. These may be ways for you to attack or defend in a big way.
These will require some pattern of dice to activate, perhaps three dice the same, or a 5. Each
card can be activated any number of times, you’ll want to choose a combination that will

maximise your seven dice. In the top right there are initiative numbers, each player adds these
together to give an initiative total. The players attack in order from lowest to highest. Whilst a
player attacks, the other players are defenders.


To me there is something magical about dice chuckers. I love the randomness they give you, as
long as you can mitigate it. There is a special place in my heart for Yahtzee! for example, where
you get up to three rerolls to maximise your scoring capabilities. Unlike Yahtzee though in Kung
Fu you don’t get to re-roll your die, what lady luck deals you is what you have to work with. If
you build your engine smartly though, you will be able to change die faces to ensure that you
get the perfect attack or defence to land. This is an unassuming game that really hit the spot for
me.

UBike Tours: Taiwan

Chih-Fan Chen ~ Age 8+ ~ 2-4 Players ~ 30-45 mins

UBike Tour: Taiwan is a card based route making game where you are pushing your luck to try
and score the best journey. On your turn you either add two more cards to the display or you
elect to take cards and pass play for this round. The timing of this is key because you don’t want
to sell yourself short and only get one or two cards, but if those cards are utterly perfect,
perhaps it is worth it? Also after you pass, similarly to Kanagawa your opponent will get to add
more to the display before taking their own cards so they can get some sweet extras.


Your aim during this sweet little game is to create a journey or vista of cards that score you a
bunch of points. The cards have a value from 1 to 15 and without the addition of bikes then you
cannot make significant jumps between numbers. If you wish to move between further cards
either through necessity or to try and get yourself more points, then you will need to spend bike
cards to facilitate that jump.


I really like the artwork on this game, it is clean and simple graphic design that appeals to me. I
will say the component quality overall is really high, my one complaint is that the punch board
was pretty hard to push out and gave me a few rough edges on my tokens though. For me this
game is really smooth playing and combines Kanagawa and 6 Nimmt together to give a sweet
game, I think that if you want a calming game with a no-stress type of feel then you can’t really
go wrong with this one!