Main Catalogue |  BOARD GAMES & CARD GAMES |  Burley Games |  Kamisado, Huch & Friends Edition

Kamisado, Huch & Friends Edition Price: £17.99 Strategy Board Game; 2 Players; Ages 10+ by Burley Games. Duration around 20 minutes Kamisado is a game of pure skill and strategy! There are no dice, cards or any other chance element. It’s just you against your opponent! The aim in each round is to be the first to get an octagonal ‘dragon tower’ to the opposite side of the board, by moving the towers in straight lines, either forwards or diagonally forwards. It sounds easy doesn’t it, but the twist is that you can only move a tower if its colour matches the colour of the square that your opponent last moved to. Also, you will find that the routes you want to use are blocked by enemy towers (and sometimes your own!). As the game unfolds, your towers will be promoted to ‘Sumos’, and will have the ability to push your opponent\'s pieces backwards, earning you extra turns. The situations continue to become more complex and challenging, until one player accumulates the required winning total and can be declared a ‘Kamisado Grand Master’ - until the next game! GAME REVIEW BY COUNTER MAGAZINE Burley Games 2 players, 15 minutes to several hours designed by Peter Burley reviewed by Ben Baldanza Each year it seems that many new pure abstract games show up, and most are never reviewed, nor do most get any real buzz. The GIPF series is a clear exception, and deservedly so. Kamisado, the newest game from Take it Easy designer Peter Burley, is a tour de force in new game design and this has a good chance to ultimately be considered one of the strongest games from this year\'s Essen crop. Peter was showing the game at Essen 2007 in prototype form, and even then you could sense that there was a very elegant and clever idea behind it. The full production release of the game is now available and gamers of all sorts should try it, as its depth and intricacies reveal themselves over many plays and the game gets stronger as a result. The board look and game goal initially seem quite typical. The board is an eight by eight grid, but more colorful than a chess board as eight different colors are used. Each player begins with a set of eight pieces, called Dragon Towers, one each in the eight colors on the board, and each lined up along an edge row. The goal is to get any one of your towers to a space on the opposing player\'s ``home row\'\'. It sounds simple, and that is part of the game\'s beauty. Each of the towers initially begins on its matching color square on a home row, and in the basic game the towers move only forward. This movement can be straight ahead or diagonal, but it is never sideways or backwards. When a piece moves, it can travel as short or as far as the player wants as long as it is unobstructed. The initial move by the first player can be of any tower, but from that point on the key rule in the game applies: the opposing player must next move the tower that matches the color of the square where the previous piece ended its move. This simple idea works very well, and many interesting setups and traps occur as a result. Like other good abstracts, you must think several moves ahead at least. You end on a green square, so your opponent must move green. You can see that their green only can move to a brown or orange square, so before you finalize your choice you can think about what you will do with your brown or orange. This example is trivial compared to the many situations that come up, but it shows the basic idea. Deciding where to move a piece (since you don\'t choose which piece to move, your opponent picks that for you) entails a good bit of strategy. Not only does the square you land on determine what your opponent will move, but the piece you play blocks or opens alternative movement paths and these can be critical. In just a few moves, the complexity of the ideas starts to show as you must watch how the other player can win almost from the outset, and evaluate what the player will do with the piece you allow/proscribe them to move. An individual game can last a few minutes or much longer based on how pedantic the players are. The basic game as described is enjoyable and satisfying by itself, but Burley has evolved this idea into a masterpiece by using this as the basis for an even bigger idea. The winner of a standard game earns one point. Kamisado can be played just this way, or as a standard match to three points, a long match to seven points, or a marathon match to 15 points. Somewhat similar to backgammon, though, winning a seven point long match doesn\'t necessarily mean that you must win seven individual games. And, somewhat like the GIPF ``potential\'\' idea, the ability of the pieces changes somewhat from game to game. This all happens with the use of \'Sumo Rings\', a concept that is only relevant in the match play. In the first game of any extended match, the tower that wins the game by entering the opposing home row has a ring placed over it and is deemed a ``Sumo Tower\'\'. For future games in this match, the Sumo has both greater power but also more limited movement. Further, if that piece manages to score again it will be worth two points, rather than one. If this happens, another, smaller ring is placed on it and now it is considered a ``double Sumo\'\'. The scoring power of the Sumo pieces grows as further rings are added, up to a total of three rings. The power that the Sumos have is the ability to push other pieces on the board, and the number they can push is equal to the number of Sumo rings. Sumo pushes are the only way that pieces move backwards on the board, and the ability to push pieces adds an excellent element of strategic play to the game. In an elegant touch, the number of Sumo rings on any player\'s set of towers quickly verifies the score of the match at any point. In the first game of a match, the player towers are set on their matching color square. In further games, the pieces are filled back onto the home row from the left or right, as chosen by the game\'s winner. This process takes pieces based on where they are situated on the board at the end game and uses this positioning to define where they will start the next game, and on which color square. I\'m sure that there are clever advantages and options that can be created by trying to manage this aspect of the game as well, though I\'ll admit that being a novice at the game after only a few dozen plays means I\'ve probably missed a lot of these subtleties so far. The rules to Kamisado are very detailed and exceedingly clear. An eight page example booklet supports the rule book, and on each page of this nine different boards are shown. The rules walk through all of the major situations that come up and use the examples to show what they look like, what the movement options are, and more. The rules are layered, in the sense that the basic game can be played before learning about the longer match specifics. As these are introduced in the rules, more examples keep things clear and there is a lot of redundancy to ensure that points are understood. Burley offers an annotation guideline for those that really get into it, and he offers forms on his website to use for this purpose. The game production is also top-notch, with terrific artwork, nicely colored and shaped towers and matching rings, and a two-sided board. One side shows the standard board, and the reverse uses the same board but with Chinese symbols on each color. The game plays the same on either side, but the symbol side looks more mysterious and may help those that have trouble distinguishing the different colors clearly. I highly recommend Kamisado as a superbly designed abstract with original ideas, depth for serious match play, and excellent components. Peter Burley hasn\'t produced very many games, but if Kamisado holds up as well as I think it should, he will have two amazingly solid designs to his name. More ...

Main Catalogue |  BOARD GAMES & CARD GAMES |  Burley Games |  Kamisado, Huch & Friends Edition