Game Preview: Onitama, or Five Actions, No Waiting

Game Preview: Onitama, or Five Actions, No Waiting
Board Game: Onitama
Designer Simpei Sato of conception released the marvelously simple three-player-only Eggs of Ostrich in 2013 (which I previewed on BGG News, and for the 2014 Tokyo Game Market he had another dead simple game: the two-player Onitama.

Based on the short description of Onitama I saw prior to Game Market, I asked someone to pick me up a copy (as part of a larger order I placed via a pair of helpful gamers in Japan) and the game has proved as interesting as I thought it would, with many hard decisions on a fuzzy tree of actions. Only problem: I'm completely terrible at it! I get so focused on picking off the opponent's pawns that I lose track of the goal of the game and end up allowing my opponent an easy victory while I'm off chasing butterflies in the field.

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