#100: Samurai
Just sneaking on to our Top 100 Favorite Games of All Time Without Question is Samurai, the third in Reiner Knizia's famous tile-laying trilogy. (Mark: honestly, the whole 'trilogy' thing has always seemed overwrought to me - E&T does not feel like Samurai to me, except that there's tiles & hidden scoring. It's like saying that Squad Leader & Settlers are the same thing because they both have hexes & warriors.)David Arnott: "If the wonky scoring system bothers you, play with open holdings. Me, I think it works just fine as is (and for the record, have never seen said wonkiness actually happen.) A lovely balance of offensive vs defensive play, with just enough luck of the draw to keep things from feeling too heavy. Added plus: I've always thought the game system kind of felt, well... Asian. (Go-like, I guess.), so the theme also work for me here.
posted by Mark (aka pastor guy) at 6:13 AM
2 Comments:
Samurai at #100?!? Ouch. This is a fantastic game with beautiful components, tense gameplay and perfect scaling from 2-4 players. The theme seems tacked on but somehow the game transcends that and manages to feel very Japanese in play. Top 10 game for me!
Dave said: "for the record, have never seen said wonkiness actually happen."
You probably have, you just didn't realize it. In the majority of Samurai results, moving just a few figures around drastically alters the victor. I could not find any session reports for games that you played Dave, but if you send me a couple, I can show you how.
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