From VPG:
TENKA You, Very Much!
Riding out from The Little Game Company that Could with banners unfurled is a new edition of Scott Muldoon’s popular multi-player card game that brings you all of the chaos and conquests of Feudal Japan – TENKA Shogun Edition. For less than one koku (330 pounds of rice), your gaming group will be rivals to control Japan in an age of battles, diplomacy, and betrayal.
Above all else, we’ve heard that players wanted more. They wanted to have more players at the table competing in the game, and they wanted more Special cards to add to the fun. Well, we have heard you, and have designed, developed, tested, and now are about to release: TENKA Shogun Edition. This is the much-anticipated “bigger” version of the original 4-player TENKA game, with some clever and subtle rules tweaks to accommodate up to 8 (or, as a variant, 9) players!
The total number of cards included has risen from 80 to 150 to accommodate such a full table of players, but what players are the most curious about are the new, purple “Special” cards – and, boy, have we delivered on those! About 1/3 of all the cards are Special now, with many new cards adding to the violence and intrigue that is feudal Japan. The new look and some of the new Special cards are shown throughout this article (click on them to see larger versions).
TENKA Shogun regalia cardThe mechanics are extremely familiar, but there is one noticeable tweak to Battles: whenever your respond to a Call to Arms at a Defender’s TENKA Shogun teacher cardCourt who is not sitting next to you (i.e., to your immediate left or right), you must also Discard 1 card for “logistics,” just as the Attacker does to initiate a Battle. The intriguing bit is that you don’t have to pay it; you can conduct some “instant diplomacy” and get another player to pay your logistics cost to intervene. Suddenly, it matters a lot more who your friends are (and what they can afford!).
Plenty of Variant Rules are also included in this Shogun Edition of TENKA, including a “long game” when you have fewer than 8 players, alternate forms of Chaos that is applied at each reshuffle of the deck, and a set of Tournament Rules.
