Edo

In Edo, players represent daimyo in mid-second millennium Japan who are trying to serve their shogun by using their samurai to construct fortresses, trading posts and houses in Tokyo and surrounding areas.

At the start of Edo – which won "best evening-length game" in the 2010 Hippodice Game Design competition under the name Altiplano – each player has five samurai tokens and three square authorization cards, each of which has four possible actions on it. One card, for example, allows a player to:

Collect rice (up to four bundles depending on the number of samurai applied to the action),

Collect 5 ryo, i.e. money (per samurai),

Collect wood (up to four, with one samurai on the action and one in the forest for each wood you want), or

Build (up to two buildings, with two samurai on the card and one in the desired city, along with the required resources)