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SENJI- Japanese for "Family Feud"

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There Will Be Games
senji.jpg
If you hear the word "Samurai" and do not automatically think of Toshiro Mifune, Shintaro Katsu, Tomisaburo Wakayama, and Tatsuya Nadakai then your momma brought you up wrong.  One thing I _don't_ think of is good board games because I think the Fedual Japan setting stinks for gaming...I think the problem is that it's always this very high level, strategic thing more about governance and administration than one-on-one combat, issues of personal honor, and katanas-a-flashing.  Screw providing rice for troops or generating koku for whatever.  I want steely-eyed face-offs in waist-deep water between quiet men that erupt in violence and garden hose sprays of blood. 

So it's time to have a look at SENJI over at Gameshark.com.  And the capsule review is that it's one of those games that's extremely well designed but not much fun- but it's at least interesting, unique, and fairly innovative in a lot of ways, and I respect that quite a bit.  Serge Laget, the guy who did MARE NOSTRUM is one of the designers and although I'm disappointed that he doesn't pull a repeat performance of masterful awesomeness, at least he did something original if overdesigned.
There Will Be Games SENJI
SENJI
Michael Barnes (He/Him)
Senior Board Game Reviews Editor

Sometime in the early 1980s, MichaelBarnes’ parents thought it would be a good idea to buy him a board game to keep him busy with some friends during one of those high-pressure, “free” timeshare vacations. It turned out to be a terrible idea, because the game was TSR’s Dungeon! - and the rest, as they say, is history. Michael has been involved with writing professionally about games since 2002, when he busked for store credit writing for Boulder Games’ newsletter. He has written for a number of international hobby gaming periodicals and popular Web sites. From 2004-2008, he was the co-owner of Atlanta Game Factory, a brick-and-mortar retail store. He is currently the co-founder of FortressAT.com and Nohighscores.com as well as the Editor-in-Chief of Miniature Market’s Review Corner feature. He is married with two childen and when he’s not playing some kind of game he enjoys stockpiling trivial information about music, comics and film.

Articles by Michael

SENJI
Michael Barnes
Senior Board Game Reviews Editor

Articles by Michael

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