My take on "Samurai Swords".

Back when I was eleven or twelve, I used to baby-sit for this family. The dad had this closet filled from top to bottom with games. Most prominent in this closet was his collection of the Milton Bradley big box Gamemaster games series, all of them. I coveted these games. Skip to about eight years ago, my local hobby shop puts a copy of Samurai Swords on its shelves for sale. Having lived in Japan for two years, my lifelong obsession with board games and my covetousness of the Gamemaster series, I bought it immediately.

Samurai Swords has been described as Risk Plus. That may be true for the mechanics of combat, but there is so much more to a game of Samurai Swords that I feel this description does the game a great disservice. First and foremost, the Risk board has a couple of corners that you can back yourself into and hole up, if things start going south for you. The board in Samurai Swords does not allow one to hole up. There are very few corners and they’re not as defensible as the corners in Risk. In Risk, a few well-timed, temporary alliances are a good idea to get ahead. In Samurai Swords, negotiation is necessary and a big part of the game. There is a really sense of tension in Samurai Swords that the provinces that you are holding can very easily be taken from you, if you are not paying attention. Unlike Risk, the total obliteration of your opponent’s armies is not necessary. One player will win, if he controls 35 of the provinces on the board.

Things that make Samurai Swords great are:
- The production of this game is fantastic. Every player gets a set of well-sculpted minis to represent their armies. A very sturdy and nice-on-the-eyes screen to shield their planning from the other players. This screen also has player reference information on one side. Tigris and Euphrates player screens ought to commit seppuku in shame to Samurai Swords’ player screens. Also, there are castles and fortification pieces in this game. These are also beautifully sculpted and add to the overall look and feel of the game.
- The negotiation in this game really gives a player the feel that they are a feudal lord during the Edo Jidai, carving out a legacy on their way to creating their shogunate. Some games are a straight out fight, but in Samurai Swords there is a lot of trust, treachery, promises kept and backstabbing going on. I love playing this game and looking into another player’s eyes, as he is telling me that we have a non-aggression pact for a turn. You really have to judge the character of your allies in this game.
- The ninja. This game has a ninja that is for hire. There’s really nothing more to say on that.
- The spending of your money (The money in this game is called koku.) Players spend their koku simultaneously behind their player screens. Koku can be spent on choosing which order you will play in, building castles, levying units, hiring ronin and hiring the ninja. You have to be careful when spending your money. If you bid the same amount as other people for certain things, you both lose your koku. If you don’t bid enough for those services, you’ll lose your koku. So you really have to weigh your chances of getting certain things and either give them up entirely that round or go for the gusto.
- Hiring ronin. When hiring the ronin, you place them on top of an upside down province card (or cards). This is a great tactic. Only you know where those ronin are, but all of the other players don’t know. They can try and deduce where you would have put them, but they aren’t revealed unless attacked or if you are making an attack with them. Ominously, Ronin initially sit on the side of the board either keeping players from attacking you or if used against you, vice versa. Do you take that risk attacking a player with hired ronin? Are the ronin in the province that you have your eye on? Tense.
- Daimyo experience. As your generals (or daimyo, pronounced die-myo [sorry, pet peeve]) see more success in battle, they gain experience. This allows them to make more attacks per turn and move through more provinces per turn. As your daimyo become more experienced, beware. The other players will hire the ninja, just to take that uber-daimyo out. Then you are left (hopefully) with a green replacement daimyo.

Things that bug about this game:
- Like Axis and Allies, you will occasionally get the player who likes to move all of his pieces on the board, then say “Whoops, let me do that over.”, and then move all of his pieces back to their “supposed” starting positions, before moving them once again. Everyone else just looks at each other sideways and gives that knowing look of “I don’t know how I’ve just been cheated, I just know I have been cheated.” Samurai Swords, with all of its many pieces, allows the “Three-Card Monty” player a big playground to play in. At one convention, it was suggested that as you move your pieces you lay them down on their sides. Some of the provinces on the board are small and fill up fast with pieces laying down, but this is the best solution to this problem as of yet.
- This game can go long. If no one runs away with a victory early on, then this game can go on for a while. I’ve played a couple of seven-hour games of Samurai Swords, which subsequently convinced me to sell it. Luckily, no one bought it from me though; I would’ve regretted that.
- Player elimination. Often the game ends shortly after someone has been completely wiped out. That is tolerable. But if the game goes on for a while after that, then that (as with any player elimination game) can really stink.

Samurai Swords is a lot of fun to play, especially at a games day. I suggest playing this game early in the day, as it can go long occasionally. The game is involved, deep and my favorite dice-fest. There is lot of more going on in this game that what is laid out on the board. I prefer playing this game with an odd-number of players, as it discourages even-numbered, long-term alliances. Samurai Swords is not for all people. If you are not a fan of direct conflict, dice-fest, negotiation or long-games than Samurai Swords is not for you. If you need to scratch your “direct conflict, dice-fest, negotiation, long-game” itch every now and then, then Samurai Swords is the perfect choice.