Blood Rage became an instant hit as soon as it made a debut in he market in 2015. Eric Lang, the designer of Blood Rage came to be known as one of the most prominent board game designers.  Now, Lang is back with his newest game which revolveds around diplomacy, honor, blood and finely sculpted plastic. So, anyone who enjoyed Blood Rage would definitely find Rising Sun intimidating, The premise of the game is simple. The game is based infeudal Japan and each player is part of a clan, vying for control of the land.

Rising Sun Board Game takes place over three rounds. On each turn, players have to pick up top four ‘Political Mandates’, as portrayed by the colourful cards. Such mandates include “recruit’ which lets you add new units to the game, ‘Marshal’ which lets you move them around and so forth. Players have to make the best decision to get a tactical edge over other players.

All the players will try to take the best decision to win conflicts and conquer newer regions. The victor is given a province token worth a small amount of points. But this isn’t as simple and balanced as it sounds. Players will frequently find that the mandates they’ve chosen, seldom allow them to do the thing they want. Also, each player has to harness the actions taken by other players and pull off sweeping moves which benefit them the most.

An important element of the game is forming alliances at the very start of each round and just like real life, alliances also come with the element of betrayal. The ‘betray power’, one of the strongest mandates of the game, is a mandate used to betray allies when a players’ priority shifts. These changing priorities and blurred alliances maintain an ever challenging atmosphere where every player has to be on the lookout of an unexpected knife on the back!

Unlike in Blood Rage, players cannot depend on the same winning tactic. Rising Sun Board Game is full of challenges, sly manoeuvring and betrayals. It will leave you pondering upon your decisions for days afterward, analysing decisions taken and second guessing vengeful back stabs.