When the founder of the studio that publishes Wingspan and Scythe says a game has flown under the radar, it is worth a look. In his Gen Con post on Monday, Stonemaier Games founder Jamey Stegmaier named Kano by Matagot as one of two hidden gems he recommends hunting down at the show, calling it "one of the best abstract games I've ever played, largely because it doesn't feel abstract thanks to how the theme (Japanese scroll painting) and components (resin painting jars, cloth board, stunning art on the tiles) intertwine with the mechanisms." His other pick was Trick to the Future, a time-travel trick-taker from Gamehead.
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Start organising for freeKano is a tile-placement and pattern-building game for one to four players, best at two to four. It runs about 35 minutes and carries a €35 price. Players compete to paint their own Emakimono, the traditional Japanese painted handscroll, by collecting coloured paint pots from a shared central mat. The art comes from Kyoto artist Jun Sato, and Matagot have leaned hard into the presentation.
The mechanisms have teeth. You may swap adjacent pots on the mat to set up a move, and you must take at least one pot, though you can take several if they match in colour and sit in a line. Placed pots then fall to the lowest free space in their column, so building a specific pattern means planning several turns ahead. End a turn with more than four visible pots on your board and the excess becomes Cloud tiles, which take up space and score nothing. That is the squeeze the whole game runs on.
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Find events near youCompleted patterns become Artwork Tiles, with bigger pieces paying more. Secret Masterpiece cards give each player a private target, while shared Red and White goal sheets shuffle the common priorities every game.
Stegmaier's verdict is that Kano is "the type of gateway plus game that I would play with anyone", which is a useful steer for anyone building a shelf that has to please the Azul crowd and the heavier players at the same table.
Sources: Matagot | Stonemaier Games
