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Amazon.com Search | |  | Rio Grande | Home » » » Samurai Board Game by Rio Grande | | | | | | | Description: | | For centuries, Samurai have represented unfailing courage, imperturbable loyalty, and internal harmony. There are three Samurai forces: peasants, clergy, and nobility. The way to power leads through these three: peasants, represented by rice fields; clergy, represented by Buddhas; and nobility, represented by high helmets. To become a Samurai, one has to be supported by one of these forces and have strong connections to the other two. Each player has an identical force, and they deploy their forces to the spaces around the power figures. When a figure is surrounded, it is captured by the player with the strongest sympathetic force. To win, a player must gain dominance in one of the powers while getting better support from the other powers than the other players. | | | Features: | |
• Deutscher SpielePreis 4th place 1999
• 2 - 4 Players
• 45 Minutes
• Ages 10 and Up
| | | Product Details: | | | Product Length:
| 10.75 inches | | Product Width:
| 2.25 inches | | Product Height:
| 14.75 inches | | Product Weight:
| 4.0 pounds | | Package Length:
| 14.5 inches | | Package Width:
| 10.8 inches | | Package Height:
| 2.3 inches | | Package Weight:
| 2.5 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 5 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
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Good game. Requires a little bit of strategy, memory, and luck.Jun 21, 2010
This is good for small groups (2 to 4). Place your hexagon tiles on the map of Feudal Japan. Your samurai, ronin, navy ship, and piece tiles will influence the surrounding pieces. Once a piece (rice, hat, or Buddha) is completely surrounded, player with the biggest influence gets the piece. Try to diversify your earnings, and plan to influence multiple pieces with one tile whenever possible. The map comes in 4 pieces, and you only use one piece per player (i.e. a 4-player game plays on the full map)
0 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 Looks better than it playsNov 04, 2009
I like the game but it isnt anything special. It looks really nice and is good quality. The game play is rather predictable and gets old quick though.
3 of 5 found the following review helpful:
 A game with pirate ninjas can't be all badDec 12, 2008
Samurai is a very good game. It's theme is totally pasted on. I actually commented "this would be easy to retheme" during the game.
The basic gameplay proceeds thusly: A board is selected based on the number of players, and 1 of each of the three figures (High Helmets, Buddhas, and Rice Fields) is placed on the main city on the board. 6 more of each figure are placed to the side of the board, and players take turns placing them in the cities, which can accommodate 2 figures each (though the figures have to be different). Once all the cities have filled their figure allotment, the villages each receive a single figure. Then players start to place their influence tiles.
Each player has like 40 tiles or something, and you take 5 of them and put them behind your screen. We just randomly took 5 and put them there, but you can choose which ones you want to start with. The rest are shuffled and put face-down in a stack near you. This is your draw pile. The 5 are hidden behind the screen, and this functions as your "hand".
So you start laying tiles. The object here is to be able to capture the figures on the board for scoring at the end of the game. A figure is captured when it's completely surrounded by influence tiles. The player who has the most influence on that figure when it's surrounded captures the figure. So if there's a village with a Buddha in it, and it's got 2 adjacent hexes next to it, once those two have player tiles on them, the village is scored and the player who has the most Buddha influence captures it.
The tiles each have different symbols and strengths, ranging from 1 to 4. So if I put down a tile with 2 Buddha on it, and my opponent immediately places a 3 Buddha to enclose the village, then the village is scored and the Buddha influence adjacent to it is tallied. The player with the 3 Buddha takes the figure.
But there's more trixy to it. Some of the tiles have a Japanese symbol on the bottom of them. These tiles can be played ninja fashion. Normally, you can only play one tile in your turn. But you can also play any number of these ninja tiles as well. One of these tiles is the "Ronin", who has 1 influence but can apply his influence to any of the figure types. Same thing with the ships, only they can't be played on land tiles. That's okay though, since most of the villages are on the coastline of the map, and exposed to at least one space of water. So you can ninja it up with those as well, coming by sea to reinforce and steal a village (need I say it? "Pirate Ninjas!").
But the ninja tiles aren't the only trixy you have up your sleeve. There are two special tiles you can play, one in ninja fashion (in addition to a normal tile) and one just as a normal tile (but it's pretty sweet). The first is a "figure swap" tile, played in ninja fashion. So you see your opponent has got his 4 influence High Helmet next to a High Helmet village. You've got a 4 High Helmet adjacent to a city with a High Helmet in it and a village with a Buddha in it. You've got a Buddha in your hand and the ninja swap. What do you do?
You swap the High Helmet figure for the Buddha figure on the board, and then play your Buddha tile for the capture! Now your 4 High Helmet is next to two of the High Helmet figures and his is wasted. You've also captured the Buddha with your single Buddha tile!
The other special tile is a "teleport" one. You are able to take an already laid tile off the board and replace it with this one (which has a 0 influence). Then you get to take the tile you took off the board and put it somewhere else. So if that dude was like "Yo, he totally snaked my High Helmet!" he can use this tile to apply his 4 High Helmet tile to another, more advantageous space - maybe a space next to the very High Helmet his opponent stole from him! Bwahahahahaah!
So all is well and good. Pretty simple, eh? Capture those figures by surrounded them with influence tiles. When all the figures are captured, the game is done. How do we score this thing, anyway?
As with many Knizia games, the method of scoring has a large bearing on how the game is played. You're only in the running for winning the game if you have the most of any figure type. If you do have the most of a figure type, then set those figures off to the side. Any remaining figures are your score at the end of the game. The player with the highest score wins!
But if you have the most in two of he 3 figure types, you automatically get the win.
So an interesting dynamic during play is introduced. If you've got the most in a single figure type, you want to maintain your lead, but you're primarily concerned with picking up the other types of figures to bolster your score. But if you've got the most in two of the figure types, you want to build those figure types up to a sure majority (4 in a 2 player game, since there are 7 figures of each type on the board).
I really dig this game. It's a lot of fun to play, and it's quick (well, it seems quick, anyway. We didn't stop playing until 9pm!). There's a goodly amount of strategy to it, and the scoring just adds gravy to that. Since your opponent is drawing tiles, you know what he's already played, but you don't know what he has in his hand (unless he doesn't have any more tiles available in his draw pile, meaning that they're all in his hand. You can then deduce what he has available to him, should you so choose). This makes it so you never really know if he's going to be able to ninja something away from you or not.
3 katanas and 2 cutlasses up! (I dig)
11 of 11 found the following review helpful:
A Jewel of a GameFeb 07, 2007
This was the game that first led me to suspect that Reinier Knizia (designer of Samurai and other games) is a genius. I had already played Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride, and I was looking for something else. I chose Samurai almost by chance. After a few plays I was impressed. After a few more plays I thought "this game is amazing"! And now I have 12 Knizia games. In the games of Reinier Knizia, we can see a great mind at work.
Samurai is not a complicated game. It has about the same level of complexity as Settlers or Ticket to Ride. But it has a spark of magic that those more famous games lack in my opinion. The magic of Samurai is in how beautifully and perfectly all the pieces fit together. At the beginning of the game players have lots of options. Every turn, players select and place a tile on the board. Things start of get a little crowded after a while, and players are realizing the consequences of their early tactical choices. By the end players are playing in certain last spaces, hopefully spaces they have planned for in advance.
You can't play too forcefully, or you will spend too much of your resources on one place. The battle is being simultaneously fought all over the board. Players can't afford to leave any area uncontested.
Samurai is beautiful and original to look at. The board itself is a die-cut irregular shape in the form of a map of Japan. The pieces that are contested (rice paddies, buddas and high-helmets) are a lovely black shiny acrylic. The board and bits are VERY satisfying to play with. The artwork is very well rendered by Franz Volwinkel.
This game scales particularly well. With four players, the entire board is used and all bits. With fewer playes only portions of the board are used and fewer bits. With 2 players, or 3 or 4, the game feels exactly the same. It plays quickly and smoothly, in about 45 minutes. My kids like it, and pretty much everyone else that I've introduced it to.
9 of 9 found the following review helpful:
Excellent Strategic Board game learned in minutes.May 24, 2006
My first introduction to Reiner Knizia's Samurai was actually through a PC game version of it which I believe was shut down due to copyright issues. A shame really as I would have never given this product a try had it not been for that playable demo.
This product comes with 4 fairly heavy duty cardboard island pieces that make up the game board, 4 sets of colored unit cards and 3 sets of markers (Rice, Buddha and high helmets). The included rulebook is made up of a few pages with detailed and quality instruction that make picking this game up simple.
The youngest player starts out by placing 1 of the markers onto an available city, then the next player and so on until all of the markers have been placed.
Now the game begins!
Again the youngest goes first with play continuing clockwise around the table. The player places one or more of his cards on the board trying to surround some of the previously placed markers. Once a city or village has been completely surround on land, the total amount of cards are tallied to determine who wins the marker.
The cards each player can use come from a pool of about 24 and he gets to pick 4 to start with and after each round draws enough randomly to retain 4 in hand.
These come in a variety of forms from Samurai to Boats with some only influencing a given marker. They range in strength of 1 to 4 so the numbers are easy to calculate.
While my description might make it seem overly complex, the game is really simple and after one or two games you'll have the rules down. Mastering it on the other hand...
An excellent game which is worthy of shelf space on any avid board gamer's bookshelf. I only wish the box was a bit smaller.
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