Shogun: Cube Tower and Samurai Power

Shogun is a wonderful, happy marriage between Risk and Euro-style games.  That is, a marriage between a terribly boring dice rolling sort-of wargame and the best types of games on the planet. 

There are several games out there that attempt to  create a good Euro-Risk experience.  Kemet comes to mind as another one that I have played that is pretty excellent.  Check out Jake's blog for a quick overview of Kemet as well as other some other things if you are a BSB enthusiast (Beer, Speakers, and Boardgames.  No Backstreet Boys, sadly).

Shogun is another Euro-Risk game, and it is also pretty excellent.  It is a Japanese re-theme of the German themed Wallenstein.  They are basically the same game, but just in different thematic settings.  The choice of me grabbing Shogun over Wallenstein was my love of Japanese-themed games, so an easy choice.
Actually, I bought this as a Christmas gift for my brother, who I have converted over to Euro games despite him loving Risk even though it is a horrifically bad game. Considering all the boardgames I bought as gifts this year are Japanese-themed, I had to get this one.  It was the perfect gift, really.   He loves this game now. I'm a gift-giving master.

Here's the box.  That samurai gentleman is quite handsome, looking out into the distance like that.

The sun sets, and Samurai Sam surveys the seaside for sushi for his supper.

The game takes place on a map of Japan, with players having armies on the territories that they own.  Over the course of the game, more armies will be added and existing armies moved around and used for attacking other territories.  Sounds just like risk so far...looks kind of like it too...

On top of that, there is a building element to the game.  Players can build castles, temples, or theaters in the territories they control.  At the end of each year (the game is played over 2 years, with four seasons/rounds per year), points are scored for each building built and territory owned.  Furthermore, there is an area majority mechanic that awards extra points in each collection of territories of same color for the most of each type of building built there.  This is actually the most effective way to get points, as having a castle and temple majority are worth 3 pts and 2 pts in each province. 

A temple built along the coast of Kii.

And the game continues to get more complicated (it took us 45 minutes to learn the rules and set up.  Worth it, but this game has a lot of little rules and complications).

Every round consists of 10 possible actions:  3 building actions, confiscate rice, confiscate money, a few reinforce troop numbers actions, and 2 attack actions.  All of these are depicted on your player board.

Player board.

These actions resolve in a different order each round, determined by random draw, so you can't always do things in the order that you want.  The order of the first 5 actions are revealed before the round, and the others are revealed during the round one at a time.  A common issue is the money action coming up late in the round, so you don't have enough cash to do what you want.  Got to plan around that...

Speaking of planning, before each round you place cards, relating to territory you own, onto your player board facedown. The action you take then applies to the territory whose card you placed on that action space.  For example if I place a territory card on the "build castle" space, then I can build a castle on that territory.  Likewise, a territory card on an attack space lets me attack using troops from that territory.  Not only is this an interesting idea in its own right, but it also makes it so you can't add troops to a province and attack with it on the same turn.  Again, got to plan ahead.

Planning planning, choices choices.

Getting rice (to feed the people of your territories later) and money makes the farmers of the land upset, and creates the chance for a revolt.

Revolt marker.  Don't steal from these people again.

Taking over an unoccupied territory or inciting a revolt by getting stuff from your own territory already with a revolt marker starts a fight with the farmer armies (FARMIES!!!).  Not being able to feed all of your territories at the end of the year also can lead to revolts, with the more food you can't provide leading to more and bigger revolts.  This is another typical Euro-style game mechanic of feeding that keeps overexpansion in check.

Mozzie, the bear with the drunken past and affinity for headwear, very much enjoyed the farmies.  He rooted for them from the stands.

Mozzie.  Sporting a holiday bow, sun-shielding farming hat, and a fine silver pitchfork.

But there's one more surprise left, a core element of the game....The CUBE TOWER!!!

Cube Tower!!

The cube tower is the impartial God that can turn the tide of battle.  In a battle, both attacking and defending army cubes are thrown into the tower. Whoever has more of their cube armies come out of the tower wins the battle.  All defeated side armies plus the equivalent number of winning side armies are removed and the surviving armies put on the newly conquered territory.
But here's the kicker.  These initial cubes enter, and only some of them come out.  Some of them don't.  And sometimes, ones that don't come out come back out during a later battle.

SURPRISE!!!

   

    

Top-down view of the cube tower.  There are people stuck in there!

It's fun and adds an element of suspense to every battle.
Thematically, though, I don't think this makes much sense...

In the Suruga territory:

Samurai 1:  "Where's Johnny?!"
Samurai 2:  "Lost in the mountain again, I presume.  I don't think he's quite all there."
Samurai 1:  "Well we lost the battle because he wasn't here!"

In Iyo, on the complete other side of the country:

Samurai 3: "We won the battle!!  It's all thanks to the new guy who showed up."
Johnny:  "WHO AM I!!!!"

Makes. No. Sense.
And teleporting samurai are already unrealistic, so I have no qualms naming a samurai "Johnny."

The cube tower is AMAZING!  If you have the edge in armies going into the tower versus your opponent, you will probably win the fight, BUT you always have to take into consideration what cubes are left stuck in the tower.  Maybe you fight a risky battle where you are at a disadvantage, because you have been unlucky on other turns and remember that you have a lot of cube stuck in the tower.  So there is a small element of luck here, but somewhat calculable odds of winning just means you have to choose your battles wisely.
And the suspense when throwing those cubes in is just fun.  And the surprises are fun.

Onto actually playing the game (finally).
First things first.  I started off the game with an energizing beverage.

For 100% kids, like me.

This game is intended for 3-5 players, but we only had 2 willing participants at the time.  So we went with a very simple, unofficial 2 player variant, which basically consisted of 3-player rules but on an artificially shrunk map. It's not perfect, but it worked pretty well.

The game was close.  It came down to one final battle.

I lost by one army in that battle.  Which caused a 2 point swing in the game.

Final score.  I'm yellow.  Obviously.

I lost by 2 points.

Shogun is great.  It does take about 2 hours with only 2 players, mostly due to some analysis paralysis in the planning phase later in the game.  With 3 or 4 players, it would probably take 3 hours, which is pushing my limits on how long I want to play a single game.  But that is really the only major flaw I see here.
It's pretty cool.  And the cube tower is a winner.

And in case you were wondering what happened to Samurai Johnny: