Samurai

What an elegant game.

Light rules, deep gameplay, language independent, attractive presentation. Do they still make games like this?

Some say it's abstract but to me it looks thematic. Castes, tiles, board and screen all make sense. Abstract is what Ingenious looks like; Samurai is not that abstract.

Rules are clear and concise. Knizia usually puts me off with intricate end game conditions but here the scoring is pretty logical. It's simple as that: you aim to either get a majority in two castes, or get a majority in one caste while staying competitive in the other two castes. In other terms: you need two big scores (AB) or one big score and two small ones (Abc).

There is a slight difference between editions: in the original if no player has majority in a caste, everyone loses. In the zman edition the player with most pieces of all castes wins.

First player advantage is overrated and is of no significance if players draw starting tiles randomly.

Its taken me ages to get around to playing this and what a fantastic game it is! Little randomness, brain-burning strategy, but brilliantly simple to learn.

Very strategic game. One of Knizia's best.

I played one very short game. You place your pieces around tokens to score points fun but the game can end very fast, it felt like the game I played ended prematurely.

Pretty, clever, beautifully balanced but dry.

Very good game. I just don't do very well at this game.

Semi-abstract combat via tile-laying. I enjoyed it, but did not feel like I really knew what I was doing. Scoring is pretty wonky.

Outstanding light game, plays fast, easy to teach, a small but respectable amount of strategy involved. Recommend to non-gamers but appeals to a wide audience. Fantasy Flight edition is excellent, nice choice of color palette, and when the map is laid out it looks awesome.

Alot simpler than I'd hoped it would be, but good scalability, and very good components. Plus I like tile-laying games.