SENJI- Japanese for "Family Feud"

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.