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Review: HeroCard: Rise of the Shogun |  |
HeroCard: Rise of the Shogun, by TableStar Games, shares some similarities with other HeroCard titles. Like Galaxy and Champion of New Olympia, Rise of the Shogun uses the core HeroCard conflict mechanics to handle all player-versus-player conflicts in the game. Also like the other games, Rise of the Shogun is both a card game and a board game, as you can play the core card-battle game as a stand-alone game, separate from the board game. This review will focus on the board game portion of the game, as I’ve already covered the core card game in a previous review.
The HeroCard: Rise of the Shogun Board Game
Rise of the Shogun pits the players as representatives of their houses, each of which is trying to vie for control of a mythical version of feudal Japan. Each player is trying to become Japan’s first shogun by accumulating enough influence across the land. The game does this by making you build chains of peasants, as well as court various castles dotting the landscape in order to sway lords to your cause. On any given turn, you can court a castle, search a shrine for treasure, complete a quest (thus winning a lord to your cause), recruit more peasants, convert or capture enemy peasants, summon monsters, or attack other heroes on the board. There’s usually quite a lot to do on your turn, and you have to make some difficult decisions as to what you want to do when. The game ends when one of the player gains a predetermined number of victory points, thus becoming shogun.
A few things are of note in regards to the rules. First, peasants are at once one of your greatest assets and one of your biggest vulnerabilities. Peasants can become lords, which are worth victory points, and can be used to create trade routes between friendly castles (also worth victory points). The problem is that, if an enemy captures one of your peasants, that’s worth a victory point for him; in addition, any peasants no longer connected by a chain to a castle as a result of the capture are also captures, leading to some huge risks for long chains with only one anchor. Even worse, each player only gets fifteen peasants, and the only way to get peasants back from an enemy is to trade away your own prisoners, which are worth victory points to you.
Rise of the Shogun comes with two heroes, and two more are available as expansion decks. The Samurai is probably the most basic and easiest to play, with lots of straightforward attacks and blocks and only a few special abilities. The Ninja has a lot of cards that give him an advantage while also attacking or blocking (usually by drawing cards or forcing the enemy to discard), and has the only card that I’ve seen that allows you to exceed your seven-card hand limit, even if it’s only until the beginning of your next turn. The Miko has a lot of special abilities that allow her to ignore or negate her opponents’ abilities, and is the only hero that can attack and perform another exclusive action in the same turn. The Prince (my favorite of the four) has a number of very devastating combos and tricky, underhanded moves, but is probably the most difficult to use of the four.
Opinions
I like this game a lot. In fact, it may be my favorite of the three HeroCard games that I’ve played. It’s got a good amount of strategic depth, and I’m a big fan of the mythic Japan theme in general. The heroes, too, are all great, both mechanically and in terms of flavor. Further, the game’s got plastic pieces like you wouldn’t believe for a $25 game. The core game comes with two hero pawns (the Samurai and Ninja), eight castles, four shrines, and sixty peasants (the peasants for the expansions come with the core game), and each expansion has its associated hero pawn. All told, that’s seventy-six plastic pieces, none of which have to be punched out or assembled in any way.
One of my favorite things about the game, though, has to be the artwork. Rise of the Shogun uses this sort of faux-Japanese style remeniscent of a woodblock print, but with elements of a comic book mixed in. This combines to create a pulp-Japanese style that is really incredibly appealing and evocative. The graphic design, too, is fantastic, as all of the cards and the board are truly beautiful.
What I Liked
Almost everything. The artwork and graphic design, the game mechanics, the flavor and setting; it’s all great stuff. Add that to the fact that it really as a very fun game for two to four players, with mechinics that are fairly easy to learn.
What I Didn’t Like
Not much. About the only thing I can think of is the fact that the game has the occasional typo on a card or in the manual, and there are a couple of vague points in the mechanics (like, what happens when your hero is defeated in battle but you have no castles left?), but it’s all pretty easy to overlook.
The Bottome Line
Highly recommended. If you’re going to buy one of the HeroCard games, buy this one; it’s worth it. It’s also great value for money; you can buy the game and both expansions for about $36 on Funagain.
