Hello AP my old friend

Saturday, and whilst the boys watched Pee Wee's Big Holiday, I talked Ian and Chris through the rules of Shogun. Andrew joined us - he and I had both played Shogun and its predecessor Wallenstein, but in the dim and distant past, with regular ass-whuppings at the hands of Anja, Adam, Steve, and Dan Clamp as I recall. But although it's a real brain burner - the post title comes from Ian invoking Art Garfunkel - the rules aren't actually terribly complex, and we set about populating feudal Japan forthwith. (Andrew here, just to add a little historical something: the names were the old names for Japan's regions, click here to see Chris' favourites Bichu and Bingo in all their historically accurate glory!)

Like Wallenstein, Shogun plays through two 'years' of the country, and in three seasons of each year you choose which of ten actions to assign to which area you control - or hope to control, if some Daimyo type hasn't nabbed it off you. Some actions allow you to strengthen, or confiscate money or rice from the local populace - good for building or feeding, but bad for popularity - too much confiscation leads to revolt.

Is this farmer revolting or raving?

Some other actions allow you to build buildings - theatres, temples or castles - and only two of the ten actually let you do what everyone is really wanting to do, which is attack.

Me(black), Chris (yellow) and Ian (blue) fancy our chances in Kozuke

I had what looked like a strong starting position, with several areas clustered close together. But sat in the middle of them was Ian, with five armies. He and Chris also managed to establish some mini-strongholds in the easier-to-defend areas of the board, whilst Andrew and I were more central. As the opening year played out, I realised I was doing what I'd always done previously, which was playing too conservatively, anticipating attack instead of expanding. So I tried to drive Ian out of my territory, only for his paltry single army to defeat the incoming four!

Ian surrounded by Sam

Andrew I seem to recall did spread himself a bit more, but suffered at the hands of Chris. Come the mid-game scoring at the 'winter' of the first year, he and Ian were miles in front, whilst Andrew and I languished far behind them. It had turned into a battle for first and a battle for third.

Unfortunately for Ian, his money ran out and in the final season of the final year his options were minimal. Chris and Andrew both took areas from him, whilst I finally broke the pattern of consolidation and managed to spread myself a bit around the board - enough to nab third, whilst Chris surged far enough ahead to see off Ian, who despite his worries had still scored substantially for all his buildings.

The final board

Chris 40
Ian 35
Sam 29
Andrew 27

Post game photos of people taking photos!

Whew! It was now three and three-quarter hours since we'd sat down to play, but as that meant it was only 10.45, we were all up for another game, and played Unearth: the game of digging up ruins and collecting stones. It was, Andrew said, "the ideal game to play after Shogun" as on your turn all you do is roll a die. You then place it on a Ruin and hope that when the ruin's value is reached by all the dice present, yours is the highest - claim the ruin, collect sets of ruins, score points. But if your dice roll is low (a one, two or three) you take a stone, and build with it. If you build a stone circle you can place a Wonder in it for points at the end of the game. Get dumped from a Ruin and you get a Delve card, which gives you some little fillip during play.

Stan and I had played the day before and thought it just ok, but it came into its own with four - lots of room for screwage and pushing people around - a Cosmic Run with added interaction really.

Andrew and I tied on 26 points, but Ian took the win with 27!

Ian 27
Andrew/Sam 26
Chris 21

A nice filler to end the evening after a totally brutal Shogun!