Players: 3-6
Playing Time: 90-120 minutes

The Components

Senji comes with a large set of components. They're generally all quite beautiful. They feature nice artwork by Bertrand Benolt that depicts everything from one's venerable grandmother to owls and pigs. The components are also all laid out very attractively, producing a nice, cohesive whole.

Board: A six-panel, linen-textured board depicting Japan. The land is clearly divided up into 18 provinces, each showing which player starts in that space.

Cardboard Bits: A large variety of cardboard markers, all linen-textured and printed on sturdy cardboard. These include: 54 order tokens, each marked with one of three colored icons for what the order does; 72 military unit counters, each marked in the color and icon of one of the six ruling families; and six square scoring counters, again each marked with the color and icon of a ruling family. As is made obvious here, lots in the game is marked with color and picture, generally making the game easy to use.

Plastic Bits: The cardboard tokens are complemented by great-looking plastic pieces for a few of the most important game elements. This includes: 36 fortress figures, 6 in each of the family colors; and 18 samurai figures. The latter have some assembly required: you need to place little lettered stickers on their flags, so that you can tell which samurai each figure depicts.

Cards: A total of 168 cards, including 96 hanafuda ("flower") cards, used for set collection, and 72 diplomacy cards, used to exchange favors. They're all good-quality and linen-textured. Though I've already commented that all the components are quite beautiful, the hanafuda cards are some of the best. They also have some extra icons to make it obvious what sort of card they are (be it animal, ribbon, or sun).

Timer: A massive hourglass that times 4 minutes. Mine had a defect which kept it from running right, but the other set I saw was fine, and I expect that mine was the exception to the rule.

Player Aid Cards: Glossy cardstock reference cards which have a map of Japan on the back (useful for arranging secret deals away from the table) and a listing of hanafuda set values on the front. Overall, it's very helpful.

Dice: Nine wooden dice, each of which shows the symbols of the six houses. This was the one component which was slightly less useful than I'd like. Because the dice lack the colors of the houses it's not as immediately obvious what you rolled as it should be. However, this is a minor complaint, and I generally wouldn't have expected the publisher to print colored dice.

Overall the components of Senji are very attractive, high-quality, and quite usable. As such it earns my highest rating for Style: "5" out of "5".

The Gameplay

The object of Senji is to gain victory points through bloody battles, card set collection, and the acquisition of honored hostages. Though it is a war game, territory conquest in and of itself doesn't win the game.

Setup: Each player choose a color, taking the fortresses and military units in that color. He also gets his set of 12 diplomacy cards plus a random draw of 4 hanafuda cards.

Each player randomly draws three Samurai cards and selects one of them. This Samurai will include a special power and an Honor value which are inversely related (e.g., the worse powers result in more honor). All the players reveal their Samurai simultaneously and move their honor up the track the appropriate number of points.

Now whoever has the most honor is declared to be hosting the emperor. This is a special privilege that allows the player to choose the order of a few things over the course of the year, starting with initial setup.

The board depicts the three provinces which each player is going to own at startup. He's going to divide three military units and one Samurai among those spaces. However, the order in which those provinces are filled is chosen by the emperor's host family. That player points at the in-play provinces one at a time, and the owning player selects whether to place none, some, or all of his pieces on that space, also placing a fortress there to mark his ownership.

When all the in-play provinces have bee selected and thus all the starting pieces played, the game begins.

Samurai Cards. As noted, each Samurai has a special power and an Honor value. Whenever a player takes a Samurai, he gains the shown number of Honor (victory points), thus making it one of the ways to score poins in the game.

Hanafuda Cards. These are Japanese flower cards. They run from 1-12 in three colors. Most have plants on them, but some have animals, suns, or ribbons. These cards will be collected over the course of the game and turned in for valuable prizes (victory points or Samurai).

Order of Play: Once the game has begun it will be played out over a number of turns, each representing a year, and each of which has five phases which occur in order:

1. Welcoming of the Emperor
2. Winter Phase (Diplomacy)
3. Spring Phase (Order Programming)
4. Summer Phase (Resolution of Orders)
5. Autumn Phase (Trading / Recruiting / Honor)

Welcoming of the Emperor: Every turn a host family is selected for the emperor, based on which player has the most Honor. In case of a tie, the previous host family chooses.

Winter Phase (Diplomacy): Now the players have four minutes to exchange Diplomacy cards. These can be their own cards or cards acquired from other players through earlier trades. Players can step away from the table to talk if they'd like, but in any case after four minutes the phase is done.

The diplomacy cards are a set of cards that varies slightly by each family. Each player has 11 cards that he's allowed to trade, which have values from 1-5 and are of one of three types: family members; military support; or trading. Nothing else but diplomacy cards can be traded during Winter. You're essentially trading for future favors during this phase.

Each of these diplomacy cards only has value to other players, encouraging players to trade them away so that they can get use of others players' special powers themselves. The cards are:

• Family Member. Can be placed out to earn the card's value in VPs as a hostage, but only one per family. Alternatively can be kept in your hand and executed for VPs if the player attacks you.
• Military Support. Can be turned in as part of a combat to earn bonus battle points, as noted below. Higher values give better maximum support.
• Trading Cards. Can be turned in during the Autumn Trading phase to take a hanafuda card from the player. Higher values give you a selection among more cards.

Missing Players. When playing with less than six players, some of the missing players' cards are available each turn through a blind bid which is conducted over the course of the Winter.

Spring Phase (Order Programming). Each player secretly places an order on each of his provinces. This order may be one of three types:

• Production. Draw 2 hanafuda cards.
• Recruitment. Add 2 military units to the space.
• Movement. Move any of the units in the space to adjacent provinces and/or the sea (and/or places beyond the sea at some risk).

Summer Phase (Resolution of Orders). Now the orders in each province are resolved ... but in the order selected by the emperor's host family. In turn he will select provinces one by one and the orders in the province will be revealed, then executed.

The ordering can be very important, as moves can be chained together, allowing longer movements, if the orders are executed in the correct order. Likewise if a province is taken before its order can be executed, then the order is thrown out and not used.

Combat occurs whenever units are moved into an enemy province.

Combat. Combat is fought in each province with the winner being the player with the most battle points ... with that total calculated through a couple of stages.

Each player starts off with battle points based on the number of military units and Samurai in the space. Then the nine dice of destiny are rolled, each of which shows one of the six player symbols. The active players each get to claim the dice with their symbols, each of which is worth one battle point.

Finally, each player secretly plays a military support card which could be another player's military support (won through diplomacy) or his own dummy 0-value card. When these are revealed each player gets to take a number of dice showing the symbol of the player whose support they played, up to the value of the card (or the number of that die face available). This once more increases battle points. The military support cards go back to their owners when used.

The player with the most points wins. All of the losing units are destroyed, plus a like number of the winners' units(!). If the winner was the attacker he gets Honor equal to 2x the total number of destroyed units, else he gets 1x.

Autumn Phase (Trading / Recruitment / Honor): During the final phase of each year, each player gets to take a variety of actions, with the order determined by the emperor's host family.

On his turn, a player may:

• Turn in sets of hanafuda cards for Honor points (earning 4-24 points for things like cards of different values, sets of animals, sets of suns, etc)
• Turn in sets of hanafuda cards with ribbons for new Samurai
• Reveal hostages (earning Honor points as long as they're out) and/or take them back into the hand (so that they may be executed if the player attacks)
• Turn in a Trading diplomacy card to get a hanafuda card from the player
• Turn in a set of 5 diplomacy cards, 1 per player, to earn Honor

Afterward, a new turn of play begins ... unless the game comes to an end.

Winning the Game: The game ends when some player through a combination of bloody battles, hanafuda card redemptions, Samurai purchases, and hostage revelations or executions earns at least 60 Honor. At the end of that round, the player with the most Honor is the winner.

Relationships to Other Games

Senji is a somewhat unique game in that it's a wargame where card management probably overpowers the wargaming element. You do have to pay attention to both, but straight territory conquest is probably not a winning strategy. In this manner it reminds me the most of Mare Nostrum, another wargame where card trading is extremely important (and ultimately the basis of victory).

As it happens, Mare Nostrum is also by Serge Laget, one of the co-authors of Senji.

I've seen some other players compare Senji to A Game of Thrones. Certainly there are some similarities in that they're both shorter wargames that involve hidden orders, relatively constrained movement over the course of the game, and a special arbiter player, but there's also a lot of differences: in particular the wargame aspect is much more crucial in A Game of Thrones. I think this similarity is largely skin deep.

The Game Design

Senji certainly has a lot of moving parts. Between its orders, its combat, its diplomacy, and its set collection, there are a lot of subsystems to think about, and that can be a little intimidating for a first-time players. However, once you get into the swing of the game, it plays smoothly.

Hand-in-hand with this complexity is good depth of play. With a playing time typically under 2 hours, Senji nevertheless allows some serious strategy. Not only do you have to balance how to get good sets of cards and how to take over territories, but you also need to be up on human interactions, both to arrange for good diplomatic trades and to be sure who your friends are and who your enemies are.

Finally, Senji's player number is of some note, because it plays fairly well with 6 players, a rarity. I have some concerns with downtime, particularly in the Autumn phase, though I'm also pretty sure that would improve with multiple plays. Playing with the full complement is interesting, because you can have both diplomatic allies and serious enemies. I've played the game with both 5- and 6-players, and I was quite happy with it in both configurations, though I know some players don't like the blind bidding that becomes part of play when you have less than a full complement.

If I have one complaint about Senji it's that the combat sometimes doesn't feel important enough. Sure, a bloody battle can result in a huge point swing, but the territory taking doesn't always feel as satisfactory as it should, and sometimes there can be a relatively abrupt end to the game based upon Honor, irrespective of board position. I've had some similar complaints about Laget's Mare Nostrum, and it's ultimately going to come down to a question of a player's personal likes.

If you enjoy mixing wargaming with Euro-mechanics like card management, and if you don't mind that any short game like this is of necessity going to be a snapshot of a larger war, then you'll enjoy Senji, because it's well-designed, clever, and fun. I've given it a "4" out of "5" in Substance.

Conclusion

Senji is a new wargame designed in the French style. It includes lots of other mechanics, from card management to order placement, creating something that goes beyond the bounds of simple territory conquest. It's also a well-designed and beautifully produced game.