{"id":3548,"date":"2006-01-31T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-01-31T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/2006\/01\/31\/daimyo\/"},"modified":"2006-01-31T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-01-31T11:00:00","slug":"daimyo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/2006\/01\/31\/daimyo\/","title":{"rendered":"Daimyo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daimyo<\/a><\/h2>\n

reviewed by Moritz Eggert<\/i><\/p>\n

Samurai themed games are a constant staple of boardgames around the world. There is
\nsomething fascinating about Japanese culture, about its vision of stylized beauty
\nembedded in a strict code of honour and obligation.<\/p>\n

“Daimyo” is one of the newest offerings using such a theme, this time by the
\nItalian game company TENKIgames. The first thing one notices when opening the mainly
\nwhite box is that the game could have been published easily in a box half or even 1\/4th
\nthe size The couple of hexagon tiles and small cards along with very few wooden pieces
\ndon’t really justify a box of this size, especially in an age where even
\n“monster games” like the ones of Eagle games use relatively small boxes packed
\nto the brim with plastic miniatures. The only plus is that this enables the rule book to
\nbe quite large, and in fact – very unusual for the usually awfully translated Italian
\ngames – this is an excellent rule book in 5 languages (English, German, French, Italian
\nand Dutch) with great layout and many pictured examples. The German and English
\ntranslations are excellent, and as far as I can tell the other translations are equally
\nwell done.<\/p>\n

“Daimyo”, the term for a Japanese “Archduke” so to speak, is at
\nits heart an extremely abstracted wargame probably closest to chess, but with the added
\nspice of a very elegant action card system that works really well.<\/p>\n

Each player owns a Daimyo figure (the only non-abstract game piece – in fact the small
\n“poeppel” with helm is quite cute) and tries to protect it from being slain.
\nThe game board is made up of generic tiles in either neutral colour or a player’s
\ncolour. If two players play, probably the “truest” version of the game, the
\nboard is tiny, consisting of a diamond with only 9 hexes. With four players this
\nincreases to 20 hexes, still not a lot of room to manoeuvre.<\/p>\n

Movement and actions are controlled by playing cards. The clever idea is that all
\naction cards are numbered A-F and 1-8 or 1-4. No number appears twice, so there is
\ndefinite order to the play of actions. Whoever owns the A1 card knows that this action is
\nfirst, for example. Each round a maximum of two cards are played, a player might act
\ntwice in a row or in wide intervals, depending on the card numbers. At the end of a round
\na clever mechanic now makes the cards you used available to the players left and right of
\nyou, as each of them gets one of the cards you played. This makes for interesting
\ndecisions, as you basically know that a strong card that you just played might be played
\nsoon against you.<\/p>\n

These are the actions of the basic cards:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Move Bushi: Bushi are your warriors represented by disks that appear under your
    \nDaimyo. With this action they can be moved as a group.
    \n
    \n\"board\"\/
    \n<\/li>\n
  2. Bushi Recruitment: You might have wondered how the Bushi appear on the board. Well,
    \nby some magical process they appear UNDER the Daimyo with this card, we won’t go too
    \nmuch into realistic detail how this might work…<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
  3. Daimyo move: This moves just the poor Daimyo (basically as weak as a King in chess).\n<\/li>\n
  4. New Han: With this interesting action you can change the battlefield by adding
    \nhexagonal tiles.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
  5. Move Han: With this action you can remove a hex somewhere and place it somewhere
    \nelse. Han Solo stays put, though, presumably on Tatooine.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
    Characteristics<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
    Playing the game:<\/td>\n60 minutes or less<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    Explaining the rules:<\/td>\nbasic game 5 minutes, advanced games 10-15 minutes<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    Graphic design:<\/td>\nsatisfying<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    Game Box:<\/td>\ntoo big but posh looking<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    Printed play help explaining the “Special Action Cards” and
    \nDaimyo abilities in 4 copies:<\/td>\n    		sorely missed, you have to refer to the rules all the time, which can become annoying
    \nwith 4 players.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    Luck:<\/td>\nIf players are on equal terms dice rolls WILL decide the outcome of the game, if you
    \ndon’t like a little luck in games, stay clear from this one. But skill plays a higher
    \nrole<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    How the Daimyo create the Bushi:<\/td>\nlet’s not think about it too much….<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    Rules Layout\/Translations:<\/td>\nexcellent<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    Things we learned:<\/td>\nHan Solo apparently actually means “lonely fiefdom”. What a bummer of a
    \nname!<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    Recommended for pure strategy fans, others might want to give it a try
    \nfirst.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

    Combat is simple and ruthless – simply an exchange of Bushi. If your Daimyo is
    \n“exchanged” in this way, the game immediately ends and the player who committed
    \nthe kill wins. This is okay in a 2 player game, but in a 4 player game it has the problem
    \nof making the first person the winner who can exploit the mistake of another player, and
    \nthe person doing this exploit will not necessarily be the best player.<\/p>\n

    When we played the game at Westpark Gamers we immediately moved on to the advanced
    \nrules which add distinct “Special Action Cards” which spice up the game (and
    \nalso cycle through the players after you played them) and “Mastery” cards, that
    \ngive each Daimyo an unknown (at least at first to the opponents) special ability. Gamers
    \nmight want to immediately move on to these spice-adding rules as the basic game could be
    \ntoo abstract and dry for some.<\/p>\n

    There is nothing that doesn’t work in this game, the rules are elegant and simple
    \nand it plays quite quickly in under an hour. I see a certain balancing problem in 3 or 4
    \nplayer games, though. Usually games like this end in an always similar scenario. A
    \nattacks B, which leaves A and B weakened, then C comes in for the kill, attacking either
    \nA or B and wins. This comes down to “if you attack or ARE attacked first, you
    \nlose”. Of course one can avoid to attack, but to avoid BEING attacked is not always
    \nan option. A winning strategy therefore has to be to avoid at all costs being A or B, but
    \nthis would end in total stasis. With aggressive players the game ends quickly, mostly
    \nwith C winning. If everybody waits until they feel sure they can attack with high odds
    \nthe outcome is still the same, it just takes longer to get there. Or perhaps you will end
    \nup with nobody attacking at all and world peace comes along.<\/p>\n

    As “Daimyo” is so abstract and simplified this inherent multi-player wargame
    \nproblem is more predominant than in dice and chaos dominated “Risk”-like games,
    \nwhich have exactly the same problem. The action cards and special abilities are therefore
    \na step in the right direction, as they add asymmetrical elements.<\/p>\n

    All in all “Daimyo” can be recommended for players who are into abstract
    \nstrategy games. Wargamers or historical gamers will find the setting a bit too pristine
    \nand dry; although the Japanese theme is well realized. Eurogamers will feel at home with
    \nthe mechanics, but might find the antagonistic game play unattractive. You have to decide
    \nfor yourself if you want to be a Daimyo or not, but the game makes it easy to get into,
    \nso you might as well give it a try.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Daimyo reviewed by Moritz Eggert Samurai themed games are a constant staple of boardgames around the world. There is something fascinating about Japanese culture, about its vision of stylized beauty embedded in a strict code of honour and obligation. “Daimyo” is one of the newest offerings using such a theme, this time by the Italian … Daimyo<\/span> weiterlesen →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spieleabende"],"views":3,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3548\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}