Takenoko

In Takenoko, you are a member of the ancient Japanese court to the Emperor who has entrusted you with caring for a gift from the Chinese Emperor, a giant panda. You will do this with the help of the imperial garderner and possibly the weather.

Takenoko is a fun stragery game where you try to gain points by growing bamboo, feeding a panda and cultivating land.
The main concept is that you have a board with a selections of things that you can do: lay a plot, collect an irrigation tile, move the imperial Gardener, move the panda or collect a card. You can do two of these each turn.

Laying a plot:
If you pick this action, you get to draw three plot tiles choose one and place it so it joins up with two other tiles or the starting tile. At the start of the game, you will be using this action quite a bit, to grow the game board.

Collect an irrigation channel:
These are important as they help you irrigate things. You need to irrigate plots as with no water supply, bamboo can't grow. Once you have collected your irrigation channel, you can save it or place it. Plots only count as irrigated if they are next to the central tile or have an irrigation channel running down it.

Move the Imperial gardener:
The Imperial gardener will help you grow bamboo. You can move him in straight lines for as long as you like and where he stops, that plot and all irrigated plots of the same colour next to it grow one bamboo piece.

Move the panda:
You can choose to move the panda on your turn, the panda moves the same way as the gardener but instead of growing bamboo, the panda eats one piece of bamboo on the plot it is in. You then put the eaten bamboo piece in the pandas stomach on your board.

Collect a card:
You get 3 cards when you first start the game, but you will soon want to get more when you run out. When you get to this stage, you will have three cards to choose varying in difficulty and worth. The first type is the panda card, in which you have to eat certain amounts of different coloured bamboo, the second is the plot card in which you have to have a certain arrangement of plots that are irrigated. Finally there are the bamboo cards were you have to have certain stacks of different coloured bamboo.
For advanced players, there is a weather die which you roll before your turn and each outcome lets you do different things.

I think Takenonko is a fun game that is quite complicated until you get to know the rules, so playing it with  a six year old might not be advisable. I really like the panda and the gardener pieces, which my family have affectionately called Tony and Frank. All in all, I would give this game a 8 out of 10.