Samurai

So, I played a couple more games of Samurai with Justin Easley yesterday on MaBiWeb. He is convinced that the first player has an advantage in 2-player (mostly since I always go first and I always beat him). I had started a game hoping to pass the first turn to let him have the advantage, but you can't "not" play, so I still ended up first. I also took a random hand as a slight handicap (my random starting hand sucked BTW). This turned out to be one of the more interesting games I've played, as I managed to get the TOP SECRET WIN! You see, there is a little known rule (well, at least its not a common occurance, so it stays at the back of lots of player's minds) about ending the game after four pieces have been tied. Most players are too greedy to tie pieces so it doesn't happen often at all. However, in this game, I was able to win one piece out of the 3-totem city and tie the other two. My next turn, I tied another piece, making there 3 tied pieces and with me having two majorities. I vaguely warned Justin that I had just made the game very tense for him, but he did not understand the reference (probably thinking I was talking my normal smack). The next turn I was able to play my swap and my ronin and tie a 4th piece, suddenly ending the game "halfway" through. Justin was stunned (and vowed to use this new found power against another unsuspecting victim). Sorry Justin - I had been waiting and waiting to pull that trick off for a long time now, but I've never seen that many ties before...

So later that night, Justin pointed me to a new thread that had just popped up! MaBi added a new two-player starting player handicap system. The start player loses their 2-ship. Of course, we had to try it out. We fired up a game, and of course for the first time in about 8 plays, Justin got to go first!. I had again taken a random hand, and if possible, it was worse than the previous game's hand. At any rate, it was a close game - close enough that we finally tied. We'll get a few more of these in and see how much the start player matters with this handicap.