| 
Tenjo
Game Type: Board Game
Publisher: Whyspire?
Medium: Boxed Game
Price: $59.95
Reviewer: Logan L. Masterson Whyspire?'s new board game, Tenjo, may be the best of its kind. Offerings from American manufacturers have been slim of late, but this game really puts us back in the spotlight. Tenjo has all the elegant complexity of the best German games.
Set in feudal Japan, Tenjo offers you the chance to rise against other squabbling warlords and become Shogun. You play one of the four great families: Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, Ieyasu or Shingen.
Your goal is to capture provinces and resource points on an elegantly designed board, replete with elegant lines of silver and gold. You possess great castles, each with the potential to grant special earnings every year. Your armies of Samurai are represented by very high quality round cardboard chits, which await your call to battle on a plastic rack. Shadow Warriors sneak across the board, erupting from hiding to destroy your foes while mighty Daimyo (like western generals) oversee the flow of conflict. Koku, the coin of the realm, can be used to recruit Samurai, and must be earned to pay for the upkeep of your castles. In each castle reside members of your family, which can be offered in traditional style to make peace with your enemies. Element Cards, which come in five types, allow your troops or Daimyo to move freely, crush enemy armies, assassinate your opponent's battle leaders and family or avoid battle or other Elements. Ring Cards, which are played with Elements, determine the strength of your preternatural power. I find this system of magic very intriguing.
The game rules, offered in a beautifully illustrated 26 page rulebook, are clear and concise, defining movement, resources and combat in an easy-to-grasp way. Charts and example illustrations explain the few difficult rules.
One of the nicest elements of Tenjo is the nested turn system. Each turn is a month, and at the end of each 12-month sequence, an end-of-year turn is played. During this time, Fate Cards enter play, allowing the chance to strengthen your position… or weaken it.
The real strategy of the game enters with the concepts of provinces, resources and alliances, offering a really robust and interesting game that is truly evocative of feudal Japan.
Tenjo has only three drawbacks that I can see. The first is that it is a very long game, even with only two players. Second, while the system is very complete and relatively simple, it would be difficult for new gamers to grasp. Thirdly, the Samurai chits, the cards and Koku bills are all very high quality, but the chits are engineered to slide onto spikes on a rack. The racks will not fit in the box with the chits on them, requiring you to stick them back on for every game. None of these will keep me from playing the game as much as possibly, though.
All in all, I was thoroughly impressed with this game. It embodies the Japanese word "Shibumi," which translates roughly as "simple elegance."  UPDATE: Yesterday (9/24) when I posted this review, I let the folks at Whyspire? know, and they sent me this in a response:
PS: In our defense to the repacking of the game pieces, our manufacturer made a last minute change to the tray without informing us... There is a way to repack them though. Apply rubberbands tightly to the tops of the loaded chipstands. Pack two in the big compartment. Invert two and pack them side-by-side, inverted, in one of the other large compartments. See attached image. Its pretty sad but it works. Ratings (out of 5)
1. Playability: 
2. Combat System:
3: Magic/Tech System:
4. Character Creation and Advancement: N/A
5. Setting:
6. Presentation: | |
