A snap to teach and fun to play- that’s what we’re looking for in a quarantine time board game! Defend the village with your fellow isolationists in Samurai Spirit!
This week’s review is gonna be a much older game than usual. Samurai Spirit is a one to seven player cooperative game from one of my favorite board game designers, Antione Bauza. Brought to us from publisher Fun Forge, Samurai Spirit is a fun quick game that plays in twenty to thirty minutes, plus you can have it delivered from Amazon!
Samurai Spirit
Defend the Village in Samurai Spirit: Board Game Review
In Samurai Spirit, you and six other warriors have been hired to defend a small village from an impending raid from a group of evil bandits. If this sounds a bit familiar to you, it’s because the game takes inspiration from the Akira Kurosawa film The Seven Samurai. The plot is practically the same, a group of Samurai tasked to defend a group of villagers.
One distinct difference from film to board game is each Samurai has the ability to tap into their animal instinct, or Samurai Spirit if you will. Each Samurai, when they’ve taken enough damage, can shift into a powerful animal/human hybrid form. This form allows them to fight harder and with a stronger special power.
This animal form is accessed by taking a second wound. While becoming stronger this will put you closer to death as two more wounds, which would be four, result in death. Each unique Samurai has a special Kiai ability which is typically a doubled or enhanced effect in beast form.
The gameplay consists of three rounds during which multiple actions are taken until either the Bandit deck runs out or the Samurai are overrun in defeat. The first round is mostly a wave of lower-level bandits or grunts if you will. Wave two adds the Lieutenants and wave three the bosses join the fray. The bandits are represented by cards of various values. The grunts range from one to four, while lieutenants are fives and bosses are sixes.
Each samurai takes a turn by choosing one of three actions. These action choices are fight, support, and pass. In order to win the village must survive with at least one family and one farm remaining and no player is killed. Fail any one of these and it’s game over for everyone.
Action one: Fight
When a samurai fights they draw from the top of the bandit deck. Then a decision must be made of whether to confront or defend the village. When confronting you place the card to the right of your character board. Then move your meeple down your combat track equal to the value of the bandit. If this takes you to us highlighted Kiai value then you remove the topmost bandit and activate your special power. If the value would instead take you past your Kiai value you are then overwhelmed and must pass the following turn.
Some bandits have one of three symbols of a Straw Hat, Farm, or Doll. If one of these bandits is drawn you can choose to defend instead. This card is put to the left of your character board. You may only have one of each symbol in your defense area. If a later bandit is drawn and has a symbol you already defended them it must be confronted.
One thing to note, if any players have missing defense spots left at the round’s end then penalties are applied. Each Samurai without the straw hat takes a wound. Missing a farmhouse causes one farmhouse to be burned per player that is lacking one. And missing a doll causes one of the three families on the board to be killed.
Keep in mind if either the six farms are burned or three families die it is game over.
Action Two: Support
In order to support you take your character’s special action icon token and give it to another player. That player then can use your ability in conjunction with their own. There is a slight penalty for this action. When you support you take a bandit card without looking at it and place it on the infiltrator deck. This represents a bandit sneaking past you while you are busy helping a teammate.
The last action is simply Pass. Once you pass you are effectively out of the round and no longer able to fight. This could be helpful if you are dangerously close to being overwhelmed. You won’t be able to support your team until the next round, however.
Samurai Spirit is a very fun cooperative game that isn’t too long and is a snap to teach. Anyone can effectively pick up and learn on the fly and the cooperative mechanism makes it easier to help newer players.
Plus you can definitely play this one solo with you controlling as many characters as you want. During this time of social distancing, getting board games to the table is tough and Solo games are a good solution for these unprecedented times.
Hopefully, you have an opportunity to check this fun little game out for yourself. Have fun and stay safe, everyone.
Samurai Spirit
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