Gunsen: The Battle for Toshi Ranbo

• Designers: Ben Rosset and Matthew O’Malley1 
• Publisher: OfficeDog
• Players: 
• Age: 
• Time: 
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4wvg7rB
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In Gunsen: The Battle for Toshi Ranbo, Rokugan teeters on the brink of upheaval as the Great Clans—the Crab, Crane, Dragon, Lion, Phoenix, Scorpion, and Unicorn—clash for control of the legendary fortress, Toshi Ranbo. Once a strategic gem on the borderlands, the castle now stands at the heart of a war-torn battlefield, its banners contested by rival warlords seeking glory and vengeance. The air hums with the tension of drawn steel and elemental magic, as ancient shrines smolder and village alliances shift like the wind.

In this strategy game, players take on the role of ambitious daimyō representing one of the seven Great Clans: recruiting samurai heroes, drafting powerful orders, and building their clan’s military might and strategic influence. Through tactical maneuvers and clever engine-building, they strive to fulfill seven victory objectives—from capturing and holding the coveted castle to completing secret missions and claiming sacred locations. Only one clan will write its legend in the blood-soaked chronicles of Toshi Ranbo.

To set up the game, place the board on the table for the player count. Place the Toshi Ranbo tile in its central space as well as the watchtowers, shrines and village tiles on the appropriate spaces.  The 3 mercenary hero cards and figures are off to the side for now. Finally, create the deck of order cards, again based on player count and then deal out a row of 5 order cards to the board.  Note there is a track at the bottom of the board showing the 10 possible achievements in the game.

Each player chooses a clan and takes the box with all the clan bits in it as well as the clan board.  The clan’s fort tile is placed on the fort location on the board closest to the player and then starting resources are placed on that fort (increasing amounts based on player order).  Each player gets 2 random tactics cards dealt to them which remain secret.  The 12 clan-specific cards are open knowledge.

The game is now played in a series of turns until a player hits the victory condition, namely placing their 7th achievement token onto the board.  The game ends immediately.

On a turn, there are 5 phases to play through:

1] Choose an Order Card – Optionally, discard the row and redeal if 4 or more cards are the same color or 4 or more cards have a resource cost.  Then choose any face up order card from the board, paying its cost if it has one

2] Place the Order Card – Either place the card above your clan board at the top of the column that matches its color (tucking it underneath so that you only see the action strip) which will then activate that column OR place it facedown on a noble action spot at the bottom of your board which will allow you to take a noble action.

3a] Activate a Column – If you placed a card above your board, you activate that entire column, starting with the card just placed and then moving downwards.  Your placed cards stay in place, so each time you add a card to a column, you can use every card already placed there as well.  In broad terms, each column has a different focus:  

• Blue = armory
• Yellow = recruiting; this is how you add troops to the board and move them
• Red = Influence
• Gold = Construct buildings onto the board or buy Tactics cards

Note that as you move around, any time that you move into a space with an opponent, movement stops and a battle will be triggered.  Armies can “teleport” between your fort and the watchtowers.  If you control a Shrine at the end of your turn, you will take the Shrine upgrade token and place it on your board to improve an action there. If you move into a Village, take the token and get whatever hidden reward was on the backside.  You can move into Toshi Ranbo, but the first person to do this must have a strength of at least 5.

3b] Take a Noble Action – each player has 3 possible Noble Actions, each of which can only be done once per game. There is an Influence cost for each

• 1 Influence: choose another card from the action row but then play it onto any column
• 2 Influence: Recruit one of your clan heroes, then choose any column to activate
• 3 Influence: choose one of your clan’s two special order cards and place it in an appropriate column and activate that column

4] Resolve the Battle – if there is a battle, get out the battle board and the attacker (red) and the defender (blue) calculate their values for Strength, Blood and Armor from their physical troops in the space on the board, from heroes in the territory, from order cards on their clan cards and the defensive bonus granted to someone defending Toshi Ranbo.  Players roll and re-roll dice and then keep dice values (all based on icons on player board and cards), adding them to the battle board.  Each side kills an opponent figure for each blood that is not blocked by a defender armor.  Finally, use strength to see who is the winner.  

5] End of Turn – resolve any end of turn effects such as claiming Shrines and Toshi Ranbo.  Then, check to see if you have fewer than 3 troops on the board, and if so, place troops in your Fort until you have 3 troops total on the board.  Replenish the Order cards to a full set of 5.

As you play your turns, you will complete Achievements. As soon as you do this, even if in the middle of your turn, place one of your Achievement markers in the appropriate box at the bottom of the board.  Each player can put a token in each box, but each player is limited to only one per box.  The achievements are:

• Win a battle as the attacker (can do twice)
• Perform a Clan-specific goal card (can do twice)
• Build 2 Buildings
• Buy 3 Tactics Cards
• Use all 3 Nobles Actions
• Control 2 Shrine territories simultaneously
• Have 3 Village tokens on your clan board
• Gain Control of Toshi Ranbo (for the first time)

The player who physically controls Toshi Ranbo also places one of their Achievement markers on the hex on the board.

Again, the first player to place their 7th and final Achievement marker immediately wins the game.

My thoughts on the game

When the game first arrived, I thought that it was going to be just another “dudes on a map” game, but as it turns out, I was quite wrong.  I mean, yes there are dudes on this map, but this game is less about fighting and battles and more about getting those Achievements.  Instead of a skirmishing game, this is more about engine building and action optimization.

As the game progresses, you play Order cards to one of the columns above your board.  As you activate each card in that column, this does somewhat incentivize you to specialize in a column, because each time you activate it, you do everything over and over again.  However, most of the cards for any particular column have similar actions on them, so this could end up not providing you with needed actions.  Thus, the game also forces you to spread out a bit as you’ll need to hit all the columns at certain times to get stuff done.

The different achievements in the game also incentivize you to hit all the columns as you’ll need the base action of each to meet a few of the Achievements.  Of course, you only need 7 out of the 10 possible Achievements to win the game, so you could possibly neglect certain parts of the engine and still be OK…

Of course, though I started off my thoughts saying this wasn’t a fighting game, I do think it will be hard to win this game without it.  Four of the Achievements are directly related to fighting (win a battle, win a battle, control Toshi Ranbo once, Control Toshi Ranbo currently) – so you better have an army and be ready to use it!  I’m just glad that this game is more than fighting – as you’ll need some good engine building to get to the other Achievements, and in the end, this is a good balance for me.  The battle resolution is a bit clunky as you learn it, but the included battle board does make it easy to figure out how everything works.

Office Dog continues to make games in the world of the Legend of the Five Rings (see also River of Gold) – though you need to have no knowledge of Lo5R to play this.  I’m not sure whether this limits the appeal of the game or not, but as they keep making games in this universe, I’m guessing there are more than enough gamers interested in the theme!

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Steph H
• I like it. Dale Y
• Neutral.
• Not for me…

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4wvg7rB