Post by Gilvan Blight on Jan 2, 2007 7:59:54 GMT -5
Summary: A tile game with a fudal Japanese background. A map of Japan is laied out with three types of Counters. Budda's, Rice Fileds and High Helms. Players in turn play tiles around the counters. When a counter is surrounded on all sides (by water or tiles) it is awarded to the player with the highest total on their tiles. The tiles each influence different counters. There are Tiles numbered 1 through 4 for each type of counter, ships numbered 1 through 2 that affect all three counters, Samurai 1-3 that affect all counters and mounted Samurai (all with a value of 1) that affect all tiles. Two special tiles let a player swap counters or tiles already in play. Most tiles can only be played one a turn, but there are a selection (the mounted samurai, the boats, the counter swaper) that can be played more then one a turn. The player with the Most of two types of counters is the all out winner. If two or more tie, then the player with the most other counters is the winner (there are rules for breaking down further ties).
The Good: the components on this a great. I love the counters. They are plexiglass and gloss black, very nice and much cooler then the usual wooden figures. The board is nice, colourful and sturdy. The counters are nice as well. The fact that all players help set up the board and then work from the same set of 20 tiles makes this quite the strategy game. It's definatley a thinkers game, more like Chess then a resource management game. Very minimal random element in this (you have a hand of 6 tiles at all times, drawn from a set of 20). The game plays rather quick when you have players who know the game. This plays very well with 2 to 4 players, with the strategy changing completely the more players that are added.
The Bad: As seems to be typical of Kniza games, there is really no reason at all this had to be set in Japan. It's really an abstract game and the Japanese bacground is just there to make it more interesting.
The Ugly: why did they have to make the 1 look like a 7. Really it doesn't hurt the game at once but it seems to always confuse new players.
Overall: an excellent game, one of the most strategic games I own. Ranks up there with Othello, Go, Chess and similar games. This won't be for non-strategy gamers though. The Samurai theme and box made me think this was more of a eurogame then an abstract strategy game.
The Good: the components on this a great. I love the counters. They are plexiglass and gloss black, very nice and much cooler then the usual wooden figures. The board is nice, colourful and sturdy. The counters are nice as well. The fact that all players help set up the board and then work from the same set of 20 tiles makes this quite the strategy game. It's definatley a thinkers game, more like Chess then a resource management game. Very minimal random element in this (you have a hand of 6 tiles at all times, drawn from a set of 20). The game plays rather quick when you have players who know the game. This plays very well with 2 to 4 players, with the strategy changing completely the more players that are added.
The Bad: As seems to be typical of Kniza games, there is really no reason at all this had to be set in Japan. It's really an abstract game and the Japanese bacground is just there to make it more interesting.
The Ugly: why did they have to make the 1 look like a 7. Really it doesn't hurt the game at once but it seems to always confuse new players.
Overall: an excellent game, one of the most strategic games I own. Ranks up there with Othello, Go, Chess and similar games. This won't be for non-strategy gamers though. The Samurai theme and box made me think this was more of a eurogame then an abstract strategy game.