The Bottom Line

Samurai is a game that projects an appearance of tranquil, Zen-like play, but in reality, it is a game of timing, frustration (in a good way), and abrupt swings of fortune. If you accept it for what it is you'll be rewarded with a tense, angst ridden, medium weight game that will alternately have you cursing your luck and praising your skills.

The Components

The components of Samurai are very pleasing. They project a peaceful and serene sense of game play. The board comes in a 3 piece jigsaw puzzle in the shape of Japan. The color scheme is attractively muted and easy on the eye.



In addition to the board there are figurines of three types (Buddhas, warrior hats, and rice paddies). The figurines are molded out of heavy plastic (Bakelite?) and highly polished. Their heft and jet-black, yet polished, surfaces make them extremely satisfying to hold and manipulate. When they populate the board they contribute their share to the Zen-like countenance projected by the components.





Each player gets a set of 20 colored tiles. There are four sets for up to four players. Each set is identical except for the color. The sets have pictures corresponding to the figures, as well as pictures of Samurai and ships, plus a couple of special tiles. Each tile also has a number designating how much influence that tile is worth.



As I've been saying, the components are aesthetically pleasing and, at least to me, project a sense of calm. A sense that turns out to be at odds with the game play, but I'm getting ahead of myself. As you might expect, components such as these have inspired their share of creative photographs.



The Rules

The Setup

There are several options for setting up the game. The simplest option, and the one I prefer, is simply to randomly place the Buddhas, warrior hats, and rice paddies on the board (subject to the constraint that no two figures of the same type can occupy the same city), and have each player randomly draw 5 tiles into their hand. Another option is to randomly seed the board with figures, while the players select their initial 5 tiles from among their pool of 20. The final setup option is for players to take turns placing a figure onto the board (again subject to the constraints above), then selecting their starting tiles from their pool. The theory behind this option, I suppose, is that players might orchestrate certain arrangements of the various figures that complement their starting hand, such that they have a desirable opening move.

In practice, however, I find that all the setup options, besides the totally random one, just aren't worth the hassle. No matter what your starting hand, and what the distribution of figures, there is practically always several equally acceptable starting locations. And I haven't seen the long term strategic benefit from selecting your starting hand versus drawing it randomly to make that option worth while.

I suggest just setting up randomly and rolling with whatever configuration the board and your tiles present to you.

The Game Play

The goal of Samurai is to capture the figures from the board by using your tiles to exert influence on them. In that sense it's kind of an area majority game where the areas are defined by being adjacent to the city hexes (which contain the figures). When a figure is completely surrounded by tiles on all adjacent land hexes (water doesn't count for surrounding) then the figure is "scored". All of the influence on the figure, exerted by adjacent tiles with a picture matching the figure or by a "Samurai" or "Ship" tiles which are wild, is summed. The player with the most influence captures the figure and places it behind their player screen. In the case of a tie no one gets the figure, and it is removed from the game.

A turn consists of playing one tile to the board. Only ship tiles can be played on water, all other tiles must be played on the land (ships, like samurais, are wild in terms of influence). A player can play more than one tile if the additional tiles are the ones with the little Japanese symbol on them. In other words, a player may place as many Japanese symboled tiles as desired plus one normal tile. If the played tile or tiles triggers the scoring of a figure then that figure is awarded as described above.

After playing tiles a player refreshes their hand back up to five tiles by drawing from their face down pool (each player has their own personal pool of tiles, which they draw from throughout the game. Once it's exhausted that's it. And it is possible to exhaust the pool though it's rare to be completely out of tiles to play).

There are two special tiles which I should mention. There is one tile which is not played to the board, it is simply
set face up in front of the player screen to indicate it's been played. This tile is very powerful, it let's you switch the position of any two figures on the board (subject to the constraint that two identical figures can't occupy the same city). As I'll explain below in the strategy section I believe this is the most important tile in your pool. Making good use of it is key to winning the game.

Another special tile is the "zero" tile. This tile is played on the board in place of a previous played tile of your color. The replaced tile then may be "reused" somewhere else on the board. Basically the zero tile doesn't have any influence, but let's you reuse one of your more powerful tiles (generally the 4-influence figure tiles, or the 3-influence samurai tile).

Another note is that the "1" Samurai, kind of looks like a "7". Make sure you point out that it's a 1 when explaining the rules.

The End Game

The game can end in one of two ways. By far the most common way to end the game is by capturing the last figure of one type from the board. When this happens the game ends immediately, and probably some number of the other two types of figures will be left on the board uncaptured.

The other way to end the game is by when three figures are removed from play due to ties in influence. Since ties are pretty rare this doesn't happen very often.

Once the game ends the players reveal their captured figures and the winner is determined. The scoring mechanism in Samurai is rather unique and is the subject of some criticism. Generally, either you love it or hate it.

Basically, in order to be eligible for the win you must have a plurality in one type of figure. Being tied for the most doesn't count. If you have such a plurality then congratulations, you might win. Next, you set aside the figures of your plurality and count your figures of the other two types. This is your score, and the highest score wins.

The scoring method is one of the things to break the elegant balance implied by the components. The three types of figures are all functionally equivalent, and the players tile pools are all identical. Thus there is a certain symmetry to the components that would lead you to expect a more balanced scoring mechanism (perhaps one like T&E where the fewest figures becomes your score, this would encourage balance in capturing figures). Instead we have a scoring system that encourages imbalance in your play. Basically, you would like to capture as many of two types of figures as you can while completely ignoring the third, although, it's never practical to specialize to this degree.

I suspect that the scoring mechanism isn't arbitrary, however. I don't know for sure, but I think it makes the endgame much more tense and crucial as you are forced into some difficult decisions about what you would like to capture versus what your tiles allow you to capture.

Theme to Mechanics Integration

There is not really much thematic integration here. The theme is mostly suggested by the components, not the game play. The three types of figures are all functionally equivalent, there are no special rules for warriors versus Buddhas, for example. There is no differentiation in the players' tile set (they aren't playing different tribes with different abilities or victory conditions, for example.) I think the game could easily be rethemed to any number of other settings.

The Random Element

Samurai has a very healthy dose of randomness in it. As long as it is played reasonably quickly the random element shouldn't overwhelm the game, but it definitely doesn't pay to have AP in this game and, in fact, AP will kill the enjoyment of it. Thanks to the large randomness newbies have a decent chance at beating a veteran player which is one of the things that helps make this a good gateway game.

As I've said before Samurai is mainly a game of timing. As the game progresses it will present you with scoring opportunities that require certain tiles to capitalize upon. If you happen to have the right tile at the right time you will succeed. Often you won't have the right tile, or your opponent will have a tile or combination of tiles that will allow him to take advantage of an opportunity you were trying to set up for yourself.

The availability of these tiles largely depends on when you randomly draw them. A tile that might have been great for you early in the game can be near worthless if drawn late, and vice versa.

There is also a healthy dose of player induced chaos in the game (especially in the four player game where a lot can happen between your turns). The chaos isn't truly random as it is the result of player choices, but it certainly can have the same feeling. When a juicy scoring opportunity appears and then disappears all between your turns it certainly can seem like you got randomly shafted.

In my opinion the game is a tiny bit too random for its length. I don't necessarily mind random or chaotic games, but I do like them to be short. Samurai needs to be played briskly in order to prevent the randomness and chaos from becoming a real problem.

Strategy vs. Tactics

Samurai is mostly a tactical game. It's important that you examine all of your options each turn and choose the one that gives you the most payoff. Trying to set up a long term strategy can actually be risky as other players can capitalize on scoring opportunities you are trying to set up for yourself. The best strategy is generally to maximize your tactical gain on each turn.

That said, there are a few strategic considerations to take into account. First, it's important to understand how much to "pay" to capture a figure. What I mean is that each figure you capture is probably going to require you to use more than 1 tile, but shouldn't require using 2 (the actual number of tiles per figure is probably slightly above 1.5). With this understanding, you'll obviously jump at the chance to capture a figure using only a single tile if your opponents are foolish enough to set that situation up for you. But, you should think twice about using two tiles to capture a single figure if neither of the tiles can be used against a second figure.

It also follows from this that the last thing you should do is leave a scoring opportunity on the board that can be completed with the play of a single tile. In Samurai it's impossible to not leave opportunities for your opponents so the thing to do is always make them cost two tiles to capture. The practical upshot of this is that you should never leave a figure with only one open space and a total influence of less than 4. Doing so means that somebody could drop down their 4 strength token, score the space, and capture the figure. At least make them use their 4 plus a ship.

There is also some strategy involving the special tiles that you should be considering right from the very start of the game. I'll get into that in the strategy tips section below.

Scalability

When it comes to scalability Samurai does something that I love and wish more boardgames did. It scales the size of the board to the number of players. With 2 players you use only central Japan, with three you add one of the islands, and with 4 you add the other. Thumbs up for that.

Samurai is at its best with 2 or 3 players because that limits the amount of player induced chaos in the game. There is simply less happening between your turns with fewer players. It makes a very tense two player game with a strong sense of direct competition with your opponent. 3 players, for me, is the sweet spot. 4 players is a bit chaotic and events can often feel out of your control, still I don't turn down 4 player games and if I'm setting up Samurai I welcome a fourth player who is interested in joining.

One big flaw of Samurai emerges here, and that's turn order bias. It's possible for some players to get more turns than others in this game, and in a game where you might only get twelve or thirteen turns that can be huge. Whenever I lose a game of Samurai I inevitably feel like I would have won if only I'd had one more turn. Well, that could often be true if you just flat out got one less turn than the winner.

Gateway Potential

Samurai is a game that I've had good luck introducing to nongamers. The components certainly help in that regard, but also the rules are really not that complex if explained succinctly. And the strategy is shallow enough that the mental load won't overwhelm them. The only hiccup is the victory conditions, which I usually start with and get out of the way. I don't think Samurai is the first game I would reach for with newbies, but I have used it and have had success. So it can work.

Tips

The key to going form a good Samurai player (one who recognizes the basic strategic considerations I laid out above) to an advanced one is recognizing how to use two of the special tiles. In fact, these two tiles are so important that I'd almost go so far as to say that the winner is often the player who deploys them the best. The tiles are the "switch figures" and the "Japanese samurai" (the one with the Japanese character that lets you move again), both of these tiles are enormously powerful compared to the others in your arsenal, and you need to use them to their best advantage to have any chance in the game. The "zero tile" (the one that lets you reuse an already played tile) is also quite powerful, but I find its use to be generally obvious. It doesn't really warrant any special tips, when it's time to use it you'll know.

Let's start with the "switch figures" tile. This tile lets you switch any two figures on the board (subject to the constraint that no city can have two identical figures). This is powerful because you can take a figure from a position where an opponent had strong influence on it and put it in a position where you have strong influence on it, while at the same time capturing another figure.

What I mean is that whenever you play the switch figures tile you should always capture at least one figure. Never play it if you can't capture one of the figures you switched. Then, with the other figure involved in the switch, you should ideally put that in a spot where you originally had little influence, but where you'll be in a position to capture it the following turn.

For example, let's say your opponent has four influence on a Buddha figure with one space left to close the city and claim the figure. If you switch this figure with a rice paddy, then you should be able to capture the paddy with a Samurai, or a 2 value rice paddy tile. You've blunted your opponent’s strong tile and used a weak one of yours to great effect. Then, hopefully, the spot for the Buddha figure should be set up for you to capture next round. Perhaps it's a spot where you had a strong Buddha influence that was being wasted with the rice paddy. In this scenario you've played three tiles (switch, capture the rice, capture the Buddha) for two figures - a 1.5 ratio. That ratio is pretty good, but it's really better than that if you include the damage done to your opponent’s position, and the fact that the two tiles you played to capture might be reused on another figure themselves.

In some cases it's even possible to capture two tokens on the same turn. One game I used the switch figures and the Japanese samurai to capture 3 figures on one turn!

Variations on the above example come up often during a game. When you have the switch tile in your hand you're first priority should be to find those situations or create them if you can. You really need to maximize the use of this tile.

Much the same advice goes for the Japanese samurai tile. This tile is powerful because it is the only land tile that can be played along with another land tile. This let's you close off a city with 2 open spaces. This tile should ideally be played when it leads to the capture of two figures on the same turn. If you can't do that, you should certainly capture one that your opponent was counting on. It's great for closing off EDO unexpectedly, or one of the other 2 figure cities. Sometimes you can use it to close off two different cities netting you both figures. It can also be used to great effect in combination with the switch figures tile, or the 0 tile. When you have this tile in your hand, your strategy should revolve around it. You should look for the biggest score possible or try to set one up.

Efficient use of these two tiles is often the determining factor in the game, which otherwise tends to be very close.

If you're playing the variant where you select your starting hand you might be tempted to put one or both of these tiles in it to ensure you have access to them when the ideal opportunity arises. But in my experience, the right time for these tiles rarely comes in the beginning of the game, and until it does they're just taking up space in your small hand. You really have to depend on a certain amount of luck to draw them at the right time (towards the middle of the game because they diminish in value as the game goes on because of fewer opportunities on the shrinking board). I've taken to not including them in my starting hand when I play the game that way.

My Opinion

My opinion of Samurai is actually higher than you might gather from the review above. After 30+ face to face games, with all numbers of players, I rate it a 9/10. It has its flaws (turn order bias, a high degree of luck, and a high degree of chaos in 4 player games), but it succeeds spectacularly at the one thing all games should do well. Every turn it gives the player a manageable set of interesting decisions. Every turn is a mini tactical puzzle, one that's not too hard, nor too deep, but one in which you constantly feel like a clever play is right at the tip of your fingers. Sometimes it is, and when you find it it can be quite rewarding. Even when a brilliant play doesn't emerge from the current position it's a mentally pleasing process to scan the board and try to fit your particular hand of tiles onto the opportunities presented.

It's a game of timing, every tile is potentially exactly the right tile you need and every position has a tile that is exactly right for it – it’s just a matter of getting the right position with the right tile at the right time. When I play Samurai I constantly find myself hopeful that the next turn, or the next tile draw, will bring about the conditions I need for my brilliant plan. The game is simple enough that you have reason to hope for that, and complex enough that you feel it's your own skill that brought about the situation, or caused you to see the play.

The flip side is that it can also be a game of frustration when, occasionally, the timing never works for you in a game. Maybe you don't draw your special tiles until the end, or whatever the reason, the fact is that through no fault of your own your timing can be off.

The frustration that goes hand in hand with the optimism of the game means that it never delivers on the sublime Zen-like play promised by its presentation. Instead it’s an affair of taking advantages where you see them and trying to set up a couple of big scores in your favor.

Samurai is a game that I hope always finds its time on the table.