This really dampened our strategy because we could either talk everything out obsessively or just take a wild guess.Īll that needs to happen is that the power levels need to be written on the base of each Samurai, but it's still a bizarre oversight. We had to constantly ask each other how much attack each Samurai had, because there's just no way of knowing without specifically asking. Whose is whose? There's no way to tell, because they aren't marked in any way.Įven worse, their power levels aren't marked, either.
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The action system, while interesting, made us wonder whether just spamming clan changes could have led to something interesting.īut by far the worst thing about Starship Samurai is something that could be easily fixed: there is no way to tell whose Samurai is on the board at any given time. You have eight samurai on the board. No, the problem is that the game just feels very random and off-kilter.Ī game that gives you multiple paths towards victory is a good game, but in Starship Samurai, there are so many paths and so many things you're supposed to be doing and collecting - in a very short game - that it's difficult to get ahold of it. But that's hardly a problem in fact, it's basically the premise of Twilight Imperium. That's because the mechanics in this game are oddly disparate, and you often feel as though you're playing multiple games at once. You may have noticed I've outlined like, five different mechanics in this game. Some of these action cards are significant, such as moving everyone's clan markers down one. However, the actions do cost you money, troops, or victory points, depending on the card. You can play one action card during each turn you have, which means you can theoretically play four action cards in a single round. How Do Action Cards Work in Starship Samurai? You fight by playing battle cards, which you draw out of the action deck. Location cards matter at the end of the game you also get victory points for collecting different types of location. But at the end of the round, anyone on a given square needs to fight.įighting is good: if you win a fight, you get 5 victory points, as well as keeping the location card. Whoever has the most power controls that space, and so ets the benefit at the beginning of each turn. When you move ships as your action, you can move ships into a space. On the left is the clan tracker, on the right is the battle field. And each action secures a different path to victory. Thus, the numbers aren't the order in which you do things: they are the number of times you complete an action.Īll that matters is that you use all of your numbers you can do each action once or you can do any action multiple times. Each player also has a total of four actions they can do on each turn:ĭuring a player's turn, they will play a number on one of these actions.
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Samurai also have attack ratings.Įach player gets four numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4. Samurai have special abilities, such as the ability to destroy a weaker ship when moving into a territory. They also receive one carrier and a number of small ships. Starship Samurai Board Game DetailsĪt the beginning of the game, every player chooses two Samurai. Unfortunately, wrapped outside of that, is a dense layer inexplicable decision-making a lot like getting a gift wrapped in an old paper bag.
Nestled within this absurd premise is a strong game with some interesting mechanics. It works better if you pretend it makes sense. You're also trying to influence a multitude of different clans.