First Impression: Shogun

By Rick Thornquist
September 3, 2006

Publisher: Queen Games / www.queen-games.de and Rio Grande Games / www.riograndegames.com
Designer: Dirk Henn
Players: 3-5
Ages: 12+
Playing Time: 90-120 Minutes

Game Played: Pre-Production Sample Copy with Draft Rules
Number of Plays: 0

Yes, folks, I am a lucky guy.  I have sitting beside me a pre-production sample copy of the upcoming Wallenstein sequel - Shogun, coming from Queen Games and Rio Grande Games.  This sample should be pretty much the same as the final production version (with one possible difference relating to the plastic used in the cube tower - see below).  I have a draft copy of the English rules, again, these should be pretty much the same as the production version, though the version I have doesn’t have any graphics.  I haven’t had a chance to play it yet - that will happen soon - but I have read the rules and looked at the components.  From those I’d like to give you my first impression of the game.

Since this is a sequel to Wallenstein and in many senses a similar game, I thought I’d save you a long explanation of the how the game works (there’s lots of reviews of Wallenstein you can check out) and just give you my take on the differences between the two games.  Note that if I don’t mention a component or rule, it’s probably because it’s pretty much the same as Wallenstein. 

Let’s do components first (if you want some pictures of the components, check out my Convention Report: Gencon 2006: August 11, 2006 - Part 1 (Day 2)). 

First off, the graphics have completely been redone.  The new graphics reflect the Japanese theme of the game.

The board is two sided and interestingly enough, the two sides aren’t for different numbers of players or anything, they appear to be just two of the same map with the provinces slightly rearranged.  There are also sea routes marked on the board - provinces with sea routes connecting them are considered to be adjacent.  These sea routes are also different on each side of the board.  Basically, you are getting two different boards to play the game with.  The board also has a victory point track along the edge (a major omission in Wallenstein).

The player boards are also two-sided.  One side is used for the groups of cubes used in the setup of the game.  Once the setup is complete, the board is turned over and the other side, which has the card spaces used to plan your moves, is used for the remainder of the game.

As in Wallenstein, there are Province Cards, but the blank cards in the previous game have morphed into War Chest Cards.  Each player gets a set of five of these cards and each card shows 0 to 4 chests on them (chests are the currency of the game).  More on these in a minute.

There are five Special Cards - each player will get one of these each turn and they will give each player a special power and also have to do with turn order.  Again, more on these in a minute.

The big pile of Event Cards in Wallenstein (of which one is used per season) has been reduced to a set of only twelve cards, of which a few are duplicated.  They have been greatly simplified and no longer apply to certain areas of the board - they all apply to all areas.  They don’t have any text on them either - they are straight graphics (and fairly easy to figure out).  Similar to Wallenstein, they all have a Rice Loss number at the bottom (equivalent to Grain loss in Wallenstein).

Now onto the cube tower.  This is what everybody wants to know about, right?  Well, I have done a careful comparison of the Wallenstein and Shogun cube towers using Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Infrared Spectroscopy and here are the results: they are exactly the same!  The graphics are different, of course, but the structure of the towers is the same.  Interestingly, the funnel and the lower tray in my copy of Shogun are the same green plastic as the ones on Wallenstein, but the rules refer to these components being “made of transparent plastic to provide all players with a better view of battle results.”.  We’ll have to see a final copy of the game to see if that’s the case.

Now onto the gameplay.  The gameplay in Shogun is pretty much exactly the same as Wallenstein with one big exception: turn order.  In Wallenstein, turn order was randomly selected at the beginning of each season.  This was a major bugaboo with players because turn order could be very important - leaving it up to random chance with a bit tough to swallow.  Shogun has completely revamped the way turn order works. 

Remember I talked about the War Chest Cards and Special Cards which I said I’d talk about in a minute?  We’ll here’s where they come into play. 

At the beginning of each season, before players plan their actions, the five Special Cards are shuffled and laid out face-up in a row of five spaces marked on the board.  Each card has two functions - first, its position in the row of spaces determines the turn order of the player that takes the card (so, if a player takes the third card in a five player game, he will go third).  Also, the player that takes a card will get that card’s special power.  These powers are as follows:

- Take one extra chest when doing the ‘Collect Taxes’ action
- Take one extra rice when doing the ‘Confiscate Rice’ action
- Add an extra army when doing the “Deploy 5 Armies” action
- When attacking, add one army to the tower
- When defending, add one army to the tower

So how is it determined which player selects which card?  Well, during the planning phase, the players plan their moves as in Wallenstein, but there is one extra card space on their planning board that they can use to bid for turn order.  This is where the War Chest cards are used.  You can place one of these cards on the turn order space on your board - the number of chests on the card is the number you are bidding for turn order.  You can also place a province card on that space, if you wish.  The other War Chest cards, when played on the regular action spaces, act just like the blank cards in Wallenstein.  They are just bluff cards and the chests on them don’t mean anything.

After players have planned their moves, turn order is determined.  All players reveal the cards they played on their turn order space.  If they played War Chest cards, they pay the amount of chests on their card to the bank (if you played a Province Card, you pay nothing). 

Then the player who bid the most gets first choice as to which Special Card to take and therefore, where he will be placed in the turn order (again, if a player takes the third card in a five player game, he will go third).  He will also get the power of the Special Card for that season.  Then the player who bid the second most chooses, etc.  Ties are broken randomly.  Interestingly enough, a player who played a province card on the turn order space gets to go BEFORE a player who placed a War Chest card with zero chests (I guess because you had to sacrifice a Province Card which could have been put to better use, they let you go before someone who didn’t bid anything).

One more tidbit on this - with less than five players, all five Special Cards are still used.  Any cards that are not taken are simply ignored for that season.  This process of selecting turn order is the same in each season, save for the winter (scoring) season which uses the turn order from the previous season.

There is one other difference in the gameplay that I noticed - this one has to do with battles.  In Wallenstein, the defender could choose how many cubes he wanted to commit to the cube tower - in Shogun, the defender doesn’t have any choice - he has to throw ALL of his troops in the tower.  I found it quite odd that they changed this rule - I thought that the decision of how many defending troops to commit to a battle was an interesting one.  Not giving you the choice in Shogun seems strange to me.  Ah well, I suppose I could always decide to use the Wallenstein rule as a variant.

All in all, my first impression of Shogun is very good.  I always thought Wallenstein was a great game but with Shogun, they’ve smoothed out the few rough edges and given us some new maps to play on.  I’m very much looking forward to giving it a try.

© 2006 Rick Thornquist

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Comments:

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Hmmmm like with Samurai or China, personally I don’t like Asian themes for new versions. Posted by Mario Aguila on Sep 4, 2006 at 11:33 AM | #

I’ve held off on getting the original because of the upcoming Feudal Japan setting of the new version.  Considering the number of excellent Shogun/Samurai movies versus Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Wallenstein movies, I think the re-theming was a great decision.  :) Posted by Ogdred Weary on Sep 4, 2006 at 04:41 PM | #

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