If you like your strategy games with a knife hidden behind the negotiation, Phalanx has one for you. Sovereign: Shogun, a samurai area-control game of shifting alliances and open treachery, has just wrapped a successfully funded Gamefound campaign.
Run game nights? Backseat Gamer handles RSVPs, waitlists, date polling, and game voting so you can focus on playing.
Start organising for freeShogun is the next entry in Phalanx's Sovereign series, following Sovereign: Bretwalda, the UK publisher's area-control game set in Dark Ages Britain where four Anglo-Saxon kingdoms scrap over the crown. This time designers Robert Plesowicz and Maciej Stepien move the fight to Sengoku-era Japan, where cherry blossoms fall as five ruthless daimyo manoeuvre for the throne while a boy regent sits on it.
Each player leads a clan and shapes the map using their own set of five action tiles: Mastery, Harvest, Diplomacy, Development and Move. You expand into provinces, raise Ashigaru, Samurai and Atakebune warships, develop your home domain and chase objectives, but raw force is only half the game. Players are pushed to talk, trade, promise and threaten, forming temporary alliances that are only ever as good as the next turn. There is a neat tempo hook too: some card actions grow stronger the longer you hold off playing them, so patience becomes a weapon.
Got a regular group? Create a private community, poll for the best date, vote on games, and let your friends RSVP in one place.
Set up your group for freeFor a strategy game with miniatures and a proper streak of nastiness, that is a tempting pitch, and it is good to see a British publisher building out a distinctive series of its own rather than chasing licences.
With the campaign funded, attention turns to the pledge manager and production. If Sengoku scheming is your idea of a good evening, round up a group who won't take a betrayal personally.
