I had played many wargames in its various forms but I had not much opportunity to play a Euro style wargame until now. A friend sunk in lots of cash (over $60!) for this game and asked us to give it a try with him.

Shogun's physical components are, for the most part, OK. It comes with the typical wooden pieces to denote army, currency, and your status on the victory point and amount of rice. The wargamer in me would have liked to see actual samurai figures to represent the army but I knew wooden pieces were the norm for Euro style boardgames, oh well . The boards, on the other hand are very pleasing to look at. The main board has a map of central Japan on both sides of the board. The only difference in the map is that the color coded regions are different but the individual territories remain the same. The other boards are for each player and one side depicts a historical samurai warlord with his family crest and the other side is for use in the actual game. The cards are pretty bland with little to no artwork. Only the region cards have color artwork representing a specific territory. The most unique and innovative part is the much talked about dice tower. I actually was a bit disappointed. I was expecting it to be either plastic or wood but instead, I found it to be made up of heavy cardboard and seems like it could get easily damaged.

Game Overview

The game is for 3 to 5 players. Each player receives one of the 5 smaller boards, a Daimyo card, the wooden pieces corresponding to the player's color, and a set of war chest cards. Each player starts with a number of chest depending on number of players.

After distributing player materials, each player is assigned a number of provinces depending on number of players. There are 2 ways to setup the game but the one we tried was the quick setup which was recommended for first time players. Basically, we chose a player number (or in this case a letter) and looked under that chart to see what provinces we started off with and how many army pieces were placed in that province. We then got the corresponding province cards.

On the main board, 5 Special cards are placed face up. These give some sort of an advantage, such as +1 rice or add one army when attacking. All four Event cards are revealed at start of each year allowing players to plan accordingly and not be at the mercy of the events. The upper half of the card indicate specific modifications in the current round and the bottom indicates amount of rice suffered by all player in Winter.. At the very bottom of the board, 10 Action cards are placed in a row, 5 placed face up and 5 placed face down. These determine the order of actions every player will take for that "season".

The dice tower, at the start of the game, is loaded up with 7 armies per player and 10 farmers (the green cubes).

The gameplay consists of 2 rounds called years. Each Round is further divided into phases named after the 4 seasons:

Each year, 4 Event cards are drawn and revealed.

Spring:
-lay out Action cards
-lay out Special cards
-plan actions/bid for turn order:
Each season players can (1) build 5 armies for 3 chest, (2)build 3 armies for 2 chest, (3)build one army and move army for 1 chest, (4)attack, (5)attack yet again, (6)build castle for 3 chests, (7)build temple for 2 chests, (8)build theatre for 1 chest, (9)collect rice from one province, and (10)collect tax from a province.
-determine event:
-determine turn order:
-carry out action

Summer: same as Spring

Fall: same as Spring

Winter:
-rice losses/potential revolts
-award victory points
-remove revolt markers
-draw 4 new event cards
-reset rice markers to zero

Rinse and repeat. Game ends at the end of season two and whoever has the most victory points win. Victory points are determined by how many buildings one has built, number of provinces he controls, and the player with the most castles in a region gets 3 additional VPs for that region. Same goes for temples and theatres with 2 VPs and 1 VP respectively going to that player for that particular region.

Actions are determined by placing either a Province card over the box indicating an action or a Chest card. Chest cards have a picture of 1-4 chests which are either used to bid or to place over an action you wish not to perform. Each Province card has 3 icons indicating number of rice produced, chest produced, and starting number of armies at beginning of the game (if using the alternate setup). Each player indicates which province will take what action by placing that province card face down on the box of the appropriate action. This effectively limits one action per province per season. Actually that is not quite true. Since there is only 10 slots, each pertaining to one of 10 actions, only 10 provinces will be able to given an action. If a player controls more than 10 provinces, the excess province(s) will not be able to be given an action.

Combat is determined by throwing your army and your opponents army into the dice tower and seeing which of the 2 color coming out is the majority. For every enemy cube that comes out, you lose an equal amount of army cubes.

Conclusion

This game reminded me somewhat of Risk and RoboRally. The connection to Risk is the main board. Like Risk, there are continents (but called regions) and territories (but called provinces). The Province cards also remind me of the territory cards of Risk although they don't function the same. The RoboRally connection is using cards to determine the order of actions and the similar feel of having to over-analyze the pieces on the board.

The game, true to the Euro style boardgames, leans more heavily towards resource management and acquiring victory points through building. Much of the gameplay is dependant on building one of the 3 buildings in key locations to try to maximize your gain of victory points. Conquer too many territories and you may not have enough rice to support each province and now are faced with revolts(s). Conquer too little and you may not be in position to obtain the most (insert one of the 3 buildings) to get the corresponding victory points.

The wargame aspect while present, is very subdued. You still need armies to at least defend the locations you have one of the buildings in or to try to acquire a territory with the necessary building. I really enjoyed the dice tower and it was a lot of fun to attack just to feed the dice tower. Another neat aspect of the dice tower is that losing a battle is not necessarily bad because you can sort of determine to attack at a later date by knowing that much of your cubes are tied up in the dice tower.

The not-so-good-thing about the dice tower, besides its fragile nature, is that it is too sensitive to touch.. Accidentally touch it, and you risk shaking some cubes inside loose.

I can see why some people would feel the game is anticlimactic. The theme of the warlord era of Japan just screams building up your army and running over your opponent with them. The gameplay, though, puts a damper on that. Conquering is a very slow process. First, you are only allowed 2 attacks. Second, a province can only be issued one action. Third, there are only 8 total phases (seasons) before the game ends. Due to these limiting factors, one cannot just sweep through all of Japan to lay waste to their enemies. The other complaint is that there is very little sense of accomplishment. I have to disagree mostly because I have grown used to Eurogames by now. Yes, you don't get to eliminate your opponents. Yes, you can't unify all the provinces under your family crest. The feeling of accomplishment is in outsmarting your opponents in terms of placing the buildings in strategic places to garner the most victory points.

The game requires one to be alert and pay attention. It definitely requires a lot of thinking and the choosing of which province will perform which action can cause one to delay the game in trying to figure out all his moves as well as trying to anticipate what your opponent will do. Which brings me to the length of time to finish the game. Each turn (year) took around 2 hours. The first round mostly due to being unfamiliar with the rules (we managed to get some rules wrong) and the second round mostly due to analysis paralysis.

If you come to the game expecting a wargame, you may be dissatisfied with how little, battles occur . If you come to the game expecting a challenging, deep game, you'll be richly rewarded. As a wargamer and a somewhat recent convert of Eurogames, I was pleased for the most part with the way the 2 aspects were melded. Even though combat was scarce, there was a lot of tension, a lot of meneuvering on the board, and a lot of anticipation. Would I be willing to play again? You bet!

Great review. I came down on the other side of this issue, though, finding it to be far too heavily focused on resource gathering. Maybe it's just because I'm the big ape that keeps smacking the cube tower around

You are correct this game is not for you typical "wargamer" where the main object is to out manuver and attack your opponent. This is you typical Euro game, where resources are the main focus.
So I say again this may not be right for the typical wargamer, but it does warm the hearts of many of Euro gamers - such as myself.

Nice review.

As to the wargamer who feels dissatisfied with the experience, I'm not sure the cart isn't being put in front of the horse. After all, it's the games such as MB's "Shogun" (aka, "Samurai Swords") which take the battle out of context. Such games completely ignore the resource element, such as feeding your armies (foraging, stealing farmer's crops, getting the farmers upset, etc.) and building/rebuilding governmental/religious infrastructure. To me, that makes the other games less realistic - not this game. Also, while a lot of wargamers think the conflict should be a constant, incessant affair, that isn't how it works in reality, either. There are lulls, times of preparation, training, rebuilding of armies, etc., so again I see the way conflict is handled in this game (and its predecessor, "Wallenstein") as being a bit more realistic. I think the designer (Dirk Henn) put as his keystone to this design the intent to take a more holistic approach to war than most wargames do. His design illustrates a greater context, and a large number of critics seem to think that makes it less of wargame and more of a Euro, whereas I instead see it as a more complete picture of war, albeit perhaps not as myopically focused on the gleam of unsheathed swords.

My gaming group disagrees with me, but I maintain that the system is a much better fit for the original game Wallenstein, theme - the 30 Years War in Germany 1618-48. In this war armies had outgrown the ability to feed them in the field and campaigns often reflected a need for forage rather than any longer term strategic goal or war aim. Thus an army might invade an ally or go 'missing' through temporary desertion, with companies turning up elsewhere at some later date.


With this era the dice tower makes perfect sense and adds to, rather than detracts from, the play. You know your army is somewhere, but where? It doesn't fit with my conception of Japanese warlords controlling their armies with a steely grip. Does anyone know any better?

From reading of the subject I would say it absolutely fits. Treachery and double crossing in the middle of a battle was a (relatively) common occurance. A Daimyo might go into a battle unsure if his left wing would simply refuse to attack due to some slight offence received six months before or actually turn traitor and side with the opposition. The dice tower does seem to fit this uncertainty quite well.

Thanks for the positive feedback! I'm glad my fifth review garnered the most feedback (of my short list of reviews ). This was the second game that I reviewed for which I didn't own. I thought this game would be perfect for writing my fifth review. I was worried that I would not be able to convey the rules because it looked so complicated and so attempted to take notes during play. After the first year of the game, the rules were quite simple. I think the fiddly nature of the game due to the many types of cards made the rules seem complicated when in fact it was quite simple.

When I first heard about this game, I thought it was a remake of Samurai Swords until I found out that it was a Euro style boardgame and passed on this game. A friend was intrigued with the dice tower and took the plunge (it is the 3rd most expensive boardgame I've seen. The other 2 being 3D Settlers and Spacefarers).

I found this game to concentrate on the logistics of warfare and not the tactical nature of the typical wargames. In the first round of our play through, we found ourselves over-extended due to conquering more territories than we could support. During Winter, we had more territories than rice and faced a couple of revolts. We realized then the value of rice. I was also thinking like a wargamer and built a lot of castles thinking that it would give me greater protection besides the victory points. Suffice it to say, my preconceived notion of a wargame got in the way of competing effectively.

Because this is a Eurogame, I don't really see the dice tower trying to realistically represent some aspect of a battle. I believe the intent of the dice tower was nothing more than to quickly resolve battles (and a fun one at that!) and for its novelty in drawing people to this game.