I played Tenjo at GenCon last year. I enjoyed the game, although I too have a problem with the length. I read somewhere that the mechanics are very similar to "German" games, which I also found.

The rules are not that complicated, and the board and mechanics are set-up to encourage conflict fairly quickly. The additional encouragement of alliances and different players pieces being able to coexist on the same space also provide another level of play. The game play is also very quick, with some mechanics designed to provide surprise attacks and the sort. However, if the designer had not attacked me in the game to show some of the mechanics...it probably would not have been as quick moving...(as it turned out, it wasn't the best move for him to make, as I pretty much obliterated his samurai.)

As mentioned above, the length is a major obstruction. We played for about 3 hours, and still had not yet played one full year (the first payday). Judging from the rules, this seems to be a very important time in the game, as your cards become replenished at that point, you earn income, and you pay your samurai salary (with those who aren't paid leaving your ranks.)

I really like the idea of the game, and enjoy setting it up every now and then to oooooh and aaaaah at the board (I think it's beautiful). But I don't know if I'll ever be able to play it due to its length. There are rules for counting up points, so that you can set a length of time, play that length, add up your points, person with the most points wins. This is probably a good implementation, but I would like to play at least 2 or 3 years before doing this in order to see how the mechanics work.

Rating: I give it a 6 on a 10 point scale...maybe higher if I ever get to play it again.

This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com