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Eiyo box art
2020 Ranked #5,959

Eiyo

A solo combat game where a samurai uses weapon cards to defeat enemies and earn enough honor to survive. Deflecting a row prevents damage but sacrifices points, forcing a constant choice between safety and decisive attacks.

Strategy Games Card Game Events Move Through Deck Series: The Matchbox Collection (Thundergryph)

Players

1-2

Play time

Not listed

Age

14+

Complexity

2/5

Rating

6.79

Harder to teach Highly interactive Deep strategy

Overview

At a glance

Is this game right for my group?

ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.

Teachability 2.6/5

Harder to teach

Replay value 4.0/5

High replayability

Interaction 3.6/5

Highly interactive

Player scaling 4.0/5

Scales well

Strategic depth 4.5/5

Deep strategy

See all 5 specifications

How it plays

How does it play?

In Eiyo, you will need to confront hordes of enemies, trying not to be defeated, by gaining honour points determined by the opponents that you are taking down. Each turn is divided into 2 phases: The samurai phase and the enemy phase.

Core mechanisms

Key systems that shape the decisions players make.

Read the full game description

In Eiyo, you will need to confront hordes of enemies, trying not to be defeated, by gaining honour points determined by the opponents that you are taking down. Each turn is divided into 2 phases: The samurai phase and the enemy phase. In the samurai phase, you will draw 4 cards and then fight. You may never have more than 6 cards in hand. During the fight phase you can deliberately attack or deflect your enemies, depending on your choices and possibilities. You choose the amount of cards to spend from your hand. To face an enemy you will need to consider the enemy position and discard a Weapon card correspondingly. You can only use one of the positions shown on the card for each Weapon card you discard. At any time, you can turn a Weapon card by 90 degrees clockwise to hit an enemy in a specific position by discarding the topmost card of your Weapon deck. By attacking an enemy you will defeat only the topmost enemy of the overlapping row and will you gain honour points. To deflect an enemy you must discard the corresponding Weapon card, and you must take a Deflect token and place it on top of the corresponding Enemy row. During this turn, you won’t receive damage from that row, but you won’t get honour points. In the Enemy phase, all of the Enemies from the rows without a Deflect token on top, will attack you. The enemies will damage you based on the positions they occupy in their row. You will discard an amount of cards from your Weapon deck corresponding to the damage received by the enemies. When using the deflect tokens, discard the topmost card of a row (without receiving honour points), before starting a new round. You will lose the game if you run out of Weapon cards for the third time while there are still enemies to fight. To win the game you will need to survive having gained at least 40 honour points. The mini-expansion, Eiyo: Yamabushi, is packaged inside the base game's box. It introduces 4 Yamabushi mini-bosses to the field of battle. —description from the publisher

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Editions

Language and publisher variants currently recorded in the catalog.

Edition Year Language Publisher / Region
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Player resources

Rulebooks, player aids, FAQs, and solo resources.

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Game and edition data

All specifications (5)

Play and group

Players
1–2
Best with
1–2
Play time
20 min
Age
14+
Complexity
2.0/5
Credits and catalog connections

Credits

Designers

1
Andrea Sbragia

Artists

1
Matthew Mizak

Publishers

1
ThunderGryph Games

Linked items

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