I’ve owned this beauty for a few months, but as most of my gaming is two player, it took a while to get this to the table. Last week, though, we got a group of four together and I suggested Shogun, as the group was made up of wargamers, euro gamers, and RPGers.
By way of brief background, I am primarily a wargamer with a deep interest in history and secondarily an Ameritrash gamer with an affinity for fantasy and sci-fi themes.
Components
This game is really attractive, which is one reason I bought it in the first place. The map is really beautiful, and well mounted. The cards are nice (though a bit small) and have a nice finish. The wooden blocks are cool, and look great piled up on the enemy’s border, ready to heave across at H-Hour. The artwork is solid throughout and very evocative of the theme.
The cube tower is brilliant. I’ve read complaints about trying to justify its somewhat random outcomes, but I had no problem here. So I attack with 4 armies and 5 pop out. So what? Maybe my success drew more to my cause.
In any case, I didn’t worry about justifying this game’s particular randomizing mechanic, I just appreciated its originality and ingenuity.
Object
Shogun is a multiplayer game of building and conflict in feudal Japan. The object is, over the course of two years, to gather more victory points than your opponents. Victory points are accrued twice during the game, at the end of each year. During the scoring phase, you get a VP for:
Each controlled province
Each building
3 VP: Most Castles in a region (a region is a group of 9 color-matched provinces)
2 VP: Most Temples in a region
1 VP: Most Theaters in a region
Turn Phase
Essentially, there are 3 turns (spring, summer, fall) followed by a scoring phase (winter). Then three more turns, followed by a second scoring phase. After that, high score (most VP’s) wins.
The turn sequence is:
Lay out action cards . 366
This means determine in which order that turns ten ‘actions’ will occur. The ten actions are the same each turn, and are generally one of four types: 1) spending treasure chests (hereafter “gold”) to raise armies 2) spending gold to build buildings, 3) move and attack, 4) raise taxes by gathering gold or rice from a province. The ten actions are very specific (for example, one allows a player to raise 5 armies for 3 gold, while another allows a levy of 3 armies for 2 gold). The first five actions are face up, so you know what’s coming, the last five are face down, and revealed one at a time as the face up actions are executed.
Lay out special cards . There are five of these, that give the player some small advantage for the turn, like raising an extra army or gold, or adding one army to attack or defense. They are randomly place on a turn order chart. So if the ‘add one gold to your taxes’ advantage is placed on turn order #3, and you select that advantage, you are also choosing to go third in each phase of the turn.
Plan Individual actions . Here is where most of the game time occurs, and this is the source of one of my main complaints with this game. Here the players assign one of the game’s ten standard actions to one of their provinces. For example, by placing a province card, face down, on one’s player mat with the ‘pay three gold and raise 5 armies’ action, when that phase comes up, the specified action takes place in that province…and only that province. No province gets two actions in a phase, and no action can take place in more than one province. Forget out raising an army and attacking with it in one turn.
You'll spend a lot of time staring at this
Players also bid for turn order in this phase, by committing 0 to 4 gold. Once revealed, the highest bidder selects the advantage and turn position they want (i.e. ‘special card’ mechanic described above).
Determine events .
A random event card is turned over that has a global effect on the turn, like not allowing combat in a temple space, or capping the amount of rice gathered by taxes.
Determine Turn Order .
Here players choose there special card (i.e. advantage for the turn) along with their turn order, in order of highest bid placed in the ‘Plan Individual Actions’ phase above.
A close up of three of the five 'special cards' on the turn order track
Carry out actions . 629