Samurai Review

I first bought Reiner Knizia’s Samurai back when it was released in 1998 by Hans im Gluck. It was a visually striking game with glossy black pieces, shoji screens to hide your score and an irregular board depicting the Japanese archipelago. It looked sleek, minimalist and- of course- Japanese. There was an exotically appealing quality to it that made it unique among the German games finding their way to the US after Settlers of Catan. After a long wilderness period during which the game was out of print and unavailable save for a fairly dated and crude IOS app, Fantasy Flight Games has released a new edition of this wonderful tile-layer as the second in their “Euro Classics” line following the five-star issue of Tigris & Euphrates that they put out earlier this year.

Like Tigris & Euphrates, the new edition is 100% intact and faithful to its original release. The artwork has been respectfully updated and although those slick black pieces representing helmets, buddhas and rice paddies have been replaced by sculptured miniatures, it is just as visually striking as it ever was. There are no new variants or options provided, but the rules as written are better than those I remember reading over 15 years ago- especially in regard to the tricky scoring method that all but defines this design.

Each player has an identical set of hexagonal tiles, of which five are held in hand at a time. On a turn, you play one tile onto one of the map’s hexes. Each hex is adjacent to one or more villages that have one of the three symbolic representations of feudal value- military, religion and economy. The tiles either have a corresponding picture, indicating that the numerical value is applied to that quality or a Ronin, which means that it tends to have a lower value but can hold influence over any of the three. When a village is completely surrounded, whoever has the highest value of specific tiles and Ronin tiles claims the corresponding pieces. Certain spaces may influence more than one village, and there are also sea spaces around some which can host a player’s naval tiles, thus boosting the strength of their forces on land.

That’s really the bulk of the rules right there, and in that slim process there are plenty of wonderful Knizia moments- particularly in deciding which battles are worth pursuing to victory and which are to be abandoned. There are also two one-shot tiles in each player’s stack, one that allows you to retreat a previously played tile and replace it with a tile of zero value and one that allows you to swap the token in a village with another one elsewhere. And then there are special tiles that allow a player to place more than one per turn, which creates the possibility of a sudden surprise attack or a coordinated play resulting in a player receiving multiple pieces in one turn. Deciding when to use these very powerful tiles leads to some serious turn angst, particularly in the late game when a sweeping play can be decisive.

This is a game where you play numbered tiles and count up values and it is a game of tile placement, area control and piece capture but it is not an abstract. Like Tigris & Euphrates, the theme is both clear and literary. The game is about developing feudal power along these three vectors and balancing your assets to emerge victorious. This is specifically evidenced in the classic scoring mechanic. In order to win, you have to finish the game with at least one majority in the three areas, meaning that you have captured more than the other players. If you can claim the majority in two areas, you are the clear winner. If no one can do so, only those who have one majority can qualify to win- meaning that in a four player game, one person is usually disqualified outright. The neat part here is that the scoring is then relegated to the total number of pieces other than those in which you have the demonstrated superiority. So if you have spent the entire game gathering the wheat tokens symbolic of economy but have failed to garner enough buddhas (religion) and buildings (military) to have more than another player, then your performance isn’t enough to classify as a victory.

So it becomes about balancing these factors and ensuring that you have the most of something and then enough of the others to come out on top. This inevitably means that you have to be careful about where you place tiles and how you time it to get what you need. With four players and the full map in play, this can be a very agreeable strategic exercise that remains eminently accessible and fairly light, despite the tough choices. It plays out in about 45 minutes. With three, you lose a map section but the game is still great at thirty minutes. The two player game truncates the map further and offers a very satisfying experience in 20 minutes that goes well with conversation and coffee.

As part of the “tile-laying” trilogy (with Tigris & Euphrates and Through the Desert completing the set), I find that Samurai skews a little more to the lighter end of the depth and weight spectrum but by the same token, I think it’s probably the most immediately approachable of the set. You can teach someone to play in five minutes and odds are they’ll be asking for another round to leverage what they learned in the first match. It requires minimal setup and takedown, and it has a “classic” quality about it that ensures that it will continue to feel rich, rewarding and fun for many years to come.