Tips & Strategy

How to teach Nippon: Zaibatsu, advice for a first game, Worker colours, Favor tokens, Influence timing, player counts, solo play and where videos differ from the rulebook — advice, not rules.

Advice drawn from the published video teaches, playthroughs and reviews listed under Sources. None of it is a rule: where a video and the rulebook disagree, the rulebook wins.

Teaching

Presenters teach in three shapes:

• Top-down: the goal and the three scorings → setup → the turn (act or consolidate) → the actions → Consolidation → scoring and the end. Before You Play opens with the four Regions and three Periods of Influence scoring, then the tracks, Factories, production, Trains and Ships, the Local Markets and Consolidation last.
• Consolidation first: theme and Periods → the board → the turn → a deep dive into Consolidation (the Worker ladder, Favor tokens, losing Money and Coal, salaries) → the actions → the round timer → the final turns → the Starting tokens last.
• Rolling teach: Gaming Rules! and Getting Games give the goal in a minute, then explain each action the first time a player takes it.

Ludex’s Teach the Game follows the second order: Consolidation explains why Worker colours and spending everything matter.

First game

• Play every Factory on side A and leave both modules in the box. Gaming Rules! and Getting Games both leave the Late-Game Factories out of a first play.
• Starting pairs that jump-start you — a free Machine, Ship or Train — are popular choices. The community sees a lower starting score as a fair price for a strong effect; the Old Factory is thought one of the weaker picks.
• Start with a level-1 Factory: Cotton and Paper need only R&D level 2 (Before You Play). Spending Silk raises your R&D level for that build, so you can open with one even before the track gets there (Getting Games).
• Paper and Cotton suit different plans: Paper Factories lean towards Money and the Finance track, Cotton towards Silk and the R&D track.

Workers and salaries

• Aim for one or two Worker colours per Consolidation. With an income of 12, four colours cost all of it. Board Game Dad and Before You Play both name mixed colours as the costliest beginner mistake: each colour costs 3 Money, and every Money you can’t pay costs 1 point.
• Your first Worker of a cycle sits at the bottom and decides the Department bonus you get when you consolidate — choose its colour on purpose.
• Take 4 to 6 Workers before consolidating: only then do you get a Favor token, and different top and bottom colours add a second Department bonus.
• Spend your Money and Coal before you consolidate — whatever is left is lost (Board Game Dad).
• Ships bring Expert Workers and upgrade a Department for good, so every later bonus of that colour is bigger.

Favor tokens

Put low-level Favor tokens on objectives you will only partly reach, and keep level-3 tokens for the ones you are sure to complete — R&D, Factories or Trains — worth up to 20 points each.

Influence and Trains

• Later Periods pay far more: 26 for first place in Period III against 10 in Period I.
• Tokens can be knocked out right before a scoring; placing late in a Period protects them.
• Trains add 2 Influence that nobody can remove — but only where you also have a token, a condition Getting Games singles out as often forgotten. A Region holds 3/5/7 Trains at 2/3/4 players.
• Replacing your own token in the same action earns the Region bonus again.

Player counts

Four players is the favourite count: the Regions, Hiring spaces and Iwakura Mission are tightest there. With fewer players the board limits Ships, Trains and Influence spaces, and 2 players skip the 2nd scoring value.

Solo

Build your whole plan around the Solo Goals: missing just one loses the game whatever your score. Higher difficulty also makes the Automa act more often. Specifically Solo and One Stop Co-op Shop both plan their game from the goals drawn at setup, and watch which Worker colours the Automa will take next so they don’t fight it for them.

Videos vs the rulebook

Several videos were recorded with a pre-release rulebook (the 2025 Kickstarter previews from Gaming Rules!, Getting Games, Before You Play and Board Game Dad) or show the original Nippon (2015). The current rulebook differs:

• you may own two Factories of the same type;
• Machines built in one action go into different Factories, and you need a Factory to build one;
• with 3 players you can use a market’s 4th Influence space by beating a token there;
• the 3-player icon on the scoring values means 3 players or more;
• each short Hiring space gets 1 Worker at the end of a round.

See also the FAQ’s older videos entry.

Host game

Before the first action, demonstrate taking a Worker off the main board into the Zaibatsu; then show a Consolidation with leftover Yen and Coal. Ask each player to forecast what they will keep, what they will discard and how many Worker colours they must pay for. This makes the cost of a new colour visible before it becomes a surprise, as in Nippon: Zaibatsu - Teach & Playthrough — Before You Play.

On turns 1–3, check the whole action’s capacity: a Ship also brings an Expert Worker, so the player needs room for that worker. Use the printed Ship and Consolidation checklists to confirm legality; avoid deciding the player’s colour or spending plan.

Rehearse the Ship capacity check

Assume you have two empty Worker spaces, the resources for one Ship, and a Destination with an Expert Worker and an empty Ship space. Take the ordinary Worker first for the Ships action: one of those spaces is now occupied. Building the Ship then fills the other space with the Expert Worker and upgrades the matching Department.

Now compare the same choice with only one empty space at the start. Taking the ordinary Worker fills it, leaving no room for the Expert Worker, so you cannot build that Ship. You cannot choose an action you cannot activate at least once. Check capacity before taking the Worker. Ships.

Sources

• Nippon: Zaibatsu- 4p Teaching, Play-through, & Roundtable Discussion by Heavy Cardboard — Heavy Cardboard
• Nippon Zaibatsu - Tutorial & Playthrough — Gaming Rules!
• Nippon: Zaibatsu - Learn While Playing — Getting Games
• Nippon: Zaibatsu - Teach & Playthrough — Before You Play
• Nippon Zaibatsu – Full Breakdown: Strategy, Mechanics & What’s Different in 2025 — Board Game Dad
• Nippon: Zaibatsu - Board Game Solo Review! — Specifically Solo
• Nippon: Zaibatsu solo play (review copy provided) — One Stop Co-op Shop

BGG: community answers are linked by thread in the FAQ; the publisher’s Nippon: Zaibatsu files include the rulebook. The videos are teaching aids; the rulebook governs rules.