Edo

Place your samurai on secret action cards and build fortresses and houses around Tokyo in a tidy, timing-driven Eurogame.

Designers: Stefan Malz, Louis Malz
Published by: Queen Games

You are a daimyo in Japan around the mid second millennium, serving your shogun by sending samurai out to build fortresses, trading posts and houses in Tokyo and its surroundings. Each of you holds five samurai tokens and three authorization cards with four possible actions each: collect rice, earn ryo, gather wood or build. The twist is the simultaneous planning: everyone commits samurai to their cards at once, then the plans play out, and the number of samurai on an action determines how much it yields. Edo won best evening-length game at the 2010 Hippodice competition under its earlier name Altiplano. A compact Eurogame about scheduling, timing and guessing what your rivals want.

Simultaneous secret planning with samuraiRice, ryo, wood and building as core resourcesWon the Hippodice evening-length prize as Altiplano

Who it's for

You like tidy Eurogames where timing and anticipation beat luck, with two to four players and an hour.

Not for you if…

You want heavy interaction through combat or a sprawling economy. Edo is compact and quietly competitive.

Vibe's take

Quiet planning, loud reveals. You commit your samurai in secret, wince when the plan collides with someone else's, and fight for the last good spot.