You can play Samurai Battles two different ways:
• Command & Colors: Designed by Richard Borg, this award-winning game system features a fast-paced, card-driven mechanism to represent the "fog of war". Special Dragon cards, along with Honor and Fortune tokens, will influence your luck in the thick of the battle!
• Art of Tactic: Designed by Konstantin Krivenko, this game system requires wits and strategy. You and your opponent secretly plan your moves every turn, then the actions of your warriors are resolved simultaneously – just like a real battle!
Both game systems are easy to learn, and offer deep strategic and tactical challenges to please every fan of historical board games. Samurai Battles is the perfect blend of the beautiful and the historic – and the perfect way to explore the exciting battles of medieval Japan.
Alliance Game Distributors' Game Trade Magazine has more details about the base game and game system as a whole. An excerpt:
• With the help of special plastic elevation hexes, the board can be built as a relief: hills can be of varying heights, creating slopes of different grades. Some may cause problems for cavalry, while others can be passed only by specially-trained ninja teams.
• Every detail of a unit is tracked – morale, fatigue, the stock of arrows in the quiver, even previous victories over the enemy – in a simple and visual way, and can influence the outcome of every fight, or even the entire battle.