Possibly our favorite game

The next game played on Monday, November 21, 2005 was Samurai... there were 3 of us.

We brought this one out as Charles finished a game of chess next door -- he was dying for a run through of this beautiful gem of a game. We do love playing Samurai. It's another Reiner Knizia designed game. The game board is actually a map of Japan broken up into hexagons. There are three kinds of pieces on the board - Tall Hats that represent the military, Buddhas that represent the religious groups, and Rice Fields that represent the farming community.

Each player lays tiles down in order to exert infuence over an area. When the area is surrounded by influence, whichever player has the mst influence wins the piece(s) in that area. (There's a little more to it that that, but it's easier to explain if you actually are in the presence of the pieces.)

To win, you need to have the majority of 2 of the 3 different kinds of pieces. So, -just having a lot of pieces is not good enough - you have to try to balance the pieces you are grabbing to make sure you have more of each kind. If no one has the most in 2 out of 3, you see who has the most of 1 of the sets. If that is only 1 person, that person wins. If it's more than 1 person, you compare the total pieces aside from each of their winning sets. Who ever has the most of those OTHER pieces wins. Deciding the winner can take a few moments!

Here's how our game went down:

Samurai Results
player	high hats	buddhas	rice fields
Jake	3	5	3
Chris	3	1	4
Charles	3	4	3

Charles usual does quite well in Samurai, but this time did not fare well at all. Let's look at the results: No one had the most high hats. Jake had the most buddhas. Chris had the most rice fields.

So, now we have to see who wins between Jake and Chris. Apart from Jake's buddhas, he had 6 other pieces. Chris had 4 other pieces. Jake won!!