Kanagawa’s first expansion gives the painterly game a fresh breath of Air

Kanagawa is getting a new expansion that introduces three new elements to the attractive card-drafting game.

Kanagawa: Air Expansion is the first expansion to Bruno Cathala and Charles Chevallier’s 2016 tale of competitive painters in 19th-century Japan, and consists of three different scoring elements: paper lanterns, kites and parasols.

The modular gameplay options can be swapped in for two of the scoring methods in the original game, offering up new decisions and interesting ways to amass points – for example, by collecting a set of new yokai markers that must then be passed on to other players before the end of the game or risk losing points.

The gameplay otherwise remains largely untouched, with players placing lesson cards and choosing whether to take a column or pass to claim better cards later on. Players add the cards to their canvas to gradually create a beautiful landscape. The player count – two to four – and play time of 45 minutes stay the same, too.

Kanagawa’s Air expansion will be out next year.