Archive for the 'Samurai' Category

THE GAME
Samurai is a game of tile placement where players try to surround towns and cities with their different strength tiles in order to capture as many of the three different types of tokens as possible.  The winner is the player who owns two majorities of the tokens (or has one majority and more other tokens than their opponent).  For a description of the game, please read my full review of Samurai the board game as the gameplay of the iPhone game is exactly the same (as you would hope). Read the rest of this entry »

In Reiner Knizia’s classic game, players take turns placing hexagonal tiles from their hand onto a map of Japan where some of the hexes (villages, towns and cities) contain one or more of the 3 types of markers (helmets, rice fields, buddhas).  When a location containing one or more markers is surrounded by tiles (sea areas don’t need to contain tiles), the tile strengths of each player are added up and the player with the greatest relevant strength wins the relevant marker.  Many tiles’ strength only counts towards capturing one of the 3 types of markers but a few (like the Samurai) count towards all types.

For example, a hex on the coast containing a Buddha maker has the following tiles around it: Red 2 buddha, Red 2 samurai, Yellow 4 helmet, Yellow 1 Samurai, Green 3 buddha.  As the other hex around this location is a sea hex, the village is surrounded.  In this case, Red wins the Buddha because they have a total of 4 towards capturing buddhas.  Green’s total of 3 isn’t enough, and neither is Yellow’s total of 1 because their helmet tiles doesn’t count towards capturing buddhas.

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Occasionally, a friend of mine runs an all-day boardgames tournament at the games shop (Eclectic Games) in Reading (UK) where anyone can turn up and play.  The day consists of around 5 or 6 games each played with 3 or 4 players and the people in each group changes every game so you get to play with most people present.  Saturday was the fourth of these tournament days (called BADGER which stands for Berskhire All-Day Gaming Extravaganza in Reading) and I got to play games that were mostly new to me.

The games I played were: Read the rest of this entry »