Swords and Scrolls: Heian Hegemony (S2H2)is a board game designed to offer players the experience of being a powerful landlord or daimyo in 11th century Japan. It does this via three main mechanics; an individual playerboard for resource allocation and deployment, a central map with provinces for players to manage or fight over and lastly building a personal deck and hand for diplomacy, lineage and tactical options. This war happened on two fronts, in the many provinces of Japan and within the emperor’s court between four main clans, the Fujiwara, the Taira(heike), the Minamoto(genji) and Tachibana.
Turn Sequence
The game is split into three main phases:
Summer or Resource Phase(Everybody)
In this phase players will count and allocate their resources on their playerboard hidden with a screen. They can also place new armies, reveal neutral province tiles and move their army tokens.
Autumn or Operations Phase(by turn, player with the highest amount of Politics goes first followed by the next highest. In the event of a tie, roll off on a six-sided die, highest goes first).
This phase is the meat of the game, as players are able to conduct covert missions, wage battles and subjugate provinces.
Spring or Development Phase (by turn, player with highest Politics starts first followed by the next highest and so on).
Here players will be able to organize their domain by purchasing cards, gain favour with the emperor and the courts and trade with other players. They will also draw event cards and assign workers to provinces in order to produce resources next turn.
Resource Allocation
One of the main components of this game is the playerboard:
The main fuel for your campaigns is a resource called koku. You obtain this every summer by totalling all the koku provided by worked provinces and divvy them up into five categories by placing a die in each category with the value face up:
Religion: Use this to capture provinces without attacking.
Administration/Bakufu: Koku allocated here will allow you to assign worker cubes to provinces during Spring so you could reap even more koku(plus other province specific benefits) during Summer.
Military/Bushi: Crank out those samurais!
Favor: Everytime you initiate an attack on a province, whether neutral or against another opponent’s you gain a step towards disfavor on the favor track around the map board. Being hated by the courts may make you a “legal” target by the other clans to destroy and your popularity may plummet(affected by certain event cards).
Politics: This power encompasses the many courtiers, magistrates and covert shinobis you will be training in that certain year. In the game having the highest Politics will provide you with initiative and draw cards. Politics will enable you to order covert actions against opponents.
Trade: For each koku allocated here, you may collect a gold token and place it in your Treasury. Gold that are unused in a turn persists and may be hoarded.
There are another three main roles these power will play:
Subjugating neutral provinces: At the start of the game, province tiles are randomly placed facedown on each province. As you flip them over, each tile may demand different things in other to be part of your province.
Purchasing cards: In the Spring phase, you may purchase cards that are placed face up next to the map board. Most cards will cost a certain amount of gold to aquire, and some will also require certain powers to be spent.
Military deployment: Perhaps the most important function of a power is to allow for troop deployment. All powers except for Politics and Trade provide you with an opportunity to deploy different types of troops.
Troop Deployment
Lowered screens will be the battlefields where you decide which, and how many of your troops will be deployed. Each player will start with cubes in each power section of their playerboard. When a battle is declared, you will deplete your power and move as many cubes to the battlefield section.
Battles are determined by the total amount of military strength each side has, and can be modified by cards from hand.
Covert Actions
Assassination, Kidnapping, Spying, Sabotage, Dishonor
The Map
The map consists of 32(current) provinces during the 11th to 12th century Japan. On three edges of the map(top, left and right) is a favor track, with starting positions right in the top middle with zero or neutral favor. The track is divided into squares with numbers from -3 to +3. Each time a player loses one favor, their favor token will be moved one square to the right of the starting position.
Purchase Cards
During the Spring phase players are able to purchase face up cards in turn and these provide different types of bonuses to powers and can be used at any time. Some cards require a payment to be used, and once used will go to your holdings discard pile ready to be recycled into your holdings deck and be reused.
Event Cards
Event cards are drawn by each player in every turn. They are always displayed for all players to see and may affect the player who drew it or up to every player in the game. An event card MUST be resolved there and then before continuing. A resolved event will then be discarded into the discard pile, unless it is a personality card specifying that you could put it into your hand.
Trading between players
During the Spring phase, during their turn players are allowed to trade once with another player. One province, one card and an unlimited amount of gold can be traded. This trade may be consensual, or fueled by blackmail or a threat. That’s up to the players.
Ending the game
The game ends when the last event card has been drawn. All surviving players will then count their victory points based on the provinces that they own at that time on the mapboard. Player with the most VPs will be the winner.
