Trashdome - Samurai Swords VS Shogun (2006)

WELCOME TO TRASHDOME!

This is part of a series of bloody matches to the death. Show support for your favorite game so it will do better in the fight. You can support it by writing why you think its the better game and more importantly by betting (i.e. voting for) it. Please make it clear for when I check the bets later. You have until Friday when I tally the bets and declare the winner. I will reserve my bet for any tie-breakers.

Although you should be familiar with both games, there is no rule that says you have to have played both of them. The only rule in Trashdome is this;

Two games enter! One game leaves!

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Now, that's tough.

So here I am after being gone all day and I just come on F:AT and hey... the Trashdome is up! And here I was all set to give my dissertation for voting for Shogun, which I think is a great game.

But Samurai Swords has great flavor and I love the game components that really help capture that flavor. Huge toy factor except the pieces are maybe a tad brittle. I wonder how many people may vote for it just because of the ninja?

Shogun: Castles, Temples and Theatres. I really like that building element in the game and the effect of provisions within the game is cool too. The game flows very well and is nicely balanced.

So I'm thinking that while Shogun is the better game and one which may win in a landslide... it's not the better game for me.

Vote: Samurai Swords.

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Great pairing, Mad Dog.

I'm not going to vote in this--haven't played either...but I am interested in the discussion. The knock against Samurai Swords: doesn't offer enough relative to the better Fortress America or Axis and Allies. Shogun's knocks:
it seems, is too dry, too drawn out, and too little conflict---other than the dice tower thingee, it isn't worth it.

Both seem to look cool, though.

Well both games have a feudal Japanese theme but they offer really different experiences from each other. Samurai Swords is a classic DoaM game with awesome bits, a non-static setup, and great battle mechanics. It's also the best of the classic Gamemaster Series. (You people that voted for Fortress America are fucking high.)

Do not be fooled by its pretty bits. Shogun is a hybrid euro area control game. It is not a wargame or a DoaM title. Sure there's some war aspects in it, but if you play it like you would play SS for example, you're gonna get your ass handed to you. It has development, war, the cube tower, detailed planning, two boards for you to choose from (The "moon" board is brutal) and the biggest difference, VP scoring.

I like both games but I'm going to give the edge to Samurai Swords. There are times when I'm playing Shogun I want to unleash more ass-kicking goodness than the system allows me. That and I get annoyed when someone attacks a province I've built a castle in. In Shogun sometimes the castle makes a difference and sometimes it dosen't. That thing cost me 3 chests of gold, it better do something!


-Will


vote: Samurai Swords

Bulwyf wrote:

That and I get annoyed when someone attacks a province I've built a castle in. In Shogun sometimes the castle makes a difference and sometimes it dosen't. That thing cost me 3 chests of gold, it better do something!

Well, it's a palace, actually. Big difference as far as defensive capabilities go.

I've never played SS, but unless it brings something truly innovative to the DoaM genre, I don't really see what the big fuss is. Is it really all that great to play Axis & Allies with Japanese figures? Even if there is a ninja...

Shogun/Wallenstein on the other hand, is a very unique game. It's not terribly innovative in the sense that there aren't a lot of games out there that copied it's mechanisms, although the cards as action planning shows up now and then. Shogun suffers from the players perceptions and expectations more than almost any game out there. It's NOT a war game..or better yet, it's not a BATTLE game. I actually think it is more of a war game than many of the A&A clones out there in that it tackles many real concerns of war that other games overlook in the interest of focusing on dice-fest battles.

You have to keep your subjects happy or you have a revolt, you have to manage your gold and rice, you have to plan your actions out in advance and hope that someone else doesn't screw with them, you have to deal with the tactical values of the various areas constantly changing, you have to balance planning ahead with being flexible, you have limited opportunities to attack (yes, this is a thematic element). Add all of these nuances to a very inspired battle resolution system that allows for dramatic come from behind victories but also self-corrects in the luck department, and you have a clear winner.

vote: Shogun/Wallenstein

Never played Shogun.

I have almost played Samurai Swords (or Shogun as it was called then) back in the day. But being 15 and an Axis and Allies junky, I was intimidated by the bidding system for turn order and having no prior knowledge of the game, getting screwed in set up. So, both games were quickly aborted. Still, I'll cast my vote for it because I've kind of almost played it.

Vote: Samurai Swords.

Vote: Shogun

SHOGUN/WALLENSTEIN is one of the best Eurogames ever published. In fact, I would probably go so far as to call it the best "heavy" Eurogame ever published, period.

Bulwyf makes a good counterpoint to it, that sometimes you want the game to let you cut loose a little more. It is very tightly wound, and very structured. But that being said it's a great, great design that brings together a lot of diverse thematic elements (warfare, economics, internal politics, infrastructure, territorial expansion) into a pretty compact package. The cube tower, what more needs to be said about it. It's awesome, fun, and it adds a real kick-in-the-pants to the more deterministic elements of it all.

I do prefer WALLENSTEIN despite SHOGUN's better production values, extra board, and clarifications. I like the Thirty Years War theme much better than Feudal Japan, and I actually think the game accomodates both themes (which are _purely_ executive, but that's not necessarily a fault) well.

As for SHOGUN/SAMURAI SWORDS...I'm just waiting for the "OMG it has a _ninja_!" comments. So fucking what. The game is stale, boring, and repetitive even with a little black plastic ninja. There are some great ideas in it, and it did move the A&A genre forward in several ways but if there's any of the Gamemaster games (other than A&A) that could have benefitted from a redevelopment, this is it. The last time I played it I was really, really disappointed because I had not played in like 15 years and had all these awesome memories of it. I was kind of shocked to see how boring and dinosaurian it is these days. Of all those games, I still think FORTRESS: AMERICA is the crown jewel, and the one that really has stood the test of time the best.

So yeah. The Eurogame gets my vote. Burn me at the stake if you must.

Is this Fortress: Ameritrash?

Come on, Samurai Swords has an awesome system of bidding for turn order, building castles, getting more guys, hiring mercenaries (ronin) and a ninja that can be used to either spy or assassinate! Not only that, it has generals that gain experience from every battle! Is there a better "dudes on a map" game? Because I don't know of any.

Vote: Samurai Swords (the real Shogun)

Michael,

Are you voting for every euro in Trashdome from now on? Holy crap.

There isn't any competition to me between these two. Shogun has the funky cube tower but that's about all about it has that is appealing to me.

Vote: Samurai Swords by a mile.

I've played both games one time each. Chances are I'll never play either game ever again. This is a great match up because not only are both games about the Samurai Age in Japan both games are total rip offs of other games.

I actually won the game of SHOGUN I played. But I felt like a total PUSSY winning by building theaters and a KARAOKE sushi bar. I got totally destroyed playing Samurai Sword because the 2 brother I was playing against ganged up on me and destroyed me. However, I actually had a lot more fun losing with Samurai Sword than winning like a pussy bitch in Shogun.

Vote: Samurai Swords.

Wow, I've played Samurai Swords many times and Wallenstein a couple times, which more or less means that I've played both Trashdome games. I think that's a first...

I loved Samurai Swords back in the day and although I haven't played it in about 13 years and wonder if it might have lost a lot of its luster, as Barnes suggests, I still enjoyed it way more when I played that then I did when I played Wallenstein. So I have to base my vote on the experiences I have, not on speculation about whether Samurai Swords has held up or how it compares to more modern games. My recollection is that Samurai Swords had some great elements that were ahead of its time and a lot of involving tactical decisions, and Wallenstein seemed like a game that was trying to be a mix of a Euro and an AT game and didn't quite satisfy either. It's been almost two years since I've played Wallenstein, though, so I should probably give it another shot.

Vote: Samurai Swords

First, we have Barnes saying that Risk is too, old and it is just nostalgia -- so vote for Settlers. Now, it is Samurai Swords that is too old and stale. Then we have the Debbi Downer spiel about Dinosaurs of the Lost World in the recently played games thread.

Quozl's listing of what you can do in Swords puts it over the top of Shogun. Bidding is cool, Ronin are extremely cool, generals getting experience is awesome, and the ninja is just gravy.

My trashdome vote against these disparate time periods is usually for the game that was best at the time. Well, fuck Shogun. It hasn't stood up to the test of time because it hasn't had too yet. Games are different now, so comparing a game that is 3 years old to one that is 23 years old and saying that the newer one is more fresh is a nonsensical argument. We'll see how Shogun is holding up in 2029 -- better yet, we'll see if anyone is still playing the bastard. Shit, Barnes will probably even forget about it after a couple more months with his Nintendo DS.

Vote: Samurai Swords

OMG it has a _ninja_!

Vote: SAMURAI SWORDS

Wallenstein has stood the test of time just fine, which is why we now have Shogun. Shogun wins thanks to the cube tower. The rest is also quite nice, but it is the tower that really makes this game unique and so much fun! You can attack a province with fewer troops than what the defender has and still hope for a win!

Vote: Shogun