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. 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.
Now players execute, in turn order, each of the turn’s ten actions. This should be the heart of the game, but in practice, it seems this game is far more about planning than executing.
Winter
In winter, more than scoring happens, particularly if you haven’t raised enough rice to feed your population. But I’ll leave those details to those who want to read the rules which are available online at: http://www.queen-games.de/index.php?option=com_docman&task=c...
Impressions and gameplay
I have to say I was disappointed. I’ll try to explain why I find this game lacking for me.
First, the mechanics seem too artificially constricting. It felt like we were playing the mechanics and not each other. In particular, this game often seemed like multiplayer solitaire, since most of the game is spent with each person silently planning his or her next ten actions. It plays too much like a puzzle, with not enough maneuver or conflict.
The game simply does not allow for a massive mobilization, or an outflanking war of maneuver. I felt extremely constrained. Shogun, essentially, puts the players on rails, where they cannot veer very far off the beaten path. Wargames, in contrast, generally allow the player all kinds of freedom. Granted, the goal in a wargame is generally very straightforward, for example, conquer some city, but the means to the end are completely open ended within the map’s boundaries. (Sidebar: maybe this is one reason wargames and Ameritrash games generally require more errata, since their ‘open architecture’ means that players will eventually find themselves in a situation never before encountered or imagined.)
This is not to say everyone has to follow the same strategy in Shogun, but their range of choices is strictly limited to a finite set. With various combinations of ten actions, five special cards, turn order, and geographic realities, this finite number is huge, to be sure, but it still feels limited. A player can produce one castle this turn, no more. He or she can’t forgo a castle to build more troops than allowed by the predefined actions. He can tax (for gold) one province only. And it can’t be the same province in which he built a castle. Why can’t he choose to tax additional provinces – with a corresponding penalty of course?
In Shogun there is no player elimination. There are no rules restricting it, but I can’t imagine how it could happen. Shogun achieves this by simply not allowing a significant amount of combat or maneuver. Each player can only attack, at most, 12 times in a game. It feels rather like a war played out in slow motion and ending after only the initial week of campaigning. If the game simply went on longer, you might actually get a decisive result.
But in the end it simply comes down to play style and expectations.
Fellow BGG’er Paul O’Conner, who had previously played Wallenstein but not Shogun, cautioned us (me, in particular) that this was a game of building and not of conquest. Advice I unwisely, but not uncharacteristically, ignored, to my own cost. While Paul studiously avoided conflict and built castles and temples, I invaded my neighbor. I generally chose the +1 to attacking armies benefit and tried to conquer my way to victory. In the game’s defense, I nearly succeeded and came in second to Paul, but even that relative success occurred mostly after I abandoned my ‘military first’ strategy and took up various construction projects.
Summary
There are many very smart people who love to do crosswords, puzzle over Sudoku, or play Chess. For folks like that, and for those who like tight mechanics, clearly delineated structure, and stellar production values, I would strongly recommend Shogun. But for folks who would rather launch a panzer spearhead into enemy lines and hope for a breakthrough, or want to maneuver to the flank to rake the enemy with enfilade fire, I recommend moving on. Likewise for those who happily tolerate some ambiguity in order to maximize their freedom of strategic and tactical choice.
I’m not sure I’ll play this one again, which is a shame. With such great bits, and the totally cool cube tower, I’m almost tempted to mod this game into something more conflict oriented. But with so many great games already out there, and so little time, this is unlikely to happen.
To those who will flame me for this review, just remember it is OKAY for us to like different games.
To those who want my copy of Shogun in trade…let me think on it a while. I still want to like this one and haven’t quite given up on it.
Last edited on 2007-11-26 18:00:24 CST (Total Number of Edits: 1)
Posted Mon Nov 26, 2007 11:53 pm
) - you definitely need to be ready to respond tactically and manage risk
The 'puzzle' aspect, for example, isn't likely to disappear with further play. But I do hope that you're able to at least give it a second chance now that you know better what to expect. 
