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Main Catalogue | Board Games & Card Games | Kuznia Gier | Rice Wars

Rice Wars

Price: £20.00

Reduced from £34.99!

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Board Game; 2-5 Players; Ages 12+ by Kuznia Gier Become The Daymio - the head of the Japanese noble house and clash in battle with your power-hungry opponents. Rice Wars is the economic strategy game set in the XIV-century Japan. Game is suggested for 2-5 players aged 8 years and up. The goal in the game is to manage the resources of the small island of Tokuno. Get the peasants to work for you in the rice fields, fend off the envious neighbours by sending your ashigaru troops, lend the ear to Imperial Advisors and hire the ronin who can challenge opposing daymio to the noble duel to the death. Game contains the two-sided board allowing the players to choose two variants of the game. The simple board is designed for fast-paced play for 2-4 players wile the epic board allows longer and more intricate game for 3-5 players. Enter the world of medieval Japan and fight for victory! Game includes: Board, 144 tokens, 55 cards, 24 wooden markers, 8 advisor cards, 5 daymio cards, ryo banknotes, rulebook. GAME REVIEW BY COUNTER MAGAZINE Kuznia Gier 2-5 players, 2 hours designed by Wojciech Rzadek, Michal Stachyra & Maciej Zasowski reviewed by Ben Baldanza In the last few years, new games from the Czech Republic have earned notoriety and these quickly established a new and potentially fertile ground for game design. This year, Poland took the ``emerging game design hotspot\'\' award at Essen with two new companies, Kuznia Gier and Wolf Fang, each hitting the stage with a lineup of well produced and interesting looking new games. Rice Wars is the best of Kuznia Gier\'s output, and the game plays well, though it is very difficult to come back if you get behind early. The theme is 16th century Japan, and players take on the role of Daimyo (ruler), each trying to control the money-making rice fields. Daimyo recruit peasants to work the fields and hire soldiers to both attack unfriendly peasants and defend the Daimyo\'s own workers. The winner of the game is the player with the most peasants on the game board at the end, thus everything ultimately is about getting more of your peasants on and knocking your opponents\' peasants off. The board shows a rice field, with 37 spaces on one side and 59 on the reverse side. The smaller side is for two to four players and results in a quicker game, while the larger field works with five players and it adds about 45 minutes to the game play. In addition to the rice fields, the board has a table that marks the rounds and another that marks the phases within a round. The small field game lasts seven rounds while the larger field runs eight; in either case each round has five distinct phases. The heart of the game is the action phase, and certain rounds are designated in ways that modify the abilities or effects of the action phase. Players can plan to use these affects to their advantage with the proper setups. Each player gets a Daimyo card that keeps their materials organized, as well as serving as a reminder of some of the game logistics. Peasants are shown as tokens in each of the Daimyo colors, while two types of soldiers, Ashigaru and Ronin, are neutral in color and available for hire to all. A deck of cards keeps things active and not always predictable; each player starts with two cards and more are gained through the game. Players can also bid for the use of ``advisors\'\' that function similarly to the cards but multiple players can take advantage of them. The five phases of the game center around the action phase, with earlier phases supporting what will be done in the action phase. Players earn income in the first phase of each round, and this is based on the number of peasants working in the field at that point. This is logical and seems simple; however, it sets up one of the more imbalanced parts of the game - its tendency to make the rich get richer and push the poorer back further. You win the game by having peasants on the board, and this also gets you more money, which helps in many ways to get even more peasants, and, well, you get the point. Each player has a palace that is placed on the edge of the board initially, and peasants generate income only if they are adjacent to the palace or link back to the palace though an uninterrupted chain of friendly peasants. ``Disconnected peasants\'\' are valuable for the game winning condition but don\'t create round-by-round income. After income is earned, players can hire any of the three token types that will work for them in the action phase, subject to paying for them and having room for them on their Daimyo card. These include up to three peasants, up to three Ashigaru soldiers, and one Ronin. Ashigaru and Ronin are paid for each round through upkeep; if a player can\'t or chooses not to pay for them each round, they lose their services. The upkeep cost is the same as the purchase cost; the upkeep idea just reduces the token shuffling that would be necessary if all solders were removed at the end of the round and then re-hired in the next round. There are enough of both Ashigaru and Ronin tokens so that each player can be fully subscribed if they can afford it. In two of the rounds, an advisor phase allows a further set-up for the action phase. Two advisor cards are drawn and players blindly bid money for their use. Advisors are always helpful, but in various ways. One lets you replace a player\'s peasant with one of your own (very nice), while another knocks down another player\'s income (nice but you must spend to make this happen), and others help in combat or get you cards or money. The high bidder gets two activations of the advisor, while second place bidders get a single use. These are noted by placing markers on the advisor card. Once the set-ups are complete, the action phase begins. During the phase, each player can pick one of six actions and this continues until everyone has no more ability to choose. The actions can be broken down into three types: doing something yourself, fighting someone else, or passing. The ``doing something yourself\'\' actions include placing a peasant on the board, which is the most direct way to add peasants. Peasants added in this way must come from the Daimyo card, meaning that they previously had been purchased during a hiring round. They also must be placed in a location that is legal, meaning an empty rice field adjacent to the Daimyo\'s palace or connected through a string of friendly peasants. As the board fills, this action may not be available since there may be no legal space on which to place. Other available actions of this type are playing a card from the hand, or choosing to invoke the services of an advisor. In either case, the action of the card or the advisor is played out. Cards are all one-time use, and they include things like forcing another player to lose money, taking unfriendly peasants off the board, deactivating or reactivating a soldier token, and more. Most of the cards are action cards, but some are reaction cards. These can be played to offset the effect of action cards played against you. The advisor actions are known to all through the bidding process, and the markers on the advisor cards are adjusted to show that the advisor was used. The next actions relate to battles, and there are two types. Combats are for the purpose of removing an opposing peasant and replacing it with your own. After the targeted peasant is named, the attacker chooses which Ashigaru and/or Ronin tokens will participate in the battle. Ashigaru contribute two points to the battle, and Ronin contribute four. They can be used once per turn, and this is tracked by flipping them over to their ``exhausted\'\' side. The defender chooses any of their tokens if possible, and players then can play cards one at a time to modify their token value. Each card, in addition to an action, shows a battle value. When each side has played as many cards, one at a time, as desired, the cards are revealed and the combat result is compared. If the attacker wins, they remove the targeted peasant and possibly replace it with one of their own. If the attacker uses only Ashigaru tokens to win, a peasant of the victorious Daimyo is placed only if the spot is legal (meaning connected directly or indirectly to the palace). If the combat is won using a Ronin, the peasant is replaced without this limitation and additionally the token is taken from the general stock, not the Daimyo card. This is one way that an unconnected peasant can be created; the other is when one or more peasants are isolated as the result of a successful combat. Combats cannot tie - if the result is tied, players draw cards one at a time and add the value to their result. This is random and frustrating when it follows an otherwise seemingly well-planned attack. The other battle is a duel, and in this case a single Ronin challenges a Daimyo. The Daimyo can refuse the duel, but doing so causes two of the retreating Daimyo\'s peasants to be replaced by peasants of the attacker, and these two replacements are drawn from the general stock. If the Daimyo accepts the duel, it begins in favor of the Daimyo by one point; this is because the Ronin has an attack value of four (as in a combat) and the Daimyo has a defense value of five. As with the combat, cards can be played by each side to modify the result. Some cards must be paid for to use and some do not have their value determined until paid, and since cards are placed blindly initially the results are often a surprise. If the Daimyo loses the duel, he loses four peasants and this is punitive. If the Ronin loses, the token is lost. This costs the Ronin player only the opportunity cost of using the Ronin in a combat, since they can buy another Ronin in the next hiring phase. The duel is thus the most effective use of the Ronin and is how the Ronin will be used most often. If not placing peasants, playing cards, using an advisor, combating, or dueling, the player can pass. Each player starts the round with two pass markers on their Daimyo card, and removes one each time they pass. After the second pass, they are out of actions for the round. After all players reach this position, the final phase happens. This is also fast, as each player draws two cards and the start player token moves. As mentioned earlier, tables on the main board track the round and phases, so knowing where the game stands at any point is easy to see. Keeping control of your peasants and adding more takes money, and money is obtained primarily through owning peasants. Some cards generate funds as well, but in practice without peasants you don\'t get money, and then you can\'t buy Ashigaru or Ronin to attack and get more peasants. The cards offer value within this context but can\'t get you out of a hole. As a result, attacking early and often is necessary to be successful and that is likely the intent of the designers. The game plays as a light war game given this, yet no counters or blocks are placed on the board and adjacency or positioning is meaningless, too. It\'s very abstract combat, reminiscent of the original Star Trek episode called ``A Taste of Armageddon\'\'. War in that fictional universe existed by computer to make it more ``efficient\'\', as physical structures were never destroyed and people let this continue by volunteering to be killed when the computer told them to. In Rice Wars, players recruit warriors and flip them to show they are used, but no physical effects on the board matter and the result is simply a change in tokens. The game is nicely produced with one production weakness - the cards do not have any text but most do not have graphics that make it easy to determine their effect. For example, one card called ``Tea Ceremony\'\' has the following use: pay to use it, then pick another player, look at their hand, and discard one card. What the ``Tea Ceremony\'\' card shows, however, is a coin to show it must be paid for (good) but then just a pot of tea with two cups. Another card called ``Fatigue\'\' allows you to exhaust another player\'s Ashigaru for that round. The card shows an active Ashigaru turning into an exhausted one, as it should. Of the 17 different cards, more than half are like the Tea Ceremony and thus the included reference sheet must be used even by players who have played the game once or twice. The advisor cards are well done and include related graphics in all cases. The rules offer a two player scenario that involves a phantom player; this works but the game works best with three or four on the smaller board. With five or using the larger board results in a game with less control and one that lasts too long. Rice Wars is a game worth playing and is encouraging for a new set of designers and a new publisher, but keep the reference sheet handy or mark up the cards yourself. In case you\'re interested, the name Kuznia Gier means ``Game Forger\'\', as in working at a forge, not a counterfeiter. Their logo shows an anvil, and that makes perfect sense. So, please forge ahead with more games soon!

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Main Catalogue | Board Games & Card Games | Kuznia Gier | Rice Wars

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