Commands & Colors: Samurai Battles

Commands & Colors: Samurai Battles is an evolution of the original C+C game, following a similar script: two players face off over a battlefield, playing command cards to move their units strategically, attempt to best each other in combat, and the best commander wins.

What ‘the best’ means, exactly, can vary: the game offers a huge amount of variable set-ups. Although the board is always the same landscape tiles and the units themselves, represented by wooden blocks, also change in their make-up and positioning in each scenario. Victory in the introductory game means eliminating five units and/or leaders: we’ll come to leaders in a bit.

Once the game begins, it’s largely a straightforward beast: on your turn you play a command card and follow its directives. The board is divided into three sections, and many command cards allow you move/attack with units in one of these sections. Some might say command a single unit in all three sections; some might give you some other tactical flex like allowing your ranged attackers to all fire on the enemy. Samurai battles has two forms of attack: ranged from distance, and close combat when units are adjacent to each other: both are resolved by rolling dice.

Different types of unit roll different numbers of dice, depending on their strength, but the dice are all the same. If you roll a symbol matching the unit you’re attacking, that’s a hit: one block from the unit is removed from the game.  If you roll a sword, that might be a hit, depending on the unit. A flag may mean a retreat for the attacked unit, depending on how many flags you rolled. Each attack comes with risk though; if the attacked unit isn’t forced to retreat, they may now counter-attack. If they are forced to retreat, then some situations allow you – optionally – to pursue them and attack again. This requires the presence of a leader.

Leaders are blocks that can empower units by the mere presence or even galvanise adjacent units of their own. Their strength can be critical; but they’re not impervious to risk, and some attacks will wipe out a leader while the unit itself still survives.

There’s one more symbol on the dice we’ve not mentioned, and that is Honour and Fortune. This symbol allows you to pick up Honour and Fortune tokens. You begin with five, and they are extremely helpful to have in supply: if you’re forced to retreat at all, you have to pay three of these tokens as punishment, essentially representing the cultural shame associated with such an action. They also have a more positive benefit, however, and that is paying to play Dragon cards.

The Dragon cards are a secondary deck that can be played to boost your moving/attacking prowess, or occasionally facilitate some other in-game advantage. The catch is that that they need to be paid for when you play them, and that costs you in the aforementioned tokens: while you will always have a full hand of command cards – you refill your hand at the end of your turn – the tokens and dragon cards are effectively currencies: you can run low, and you can run out. There’s a risk in using tokens to play a Dragon card if you subsequently are forced to retreat. On the other hand, if you don’t play a Dragon card when you can, you might be doing your cause a disservice, and it’s judging these risk/reward moments provide the game with drama and tension, as much as movement and combat on the board.

At the end of your turn you can draw a Dragon card for free, or take two Honour and Fortune tokens. The game continues with this back-and-to of strike and counter-strike, until a player hits the scenario winning requirements.