Marcs board game reviews - Samurai (by Reiner Knizia)

One of my biggest hobbies is that I like to collect and play designer board games. These games are not the typical ones found in most houses, they're games made by people like Reiner Knizia, Martin Wallace, Kevin Wilson, and published by companies like Hans im Gluck, Queen Games, Rio Grande Games or Fantasy Flight Games. To me it's the perfect hobby, its a great way to spend an evening with friends or family, it makes you think in ways that you're not used to, and it brings people in a way that playing video games will never be able to do.

So in these little reviews I will be explaining various games that I own, how they work, what I think of them, and such. As this is my first attempt at writing a review you'll have to excuse me if it doesn't turn out so well.

This time I will be discussing one of my favorite games that I own, Samurai, made by one of my favorite designers, Reiner Knizia. First a little thing about good old Reiner though. The reason why he is such a great designer in my mind and why many of his games have done so well is because he takes very simple concepts and game mechanics and turns them into complex decisions. And that’s why I enjoy Samurai so much. It's so simple yet each move you make is an agonizing decision; each game you win is a victory that was hard fought.

In Samurai each player is trying to gain the most support from the three different factions/classes of Japan, peasants, nobility and clergy. Each player takes turns placing a tile, from his hand of five tiles, next to one or two cities. Each city represents one or more of these factions and players are trying to influence the different cities to gain their support. Most tiles have a picture of one of the three factions everyone is trying to influence, along with a number representing how much influence that tile is worth. Not every tile will influence every token, peasant tiles only influence peasant towns, clergy tokens will only influence clergy towns and nobility only influence nobility towns. So on a turn you may place a clergy tile in between a town with a clergy token and a town with a peasant token but the clergy tile will only influence the clergy town and won’t do anything towards a peasant town. Eventually a town will be completely surrounded by tiles at which point you figure out who has the most influence over that town, that player then takes the token representing that town and places it in front of them. That’s the whole game pretty much. You choose a tile and you place it down somewhere on the board, then take tokens that belong to you. There are some tiles that complicate things a bit though, there are the samurai tiles that influence anything they're next to or the boat tiles that can be placed in the water(everything else has to be placed on land), and then there is the tile that lets you swap the tokens between two towns. All of these things come together to make a game that is very simple in playing but complex in strategy.

The game ends once any one of the three factions is completely gone from the board, so if your not paying attention you may find that some of your long term plans won't come to fruition, thus ruining your chance of victory if you’re not careful. One of the interesting things I find about Samurai is the way that a winner is determined. It's not simply about who got the most town tokens, it usually ends up being who got a good mix of all three. Of course you automatically win if you have the most tokens in 2 or all 3 of the categories but that rarely happens so the winner is determined by finding everyone has the most in at least one category then counting all the pieces they have outside of that category. So if Bill has the most Nobility pieces we add up his peasant and clergy pieces, and if Jen has the most in Clergy we add up her peasant and nobility pieces. Whoever has the most pieces outside of their majority wins. It sounds complicated but it really isn't.
Samurai scales very well, playing equally as fun with 2, 3 or 4 players. This can be accomplished because the board fits together like several puzzle pieces. If there are less players, less pieces are used, thus creating the same amount of tension even if there are less players.
I give Samurai a 9/10, it's a simple game that makes every move tense and every game enjoyable.

A Kaitlyn First

Crib training.... why did we wait so long. Kaitlyn has taken to it amazingly and we are very proud of her for how well she's adapted. To comprehend the magnitude of our joy about this, you must first understand how bedtime was the days prior to this.

We've always had to have a new gimmick to put her to sleep: months 1-3 she needed to be swaddled and rocked on a lap, while fed a bottle. Months 3-4 she needed to be cradled in one arm, while rocked and feed a bottle. Months 4-6 she needed a bottle, laying down on the bed or couch, while her little hands were held. Months 6-9 she needed to be laying on our chest while we bounced and shushed her. The process was ever changing and with each change the time it took would increase. In the beginning it was quick, only about ten minutes. Towards the end it took about forty five minutes to about an hour. There was always protests and crying, and the reason we had to change the routine up a bit sometimes is because she would catch on. She would catch us trying to wrap her up, hold her a certain way, or feeding her a bottle at night, and this would set her off. She'd freak out and refuse to be comforted that way ever again. Then the clever people we are, we'd come up with something new that worked.

Crib training was a hard decision to make for me, but she was nine months old and still waking up at night. I felt confident it would be best for everyone, especially Kaitlyn. For FHE last night, we went out and bought a baby monitor, a fan, and crib liner. We then read all we could about what the experts said to do. We felt armed and ready. We took shifts with Kaitlyn, helping her to lay down when she sat up, and comforting her with a soothing touch or pat. It took a little over an hour, but she eventually went down with out us needing to take her out of the crib to comfort her. She then slept longer and better than before, even waking up once and soothing her own self to sleep before I could reach her.

It was the same routine for nap time except that it only took fifteen minutes. Then tonight, after a bath, story and kiss, she wiggled around for a few minutes searching for a comfy spot and was out with little protest. Sleep well tonight. I love you, Kaitlyn.

Baby Kate

Island in the Sun

Music as always been important to me. Sometimes the best way to sum up how I've felt about different phases in my life as been a song, my theme for that season of my life. For instance, I was eighteen, coming out to college after of the best summer of my life so far at that point, feeling carefree and invincible, and the song that I carried with me on the plane to Utah was "Island in the Sun" by Weezer.

One of these days I think I'd enjoy actually creating a soundtrack for my life up to this point. Some of the other track would include: "Wouldn't it be Nice" by the Beach Boys and "Fields of Gold" by Sting (for my four year romance with Marc before we got married), "Isn't she lovely" by Stevie Wonder (for when Kaitlyn was first born),

When you’re on a golden sea
You don’t need no memory
Just a place to call your own
As we drift into the zone

On an island in the sun
We’ll be playing and having fun
And it makes me feel so fine
I can’t control my brain

We’ll run away together
We’ll spend some time forever
We’ll never feel bad anymore

hip hip
hip hip
hip hip