Kahuna

About this board game

Kahuna is a two-player strategy game played in about 40 minutes, in which rival sorcerers compete for control of a South Seas archipelago of twelve islands.

Players use cards to place bridges between islands or remove an opponent’s bridges. Building a network is only part of the challenge: control can shift quickly when a player gains a majority of the bridges surrounding an island.

• Two-player competition on a board featuring twelve islands
• Card-driven bridge placement and removal
• Majority control that can trigger a chain of changing island ownership
• Three-round scoring in a compact strategic contest

When a player takes the majority around an island, they place one of their marker stones there and remove all of their opponent’s bridges connected to that island. Those removals may affect control of neighboring islands, potentially causing another marker stone to be lost.

A round ends when the face-down deck and the three face-up cards have all been taken. Players then score for islands marked with their stones. The game can also finish early if one player has no bridges remaining on the board.

Originally published in 1997 as Arabana-Ikibiti, the Kosmos edition of Kahuna is the best-known implementation of the design. Its attractive graphics and wooden pieces support a focused contest where timing, card use, and careful positioning matter.