What’s the verdict on this? Because I’d love to see someone defend this game against two others:
A Most Dangerous Time and Sekigahara.
I can guess what the defense will be:
OMG minis!!!
Do either of those games have divine intervention and demons? Because if not I don’t think they’re modelling quite the same thing.
My verdict on it is that after one playthrough of a friend’s copy, I wished I owned it.
It’s unique selling point over those other games about historical Japan – aside from the OMG! excessive minis – is that it seems to be a really nice refinement of Eric Lang’s dudes-on-a-board formula. Guy knows what he’s doing.
-Tom
Picked up Unicornus Knight today!
Had the time to try half of a solo game today. So many well laid plans foiled by that bumbling princess. It seems like it would almost be cheating playing as the princess tactician personality that lets the players directly control her.
Despite the cutesy artwork, I’m surprised how well it works as a lite-ish strategic wargame, planning your campaigns as you leapfrog from town to town because you can’t recruit more soldiers out of towns and resupplying in the wilderness is turn-death. Woe to the army who crashes against an occupied town and falls short.
This could really work reskinned as a LOTR game. Or even as a WWII game where German generals have to work around Hitler’s moronic interventions! Someone put a mustache on that princess!
One minor thing I wasn’t crazy about: the fate card “Love at First Sight”, where the enemy general joins you as an ally IF your character is the opposite sex. Aside from “heteronormative” accusations from Tumblr, I have the same problem with it as I had with that Last Night on Earth hanky panky card that had the disastrous consequence of TWO characters missing an entire turn if there was a man and a woman in the same space (the middle aged sheriff messing around with his teenage son’s high school girlfriend? ewww). It leads to an arbitrary gaminess that limits actions if you want the best chance at winning. In LNoE you ran an all men team or an all women (and the priest) team. In Unicornus you want to run a mix BUT move your characters so that only men make first contact with the women generals and vice versa. That’s a bit of a problem since most of the support characters are women. The general defecting from that event is just too good to pass up though.
I’m not sure Love at First sight discards once drawn. As per the rules, the character becomes bound by fate, and the card will trigger when other character becomes adjacent. You can trigger it with a non-matching character and then when another matching character gets close it triggers. Basically in most plays you are going to get about 3 allies you don’t have to kill. 2 of those probably through Love at First Sight. While it is true matching female/male attacking vectors are going to be more effective, there’s a lot of others mechanical matches to consider that I think trump the LaFS card, given that you can take advantage of it after the fact should it be drawn.
As for the heteronormative aspect… yep, that also bothered me a little bit. But it’s a really thematic card for the genre (anime fantasy epic) and the alternative would be to have a matrix of different sexual preferences for different characters, which would be overblown, I think.
I think you’re misunderstanding how Fate cards work, or at least how this specific card works. “First contact”, when you attach a Fate card to an enemy general, occurs when two characters are in the same area. Love at First Sight only applies when they’re adjacent. More often than not, it’ll flip up and attach to an enemy general, and then you’ll maneuver in a character of the opposite sex to activate it.
-Tom
EDIT: Gah, ninja’ed by Juan while I doublechecked the card! Also, you guys have got to be kidding about being bothered by the “heteronormative” element of a fantasy game including romantic relationships between men and women. Has Bioware made it so all fantasy games have to acknowledge same sex relationships now?
Not so much bothered by the card as bothered by knowing it was going to be pointed out and it could have been avoided. As I said, I like how thematic it is.
Huh. I guess. It’s confusing because the fate section of the rule book says that you place the card on the empire character sheet then place that sheet next to your kingdom character card to denote that the relationship is between them. That makes it sounds like whatever is on the fate card is exclusively between those two.
I’m not bothered by it. I’m just imagining that it’s going to send some into a tailspin. Well, it would if the game was remotely well known, or if the people who’d get upset would even pick up an anime boob laden game box in the first place.
We played a really interesting game of 1846 today. My friend wanted to try something new, so he spent the whole game investing in other peoples companies, and never started his own. Well, after five hours of play, most of which he didn’t directly participate in, we finally broke the bank and ended the game. He ended up winning, though only barely. This was the fifth time I’ve played 1846, and I feel like I’m still only scratching the surface. Also, it is amazing how fast time flies while playing it. I don’t know if this is my favorite game, but it sure is in my top 3.
My LGBT friendly mod for Unicornus Knights: Those cards only work on the same sex. Voila!
I bought Sidereal Confluence a while back, and finally got around to sorting the components. The criticism of the production values seem valid, looks pretty cheap. Sit Down & Shut Up’s comparison to an assortment of power point presentations slammed together might not be tjat far from the truth.
I have high hopes for the gameplay, though. Might get it on the table tomorrow.
I’ve played Sekigahara but not the other one. I’m a bit baffled why Sekigahara is so well loved. It’s nice and simple to play and has some great dramatic moments, but overall it felt pretty light on evoking its theme for me (which is what I personally expect to get from a wargame).
Rising Sun’s theme is completely stupid bonkers. It’s like Warhammer in Japan. But I do think it totally captures that theme if it’s what you’re looking for. It’s also one of those games that’s improved leaps and bounds as my group has developed a table-meta, and especially great when that table-meta starts producing silly stories. In my game last night I was rolling around territories with a fire dragon and went up against a clan famous for their respect and sincerity. This combo puts all of the gameplay tension on who gets the capture hostage ability. Respect and Sincerity give extra points for hostages and if that player could kidnap my dragon there’s no way I could even compete. The whole round up until this fight both of us are counting each-other’s coins to see who’s going to be able to pay for the benefit. I really like these absurd stories and tensions it builds throughout the game.
I also find it completely overwhelming, but I think mostly in a way I’m coming to appreciate the more I play it. I can’t ever figure out what the hell is happening in Rising Sun. What does happen, though, is entertaining enough that I’m happy with my confusion. Which is strangely how I feel about most wargames I’ve liked. Rising Sun is definitely not a wargame, but I find it overwhelming, dramatic, and narrative in a somewhat similar way.
Played Rising Sun Friday. Overall, I liked it. My friend got the kickstarter edition which has some really kick-ass components: the mandate cards are nice tiles, the strongholds are nice plastic models.
It took me a while to figure out winning strategies. For most of the game I was in first place, but ended up in second after the final counts. I just couldn’t get the last set bonus for getting 3 different colored territories.
Blood Rage is still my favorite Eric Lang game, but I enjoyed this one.
So what you’re saying is I need to do a comparative video series on these three games to decide who has the demons that are most historically accurate?
Thanks for all the replies. I honestly considered buying this just to paint the minis, but that madness passed. I like the idea of Japanese Warhammer, though. @porousnapkin I appreciate Seki for exactly the simplicity and tension that you describe. I can see how it might not be thematic enough for some.
This was the problem of Japanese warlords throughout the shogun era.
Played Azul and The Climbers this weekend in addition to some older stuff like Survive. Azul we really enjoyed after we got the hang of it. The strategy isn’t deep, but it’s enough to keep the game interesting - it’s a great game to play while socializing. The Climbers seems like a good idea in theory, but has really piss poor rules. There’s some updated ones on Board Game Geek that make it somewhat clearer, but I’m a little disappointed in this game so far. We only did a 2 player game so I imagine with more players it will be more interesting.
A Most Dangerous Time is excellent and taught me why Nobunaga burned Mt Hiei to the ground. I’m not saying I’d commit a monstrous war crime over those monks, but I’m not not saying it, either.
That’s enough thoughtcrime intent for the Ninth Circuit to nullify your boardgaming privileges.
A Most Dangerous Time is truly an excellent game. I’m not sure it would be better with underworld demons and dragon fights, but I could keep an open mind.
Tom already answered, but yes, it’s like a refinement on Chaos in the Old World.
has anyone invested in specialist tables etc for boardgaming.
I am loathe to pack up my Gloomhaven, so was thinking it’d be pretty cool if i could have a table within a table, so I could eat and then come back to playing.
Turns out people have already thought of that.
Some impressive, expensive, stuff, that I so dearly want now…
https://www.boardgametables.com/
https://wyrmwoodgaming.com/prophecy-2/
Maybe for Christmas? :)