Shinobi
Shinobi Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Setup
Age: 10+ Number of players: 4-6 Game time: 15 min aprox.
Fighting gear
- 24 Attack cards (4 for each clan with 4 different weapons: shuriken, sai, katana and blowgun)
- 18 cubes to mark attacks
- 30 life tokens
- 1 meeple
Preparing the armoury
Out of the six clans, choose which you want to be Daimyo of and take:
- 4 Attack cards that belong to that clan
- 3 Attack markers (black)
- 5 Life counters (red)
The player with most scars takes the meeple which marks the Initial player and begins the game. Then the turn passes to the player on his right.
Assassination festival
Each round is made up of two phases with the healthy goal of killing all the rest:
- Assign attacks
- Resolve Attacks and Denounce
Assigning Attacks
During your turn, you must attack the three rivals on your right, giving each of them an attack card face down.
As you do so, you must tell each of them which weapon you're attacking them with. But, of course, this DOESN'T have to be TRUE. Remember, we're Ninjas.
On receiving the face-down attack, the assaulted player must mark the kind of attack he's been told to be receiving by placing a black cube on top of the appropriate weapon icon on the back of the card. If a player has already received two identical attacks from other ninjas, be they true or not, he cannot repeat the same attack a third time.
When you attack you can say whatever you want and gesticulate frantically or subtly wink to another player, anything you deem necessary to confuse them on which attack you're really assigning. Remember, deceit will be your most powerful weapon.
Once you've assigned three of your ninjas to attack your rivals, the following player will do the same.
Once all the players have assigned their attacks, each of you will have before you three face-down attack cards, courtesy of the loving clans to your left. Each card will have a cube marking the weapon the attacking ninja is supposedly using. The time has come to use intuition, dodge and denounce.
Resolving the Attacks
To resolve attacks, the player with the meeple must choose and reveal two of the three attacks he has received from his friendly colleagues.
Before doing so, he may question the players that have attacked him (who will, most honourably, say whatever they want, regardless of the truth). If other attacks have been revealed, he can examine them to check which ones have been used already.
Once he reveals the two attacks he chooses, if they're with the same kind of weapon, sadly, the attack has been successful, and that player loses one of his life tokens, which will be placed in the centre of the table. If, on the contrary, the attacks were perpetrated with different weapons, the attack misses by a mile and the player escapes unscathed.
But...wait! The ninja clans hold their reputation in very high esteem, and once the attack has been resolved, the player can choose to stick to the code and denounce his attackers, for incompetence or plotting:
Incompetence: the clans don't tolerate incompetence.
If a player reveals two different attacks, he can decide to denounce incompetence. To do so, he must say out loud: "I denounce incompetence!" and reveal the third card.
If all three cards are different, all the attackers lose a life for performing such a badly coordinated ambush. If, on revealing the third card, it turns out that there were two identical attacks, the denouncer loses a life for false accusations.
Plotting: the clans don't tolerate plotting, for it shows lack of style and coordination capacity.
So, when a player reveals two identical attacks, before losing the life token, he may choose to denounce plotting and reveal the third card. To do so, he must stand up and say, in an accusing voice: "I denounce plotting!" and reveal the third card. If all three cards are the same, he doesn't lose the life token, but his three attackers do. However, if the third attack was different and there was no plotting, he must lose two life tokens, one for the attack and one for his false accusations.
The game carries on this way until every player has revealed his attacks and denounced whatever they thought indictable.
Once the round has finished, each player recovers his attack cards and the meeple passes on to the player on the right, and so a new turn of amiable assassination begins.
When the Chief of a Clan loses all his life counters, he can no longer be chosen Great Daimyo, but his ninjas continue to attack nonetheless, and he can denounce just as before, trying to unveil as many incompetence and plotting cases as possible from the players that still have life tokens.
We salute you, Great Daimyo
As soon as there's only one Daimyo with at least one life token left, he's chosen as Great Daimyo and the game ends.
We all wish the Great Daimyo a long and prosperous life. Although we know it isn't going to be the case.