Kyoto BGG ↗

Kyoto · German edition · (2020)

Your rating: 6.0

My BGG Comment

This is a small negotiation game where each player represents a country at the conference. At the start you get some money, some prosperity cards (like SUVs, Coal Plants and other „great things“) and 3 lobby cards of which you keep 2. The game is played over 10 negotiation rounds or until the earth is destroyed. If the game ends and the earth is not destroyed the person with the most points is declared the winner (aka the richest) if the earth is destroyed they become the scapegoat („You did too little“) and the person with the second most points becomes the winner. The earth has 3 gauges of 5 that signify possible destruction: temperature, air quality and animal diversity. If one gauge reaches 5: game over. In each round the presiding country gets to present 1 of 2 study cards that have costs of money and require either CO2 removal or certain measures that might anger your or someone else’s lobbyists. The consequences for inaction are on the card though half of it is hidden and only the presenter knows the full range of problems. So you may think that killing off another animals species is not a problem because the presiding country didn‘t tell you that the hidden cost is another rise in temperature. Add to that, that each of the air and temp gauges have tipping points where other gauges are increased as well… and each negotiation becomes quite tense. The negotiations last 90 seconds and every country can add as much money or prosperity cards to the pool as they want or you can even bribe another country to take back a card if that card would for example anger one of your lobbyists. The presiding country can choose which cards and whose money to take. Cards are added to the display of „measures“ where you can see which lobbys are particularly unhappy. So how to come out on top? Points are awarded for the most money, for each prosperity card you kept and for how happy your Steel and Pharmaceutical (or other) lobby is at the end.