Designer:  Dirk Henn (Alhambra, Shogun, Wallenstein, Wallenstein Second Edition)

Artists:  Marko Fiedler (Edo, Escape: Zombie City, In the Year of the Dragon, Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age, Shogun Big Box, Michael Menzel (Agra, Arkadia, Bruges, Catan, Chicago Express, Cuba, Dominion, Dominion: Intrigue, Firenze, First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express!, Forum Trajanum, Hacienda, Jambo, The Pillars of the Earth, Rivals for Catan, Rococo, Royals, Santiago de Cuba, Shogun, The Speicherstadt, Stone Age, Thebes, Thurn and Taxis, Torres, Ulm, World Without End), Oliver Schlemmer (Escape: The Curse of the Temple, Fresco, Kingdom Builder, Wallenstein Second Edition)

Publisher:  Queen Games (Alhambra, Amerigo, Chicago Express, Escape: The Curse of the Temple, Fresco, Kingdom Builder, Lancaster, Legends of Andor, Luxor, Merlin, Shogun, Thebes, Vikings, Wallenstein)

Genre/Mechanisms:  action queue, area majority/influence, area movement, auction/bidding, economic, simultaneous action selection, variable phase order, territory building (Shogun); action points, action queue, area majority/influence, area movement, economic, simultaneous action selection, variable phase order, territory building (Wallenstein)

Funding Status:  At the time of this posting, Shogun & Wallenstein Deluxe Upgrade Kits is already fully-funded. Pledges currently total more than 2.5x the initial funding goal with 7 days left to go on the campaign.

Player Count:  3-5

Solo Mode:  no

Complexity:  medium-heavy

Risk:  medium-low

What It’s About:  “Shogun is based on the Wallenstein game system. The game is set in the Sengoku period (approx 1467-1573) which ends with the inception of the well-known Tokugawa Shogunate.  Wallenstein is set during the Thirty Years’ War, when military leaders roamed the country, fighting for dominance while building palaces and churches. Collect victory points by controlling countries and developing them, but don’t forget the peasants. Battles are fought using the dice tower, but rather than randomizing the faces, this tower keeps some of the cubes. The winner of the battle is determined by the number of the attacker’s and defender’s armies that emerge from the tower.”

How It Works:  Shogun and Wallenstein are essentially the same game, just with different theming and art, a few rules tweaks and some small changes in components. “The central feature of both games is the Cube Tower, used for combat resolution. Cubes are put into the tower during a battle, and what comes out eliminates in a 1-to-1 fashion until only one army is left. Some of your cubes might get stuck in the tower, but they will come out later and provide you an unexpected advantage.  The cube tower draws a middle line between deterministic and dice based combat, allowing for randomness in battles for excitement, but more even odds across the course of the game.”

“The Cube Tower games pairs this mechanism with area majority scoring for buildings which are built around the map and pre-programmed turns. are 10 actions each year, and at the start of a year the order of these actions are shuffled and the first 5 revealed. You will need to choose which provinces that you control will perform the various actions, such as launching attacks or taxing, from the start, much like a commander planning an upcoming campaign.”

The basic game of Wallenstein is played over 2 years, each comprised of 4 rounds, for a total of 8 game rounds. Each year’s rounds are broken down by season. In Spring, Summer, and Fall, players perform the following steps in order: display action cards, display bonus tiles, plan individual actions and bid for turn order, determine event, determine player order, and perform actions. The actions that are performed each season are determined by the series of cards displayed at the bottom edge of the game board. Each action is performed by each player in turn order, and players must take the action if they can, and then play progresses to the subsequent action card.

The Winter season (round) of each year functions as a scoring season. Players will take grain loss penalties before suppling grain to their various regions. They may also have to deal with any revolts that occur as a result. After revolts have been handled, players will score 1 VP for each controlled county and 1 VP for each building. Additionally, the most palaces in a region will score 3VP, the most churches 2VP, and the most trading posts 1 VP. After the end of the second year and the second Winter season, the player with the most VPS wins the game, with any ties broken by the player with the most remaining Thalers (money).

Comparisons:  El Grande, another area control game that uses a cube tower as a central mechanic, is a pretty good comparison here. Some others include A Game of Thrones: The Board Game for its combination of dudes on a map and action selection/follow mechanics, Mare Nostrum, Serenissima, and on the heavier end Forbidden Stars, though none of these games utilize cube tower mechanics.

What Should I Pledge?:
$65 Shogun Upgrade Kit: the Shogun Upgrade Kit and Start Player Marker.  The Shogun Upgrade Kit allows you to upgrade your regular copy of the game to a Deluxe copy.  It includes 80 3-D plastic buildings (to replace cardboard tiles), 330 wooden armies (to replace wooden cubes), 5 acrylic victory point markers (to replace wooden cylinders), 5 acrylic rice markers (to replace wooden cylinders), 42 acrylic revolt markers (to replace cardboard chits), and 35 metal coins (to replace wooden blocks).

$65 Wallenstein Upgrade Kit: the Wallenstein Upgrade Kit and Start Player Marker.  The Wallenstein Upgrade Kit allows you to upgrade your regular copy of the game to a Deluxe copy.  It includes 80 3-D plastic buildings (to replace cardboard tiles), 330 wooden armies (to replace wooden cubes), 15 acrylic coat of arms tokens (to replace wooden markers), 42 acrylic revolt markers (to replace cardboard chits), 5 acrylic bonus tokens (to replace cardboard tiles), and 35 metal coins (to replace wooden blocks).

$120  Early Bird Shogun Big Box Deluxe:  a copy of the Shogun Big Box, the Shogun Upgrade Kit, and the Start Player Marker.  The Shogun Big Box includes the base game of Shogun, Tenno’s Court Expansion 1, Samurai Expansion Module 2, Military Leaders Expansion Module 3 and Chambers Expansion Module 4, with the latter three items being unique to this release.

$120  Early Bird Wallenstein Big Box Deluxe:  a copy of the Wallenstein Big Box, the Wallenstein Upgrade Kit, and the Start Player Marker.  The Wallenstein Big Box includes the base game of Wallenstein Second Edition, and Expansion Modules 1-4, which are Emperor’s Court, Landsknechte, Military Leaders, and Office.

$129  Shogun and Wallenstein Upgrade Kits: combines everything from the Shogun Wallenstein Upgrade Kit pledge levels, including 2 Start Player Markers.

$136  Shogun Big Box Deluxe:  the same rewards as the Early Bird, but without the Early Bird discount.

$136  Wallenstein Big Box Deluxe:  the same rewards as the Early Bird, but without the Early Bird discount.

$228  Shogun and Wallenstein Deluxe Bundles:  combines everything from both the Shogun and Wallenstein Big Box Deluxe pledge levels.

$261  Cube Tower Trilogy Bundle:  includes everything in the Shogun and Wallenstein Deluxe Bundles pledge level, plus a copy of Immortals.

Add-Ons:
$38  Immortals
$38  Shogun Coin Set
$38  Wallenstein Coin Set
$16  Shogun Player Marker Set
$16  Wallenstein Player Marker Set

KS Exclusives
Both Deluxe Upgrade Kits, as well as the Start Player Markers offered through this campaign, are KS-Exclusive and will not be offered at retail.  Which means this is likely your only chance to obtain Deluxe versions of Shogun and Wallenstein.

All-In Total: In the continental U.S., you’re looking at $261 for the Cube Trilogy Bundle, $32 for the two Player Market Sets, and $25 in shipping for a total of $318.

Shogun & Wallenstein Deluxe Upgrade Kits completes its Kickstarter on Thursday, May 7th and tentatively ships in April 2021.