Small Samurai Empires

Catherine and I played a game of Small Samurai Empires this afternoon. I took House Mori (Yellow) whilst she took House Takeda (Blue). The clan names are purely for colour. Literally.

The board set up. The game is about controlling the four coloured regions of the board. Each region accumulates points during the game, with the Orange region being most important, the Green and Grey ones middling and the Purple region the least so. However cards played during the game will also affect how well a region scores at he end of the game, so the players get to decide, to some extent, which parts of the board are the key ones to fight over. In this game the Orange region started the game as being relatively unimportant. 

(If you can't work it out, Grey is Shikoku, Kyushu and the southern part of Honshu, Orange is central Honshu, Green is northern Honshu and Purple is Hokkaido)

Central Honshu (the Orange region)

On each turn the players take it in turns to place a number of orders. An order only applies to the region it is placed against, and can be to harvest resources, attack, move or recruit troops. Only a limited number of orders can be placed against each region, so the players who go first can prevent later players from acting in certain regions. However the sequence in which orders are placed changes each turn based on the players' scores. Here you can see that I have recruited troops in the Green region, whilst one of Catherine's armies has moved to control the green resource counter. Resources are green (food) or bushido (red) and are used to enhance certain actions - you can build more troops with food, or attack more often with bushido, for example.

The position at the end of the first Era. The game consists of three Eras, each with two rounds of order placement and resolution. So it's a short, sharp game. I'd quickly grabbed control of the southern part of the board (Grey) and Catherine the north (Purple). I was building up strength in the north of Honshu (Green), whilst Catherine had pushed me out of the central Orange region. At the end of an Era you score points for control of Regions; Catherine got a slight lead at this point, mostly through control of shrines, which are provinces worth bonus points.

In the second Era the Orange region acquired some cards and became worth fighting over. I established a small presence.

Then I expanded it. 

Green also became hotly contested. Catherine seemed quite keen to fight for it (I think she had cards to play to boost its value), whilst I wanted it as a source of reserves to feed into the Orange region.

I established full control of the Grey region, and even built a castle. Castles are permanent troops; they can't be destroyed and make contesting the province they are in much harder for opponents. They are also worth bonus points when calculating a player's influence in a region.

The end of the second era. Catherine had undisputed control of the Purple region, whilst I controlled the south of Japan. The central regions, Orange and Green, were still contested. On the right you can see the cards played for each region - two each for Grey and Orange and one each for Green and Purple. Again the scores were close at the end of this Era; it would come down to the final points based on the cards.

The final Era. I struck lucky when I played a third card for Grey. In a two-player game one card is played by each player at the start of an Era, and a third card drawn from the deck. The third card was also Grey, putting four cards on the Region, and making it very valuable indeed. Catherine added another card to Purple. The main fight would be for the Orange region, which had two cards against it. Since I had enough influence over the Grey region to score maximum points from it, I used ships to transport troops into the Orange region, whilst also moving a few armies south from the Green region which, frankly, wasn't really worth fighting over. Catherine was so focused on fighting in the centre that she missed the chance to grab a couple of valuable Grey areas by shipping troops down from Hokkaido (Purple), where she had lots of armies doing very little.

The end of Era points saw me edge ahead slightly, but my total control of the Grey region and its high value pushed me well into the lead when we did the end of game points. Catherine couldn't make up the points with her total control of the Purple region. We score roughly evenly for the Orange and Green regions. I finished off my victory with a nice haul of unused resources as well.

I was pleased that my victory was achieved partially through an understanding of how to use naval assets; Catherine still hasn't quite grasped the use of the order which allows you to move troops by ship.

I'm not sure if this is a game I'd play a lot, but it is fun, and there are a number of optional rules which change the way the game is set up or scored to increase replay value. I'd like to play it again with three players (we've done that once) and it would be fun to try and get in a four-player game as well, since that really makes the allocation of orders very tight.

As you can see, it's a gorgeous little boardgame.

52 Games - Game 4