Age of War (2014) by Reiner Knizia was published by Fantasy Flight Games. Age of War is set in feudal Japan.
Age of War takes about 20 minutes with two players. You roll dice to complete patterns on Castle Cards then collect the Castles.
Each Castle is worth a couple points. Collect a set of all the Castles of the same color and their value increases and they can't be taken by your opponent.
When all Castles have been collected the game is over and the player with the most points wins.
Simple. Fast. Fun!
Components
There are 14 Castle Cards in 6 different colors. The individual Castle Cards are worth 1 to 4 points a piece. Collect the entire set of a color and the set is worth more than the total of the individual cards.
There are 7 custom dice. The sides show a Daimyo, Infantry (1-3), an Archer or Calvary.
And there is a single page rule book. The rules are crisp with good examples. You can learn this game in 5 minutes.
All of the components are of good quality with nice art of feudal Japan.
Setup
Setup takes less than a minute.
Sort the Castle Cards by color and put them faceup on the table.
Pick your first player and start rolling!
Gameplay
The active player starts by rolling all 7 dice.
Then they decide whether to start attacking a castle or they can re-roll. If they re-roll they have to set one die aside and re-roll using 6 dice.
The can attack a unclaimed Castle or another player's Castle. They can only attack 1 Castle in a turn.
Each Castle has Battle Lines that show which dice are needed to defeat each Battle Line.
If a player moves dice to a Battle Line they continue their turn by re-rolling the remaining dice. A single, complete Battle Line must be defeated by each dice move.
If a player either can't or chooses not to move dice to a Battle Line then they remove a die from their dice pool and re-roll their remaining dice.
Their turn either ends with them capturing the Castle by covering all Battle Lines or failing.
Note - in the top left hand corner of each Castle Card is an extra Daimyo which also must be defeated if the Castle currently belongs to an opponent.
If a player captures all the Castles of a color the player puts them in a stack with the back face up showing the value of the set. This also indicates the set is safe from an attack and capture.
The game ends when all Castles have been captured.
Thoughts
Age of War is deceptively easy looking. Game play is simple and fast but there is a nice underlying layer of strategy.
We replayed Age of War multiple times the first day we played it. It is also a great game to start or end a game night.
This game also gets nicely tense as Castles are captured and players start to go after Castles belonging to other players.
The Good: Lots of quick playing fun.
The Bad: It got a little repetitive after a couple plays but should be fine with different group of players or after a break.
The Dastardly: My wife much preferred capturing my castles than the unclaimed.