Samurai

Cost: $40 From: Rio Grande Games Players: 2-4 Playing Time: 60 minutes Type of game: Family Strategy Skill level: 8 Complexity: 4 Reviewed by: Peter Sarrett, Issue 19, Summer/Fall/Winter 1998

And it’s Reiner Knizia with the trifecta. When word got out that Knizia was working on a gamer’s game, people salivated. That game turned out to be Euphrat & Tigris, and players rejoiced. He followed this up with the superb Durch die Wuste, in many respects superior to its predecessor. Now, from this year’s Essen comes Samurai- the third in Knizia’s tile placement trilogy and, I fear, the weakest. Which only goes to show how strong the other two games are, because Samurai is no slouch. It merely suffers in comparison to its older siblings.

While the games share some similarities, it’s particularly fascinating to observe the three essentially different takes Knizia has given us on the tile placement genre. Though clearly related to each other, the themes and mechanics of all three games stand on their own and result in markedly different game experiences.

The setting this time out is feudal Japan. The full jigsawed game board which shows the island nation is used for a four player game, but can be truncated for three or two players. I’m told the game works just as well with any number, but this review is based on play with four.

Samurai is about capturing representatives of three castes- priests, warriors, and farmers. Each is depicted by sleek black plexiglass figures which bear no resemblance to their namesakes. Yes, it’s another abstract Knizia game dressed up in fancy clothing. In fact this is simultaneously the prettiest and most abstract of the entire trilogy. Players take turns placing these figures in cities and villages throughout the islands in the setup phase. Resist the temptation to mull over your placement too long- this phase could just as easily be randomized with no loss to the game’s strategic scope.

Each player has a color-coded but otherwise identical set of twenty hexagonal tiles representing his “influence”. Some tiles influence only one of the three castes, while others influence all of them at once. Either way, a tile only influences figurines to which it is adjacent. When all land hexes surrounding a figurine are occupied, the figurine is captured by the player exerting the most influence over it.

Most tiles can only be placed on land hexes, except for ships which must be placed at sea. A couple of special tiles allow figurines to be swapped or a played tile to be picked up and reused. A nice touch, these- they expand the strategic possibilities and skillful use of them can make an enormous impact on the game, yet they’re not unbalancing. Each player begins the game with a hand of five tiles. The rules suggest that each player select his opening hand freely, but you may prefer to deal yourselves random hands initially until you’ve played enough to understand the strengths of the tiles.

The tiles are split into two groups, one of which is marked by a special symbol. On his turn a player may play no more than one unmarked tile, but also any number of marked tiles. Cunningly, only one of the marked tiles- the samurai- can be played on land. Since only land tiles cause a figurine’s capture, this prevents a sudden cascade of unanticipated captures while allowing radical shifts in the balance of power.

The game ends when the last figurine of any of the castes is captured, at which point all players lift their screens and compare all of their captured figurines. If one player holds a plurality in two of the three castes, he wins outright. Otherwise, each player holding a plurality is eligible to win. These players ignore the figurines of their plurality and count the number of other figurines they captured, with the highest total winning. Note that players are not allowed to share a plurality- if there’s a tie for the most figurines in one of the castes, nobody is credited with a plurality in that caste.

Reread that last sentence, because it hides what may be the game’s biggest weakness- you can actually lose the game by playing well! Consider a scenario where Alan has five warriors, two priests, and two farmers. Bob has three, five, and two, and and Chris has four, five, and two. There’s a three-way tie in farmers, and a two-way tie in priests, so Alan wins because he’s the only one with a unique plurality. But if Alan had managed to take one of the priests that Bob actually took, Chris would have had the plurality in priests and his score of six other figures would have beaten Alan’s score of five. So Alan would have actually lost the game because he’d managed to take an extra piece!

Knizia is fond of counting on the fallibility of the human memory to make public information hidden. He’s done it before- Quo Vadis?, Modern Art, and Euphrat & Tigris all utilize this principle. There’s been much discussion about its efficacy, particularly in regard to Euphrat & Tigris. The similarity is usage between that game and Samurai is obvious. But the difference is tremendous. In E&T, there’s never a downside to earning another point. It might not wind up being useful to you, but it will never hurt you. Don’t feel like tracking your opponents’ scores? No problem-just work on maximizing your own and you can’t get burned. As illustrated above, however, this approach can be disastrous in Samurai, leading some players to speculate on whether or not open holdings would improve the game. Knizia prefers hidden holdings to avoid “analysis paralysis”- the tendency to count and over-analyze every move of the game in the presence of perfect information. The generic problem with this approach is that it favors players with better memories. In many groups it will never matter, but if you’ve got a savant in the group he’ll win a disproportionate amount of the time. And in Samurai, the problem is compounded because a seemingly good move- capturing an extra piece- can cost you the game.

The other major problem in Samurai is that it suffers from Boxes Syndrome. You remember that paper & pencil game, don’t you? Players take turns connecting dots, and when someone completes a box they claim it and take an extra turn. So the key strategy is to avoid being the player to draw the third line of a box, because your opponent will be able to draw the fourth and take it.

Figurines aren’t captured in Samurai until the last land hex surrounding the figurine is occupied. Which means if you play the penultimate tile, you’re opening the door for an opponent to swoop in and close it out with a high enough tile to swing the balance in his favor. Of course, this depends on an opponent having such a tile at his disposal, but unless you can see them all on the board already there’s no way for you to know. Do you feel lucky, punk-san? Players wind up overcommitting to ensure victory, taking risks and possibly handing points to an opponent, or (most commonly) going elsewhere once only two spaces around a figurine remain. These standoffs pop up all over the board until finally someone blinks. If it’s the player to your right, you often get a windfall.

That said, I’ve nevertheless been enjoying the game quite a bit. It plays in under an hour and maintains a high level of tension and uncertainty- precisely what we’ve come to expect from Knizia. The components are gorgeous, the rules simple, and the decisions often agonizing. Yet the game never bogs down and players don’t wait long between turns. The hidden-information catastrophe shouldn’t crop up very often (although it will taste sour when it does), and you’ll have to decide whether or not you’re bothered by Boxes Syndrome.

Samurai may not be as strong a conclusion to the tile trilogy as we might have liked, but it’s strong enough to earn a recommendation.