This is the beginning of a series of articles on the main mechanisms of “Daimyo, the rebirth of the Empire”. I won’t go too deep into the rules but only highlight some points that make the richness of Daimyo‘s gameplay.

Reminder: Daimyo is designed by Jérémy Ducret, illustrated by Dimitri Chappuis and Anthony Wolff and published by La Boite de jeu. Daimyo is a game of Dice Drafting, Majority of Influence and Resources Management.

Many years after a disaster that decimated most of mankind, some survivors, organized in clans, started a new civilization based on a misinterpretation of the Bushido codes. In this uchrony, combining lost technology and waste materials, you play as a so-called Daimyo who craves to be the new Emperor of the Archipelago of 6. Popularity has replaced honor and every Clan aims to become the most popular to rule the Archipelago.

Daimyo will be launched on Kickstarter on the 16th of July 2020.

Crafting the Clan board

One of the key features of the mechanisms of Daimyo is the way you’ll manage and customize your personal Clan board.

The Clan board is divided into 6 action zones where you’ll place your drafted dice. The available actions will depend on the color of the die. Each zone has a color, a red die can only be placed into a red zone, a green die into a green zone and a blue die into the blue zone. The “Tax” zone can host a die of any color.

When placing a die into a zone, you activate its corresponding action.

Another zone at the center of the board, with the “13+” icon, shows your Clan’s special capacity (each clan having its own capacity). If the total value* of the dice placed on your board is 13 or more (no matter the color of your dice), you trigger your Clan ability which, added to your turn’s main action, generate powerful combos.

*Note that the value of each dice also allows to activate Hero cards, i’ll explain this in another article. The color of the dice is what matters most for the Clan board.

Beneath each action spot, and next to your Clan’s capacity, lies an empty spot (circled in white in the above example). These spots allows you to customize your Clan board along the game in order to make your actions more and more powerful. It also helps to create efficient links between your actions to fine tune your strategy.

 

Construction boards are placed on the right of your Clan board (see above). They include the buildings you’ll be able to build during the game as well as Bonus action tiles that will be unlocked when constructing buildings. These tiles will be placed on the action spots of your Clan board in order to customize your main actions.

Yet, each empty space on your Construction board is now showing an additional cost to build further buildings (see “surcharges” on the above example). That’s the price to pay to have more powerful actions for the rest of the game.

 

The zone at the top of your Clan board (highlighted in yellow in the above example) corresponds to your end of the round incomes. This zone can also be customized with Bonus action tiles in order to have better incomes each round.

The customization of the Clan board is one of the main strategic stakes of Daimyo. You’ll draft 3 dice per round, during 5 rounds, which makes 15 drafted dice. The more you’ll chain your actions thanks to the Bonus action tiles, the better you’ll benefit from these 15 dice. Optimizing your actions will be key to success.

Note : Your Hero cards will also bring some nice action combos, but i’ll write about that in a future article.