Sunday 6 August 2017

Tiny Epic Ninjas

Stan and I tried out Ninjato the other day and liked it enough to bring it on holiday. This morning everyone (everyone: all the kids, plus me) was up at 5.30am, so by the time 6.30 rolled around Peppa, Stanley and I had set the game up and were ready to start chucking our shurikens.

The game has a shade of Stone Age - the push-your-luck element - with a layer of strategy on top, as you try to establish most influence with the three clans of the Ninjato world.

raiding by night/morning

The idea is that we are raiding clan houses in the night-time, playing Dojo cards against the sentry guarding it. The Dojo cards number 1 to 5, but the neat twist here is you can attack by strength - play a higher card than the sentry strength - or stealth - play a lower card. Having ousted the sentry, you can grab some treasure, and then choose whether or not to get more - which (if you call Banzai) means facing another sentry. The luck-pushing is evident here because you don't know what kind of strength the sentry will have until you've chosen to face it.

Ninja skills

Each house belongs to a clan, and if you grab the last treasure you can (in fact you have to) change the clan ownership. Ownership of the houses becomes extremely relevant in the three scoring rounds, when the players with the most influence in the respective clans scores points  - meaning that it's not just as straightforward as ploughing into any house you like the look of - you need to keep an eye on the bigger picture. Assuming first place took the available points, second place gets to take a Rumour card (like the multiplier cards in Stone Age).

Envoys

Having influence in clans is gained by cashing in your ill-gotten gains to bribe Envoys: the player with the most has the most influence, with the age of the envoys breaking ties. There's a couple of other things going on as well - you can gain helpful skills from the Sensei, and raids can occasionally get harder to pull off when an alarm sounds and elite sentries pop up - but the meat of it is the twin battles of raiding and the political machinations of the clan tokens.

In our game Peppa and I got into a back-and-to battle over the envoys, whilst Stanley seemed to be content to stay out of it, ending the game with only two. He was last to score, as I saw off Peppa 97-90 in the count-up I thought I'd managed a first win of the day. But Stan had gathered so many Rumour cards on the quiet he totally obliterated us, sailing past to a complete 147 point trouncing!

I blame the fact that wasn't even eight o'clock in the morning.

No comments:

Post a Comment