Anyone play Samurai?

So FFG's version of Samurai came out recently. I've always wanted to pick up a copy but never have... anyone try it out? Or love the original? I don't hear about it much so I assume it's not a big deal around these parts but I still kind of want it. I generally dig his games.

Yeah, I used to play it a bunch before trading it away. I thought it was good fun

Samurai is one of my top 10 games ever. Not sure what that says, but yeah, it's a great game. It's really abstract and the scoring confuse some people, but I think it's damned genius.

I'm with Chapel.

It's a mathy-spatial game, a bit like Kingdoms. Didn't scream fun to me.

I'm reviewing it for MM. It's a great game. It has an interesting theme that is sort of derived from the T&E concept of determining the value of an empire based on its weakest or least asset. So there are three vectors along which you develop strength (roughly- religion, economy and military) by placing number tiles that can influence multiple areas (it's a hex grid). So you have to decide where to play high-value tiles and there is also a couple of one-shot "zinger" tiles that do some special things, and then some tiles that let you break the one-per-turn limit to suddenly and surprisingly lock down an area. The scoring is interesting- if you have the most of two types of figures, you win. If nobody does, then you've got to have a majority in at least one type to qualify for the win and then your score is the number of figures that you DON'T have the majority in.

It's full of those Knizia moments- hard choices, picking which battles to start/prolong/finish, fluid valuation...it also looks great, with that awesome map of Japan for the board. The FFG version is great- overall, I like it better than the old edition even though it doesn't have the glossy enamel pieces and they are instead sculpted minis. It is exactly the same in terms of rules, component count, etc. There are no optional additions like with T&E.

Michael Barnes wrote: I'm reviewing it for MM. It's a great game. It has an interesting theme that is sort of derived from the T&E concept of determining the value of an empire based on its weakest or least asset.

That scoring mechanic, which shows up in a lot of his games... is more influential than I think people realize. Any modern Euro (like Agricola for example) that forces you to build a balanced tableau, empire, farm... whatever, is basically just a more complicated version of the same thing. It seems more incredible when you start to see just how much it's been used outside of his games.

The part about Samurai I like the most, no joke, is that you can force the game to end earlier through ties and the normal winning conditions still apply.