Strategist Strategy

"Who would have thought that we would have to face each other in battle like this..."

Two strategists, who had once been fellow disciples and studied under the same master, find themselves devoted to carry out the most refined battle of wits, bearing the burden of protecting their home country.

A strategist, however, will never enter the battlefield themselves.
They send out instructions to the Shogun in action based on the information provided by the messengers rushing back and forth from the battlefield.
Figure out the other player’s intention with the help of the time lag in-between to aim for victory.

The game begins with 3 kinds of game pieces, Infantry, Archer and Cavalry taking position.
How do you establish an advantageous battle formation as you go into battle?

The key to victory is to understand how to properly utilize the special command, the Chain Message, which allows game pieces of the same kind, positioned next to each other in a vertical or horizontal direction, to advance in the same way and in the same turn.
Be conscious of coordinating your military forces and never dividing your formation.

WHAT KIND OF GAME IS IT?

Strategist Strategy is a strategy game for 2 players. The goal is to take down the Shogun of the other player by moving your own pieces, similar to Chess or Shogi.
However, it has the following distinctive features.

• You are free to place the soldier pieces anywhere you want at the beginning of the game. The players take turns, placing 1 piece per turn. The placement of the pieces shall be determined with ever-evolving strategies while watching the moves and battle formation of the other player.
• There are only 3 different kinds of soldier pieces.
• You are not able to move the pieces immediately during your turn. You may only move them according to the commands issued by “cards” in the previous turn. It is not guaranteed that the game pieces will move as expected.
• When pieces of the same kind are aligned next to each other, either in a vertical and horizontal direction, you may move them together in the same turn, up to more than 2 pieces at once.

For example, 3 Infantry pieces in a row may move forward at the same time or multiple Archer pieces may shoot arrows at the same time. In order to win, it is key to establish a good set-up/formation for yourself and break up the set-up/formation of the other player.

• After the initial placement, the players decide in secret which game piece will become the Shogun piece, which is the defining piece for winning or losing the game.

It is crucial to predict the Shogun of your opponent during the game play.

In order to get a taste of being a real military strategist, we created this game for 2 players and added game elements that will hopefully remove unrealistic game elements that we had experienced in other strategy simulation games.

—description from the designer