SquarkBlog

One of our gaming group regulars, Nick, bought Senji, one of our hot new arrivals. He read the rules and was itching to play. So much so that he managed to recruit six of us for an impromptu Monday night gaming session. Luckily most of us were free that night, despite it being a Monday night.

Senji is a game set in Feudal Japan during the Sengoku Jidai era where clans of different political persuasions fight each other for honour, power, money and for the heck of it. Not sure about the last motive, but I am pretty confident they do fight for the heck of it. If not why do they dress up in expensive heavy samurai armour and run about in the battlefield?

Anyway, Nick laid out the beautiful map showing the main islands of Japan together with the famous Japanese tsunami painting in the background of one of the sea areas. We also marveled at the very nice plastic samurai figures and the cool castle figures. Next, Nick showed us the cards. Fantastico! Very nice artwork. Suddenly, I felt I was playing a role of a Daimyo (clan leader) in a Kurosawa epic. In Senji, the Shogun (Emperor) is aging. Each player plays a daimyo who struggles to gain 60 honour points in order to be declared Shogun and win the game.

Nick explained the simple rules on how to make deals between players, how to trade, how to move and fight, how to produce and how to score honour points. After this brief introduction, we started playing. Each player picked a colour and got the castle and units of their own colour as well as cards depicting trade, military assistance and family members. Each of us were dealt three samurai cards and each of us had to keep one and discard the rest. Now, each samurai has different honour points and different abilities. Jade, Nick and Wong chose samurais with 8 honour points, Jason and I chose one with 6 honour points. These honour points were scored immediately on honour point track at the edge of the board. The first shogun was determined randomly amongst Jade, Nick and Wong, since they were the players with the most starting honour points (8). Nick took a castle from these three players and I randomly picked one. Jade's blue castle was chosen. So the aging emperor joins Jade's family. Now, whoever the aging emperor joins at the beginning of the turn will be very powerful that turn. He can dictate whichever player moves first. Jade was so thankful that I chose his castle randomly that he gave me advantageous timing in my actions for the first turn. Thanks, Jade! We then deployed our forces and samurais in turn order dictated by the Shogun. Next was the diplomacy phase. Jade turned the beautiful sandtimer, which came with the game, and all of us started making secret deals with one another. Players could make trade deals, provide military aid and/or sent members of their own family (the family cards) to other players as a sign of trust. We made deals, threats and exchange diplomacy cards in this fun-filled phase. As we were allowed to move away from the game table out of earshot of other players, we huddled in different groups whispering to each other. There were incidences of eavesdropping as a player pretended to go to the toilet and somehow hid behind the door to our gaming room to listen in on the conversations of a rival group. There was also a lot of rumour-mongering as players were free to talk to different groups of players. Suddenly, Jade the Shogun said "Stop!" The sand on the sandtimer had fallen to the bottom chamber and time was up!

Next was the orders phase where order counters for each province were placed faced down by the controlling player. There were three types of orders: recruit, produce and move. A recruit order allows the player to place two more army units on that province. A produce order allows the player to take two hanafuda cards which represents the economic development of provinces. Now, in a later phase, the hanafuda cards, which consists of different pictures and numbers can be exchanged for honour or for more samurais. This was the set-collecting feature of the game. Simple but effective. The hanafuda cards are beautifully-rendered and add to the atmosphere and the theme. The move order allows the player to move his army and samurai, if present, from that province to another. If the province moved to has the units of another player, a battle ensues. In a battle, each player totals his units and samurais. The six-sided dice included in Senji each have a player symbol on each face. The attacker provides one dice to each samurai in the battle. He rolls the rest of the dice. The aim is to roll the players own symbols. After rolling, each player places a military card. This represents military aid from other players, which can reinforce his army in the battle. The winner of the battle is the player with the most forces in units and card. The winner of the battle gains honour. Pretty innovative combat system.

After all orders were carried out, the Shogun dictates which player trades first. In the trading phase, each player in turn exchanges hanafuda card sets for honour points or samurais, takes hanafuda cards from other payers whom he has trading deals with and choses whether or not to display family members of other players to the public. This last move gains the displaying player honour points. There were lots of macho talk during this phase as players proudly displays the wife/mother/ father/daughter cards of other rival players in front of them. "Look! I got your wife here, together with the Shogun's father", etc. There were some classic lines said during our game, but I cannot reproduce them here as they were bordering on the verge of going beyond R-rated. OK, OK, some of these lines were outright beyond R-rated, but that's part of the fun.

The second turn of the game saw a different player being Shogun-Jason-as he had the most honour points at the beginning of that turn. All players were collecting hanafuda cards and building their forces up, as in the first turn. The third turn saw Jason attacking Jade's island province successfully. Jade had his revenge the next turn as he destroyed one of Jason's defending forces in one of Jason's home provinces. I attacked Jason's force which had earlier captured one of Jade's province and wiped it out, and Nick attacked one of Wong's peripheral province, but lost! This critical fiasco cost Nick five armies and a samurai. Big blow! Wong benefited as he gained honour points from successfully defending his province from an attack. Jade then attacked another of Wong's province. Wong's armies again managed to defend successfully. Again, Wong gained honour points. Lots more battle action in ensued in the later turns. Jade managed to wipe Jason's units off the board., but Jason was not out of the game although he had no units left. He came back as a ronin (a leaderless samurai) and started building his forces to seek revenge. One of the beauty of Senji is that there is no player elimination, so a player cannot be kicked out of the game just because he lost all his units. This player is weakened, but he still has a chance of winning because he does not lose his accumulated honour points. Nicely-thought out game concept for this day and age...and this fits nicely into the samurai theme of ronin seeking revenge. Ingenious or what?

Wong who defended well from the joint attacks by Nick and Jade, both of whom had repaired their initial rivalry, but Wong lost a lot of military units in doing so. However, he managed to collect lots of hanafuda cards in the last turn and converted them for about twenty honour points. This brought his total to sixty-two honour points and he won the game! Wong was crowned shogun!

We all were taken by surprise by Wong's clever series of moves. The post-game chatter, which usually ensue while we are packing up, was full of praise for the game as well as the different strategies to win. Wong won by the hanafuda strategy - set collecting. He won even when his armies were defeated by multiple attacks from Jade and Nick by cleverly collecting sets of honour-producing hanafuda cards. Nice! I was going for a mix of military and hanafuda strategy but was one turn too late. I think Nick, Jason and Jade were also doing mainly military.

We all had a really good time playing Senji. The atmosphere of battling clans, the three different aspects of the game - military, economic and diplomacy, the nice plastic samurais and castles, the beautifully-rendered hanafuda cards and board graphics and the well-written game rules all make Senji a strong contender for a great game.

Just one minute...Nick just called me - we are playing Senji again this Saturday!

I love it when a clan comes together!

 

 

Note: All graphics used on this Squark Blog are from the publisher Asmodee and are copyright by  Asmodee. We were so excited by  Senji that none of us took any photos. I will take some photos during our game on Saturday. Promise!