Battle for Rokugan takes Game of Thrones: The Board Game to the Legend of the Five Rings universe

Fantasy Flight has announced the next game in its reboot of the Legend of the Five Rings universe, Battle for Rokugan.

Following the upcoming Legend of the Five Rings living card game, Battle for Rokugan looks very similar to FFG’s A Game of Thrones: The Board Game, albeit set in the fantasy world of battling samurai rather than Westeros.

The aim is to gain honour by taking control of territories over the course of five rounds – the map is divided up into seven clans, rather than the houses of Westeros – with the smaller provinces in each region serving as individual points of conflict, as well as a way to gain special abilities when a player conquers an entire area.

As in Game of Thrones, players execute orders facedown to secretly attack locations, defend themselves, seek peace or bluff to throw off their opponents. There’s a strong diplomacy element to proceedings, which can remove the need for fighting (or open up a naïve friend for a tactical betrayal).

Although many of the gameplay aspects will be familiar to Game of Thrones players, Battle for Rokugan appears to be more than a simple reskin, with a number of tweaks to the gameplay flow and turn structure that makes it more of a remixed reimagining.

Playing time is said to be an hour-plus – hopefully bringing it in much quicker than Game of Thrones’ two-to four-hour time mark. Battle for Rokugan also pares down the player count a little – supporting as few as two people (rather than Game of Thrones’ minimum of three) but only playing up to five, one fewer than its spiritual predecessor.

Battle for Rokugan will cost a rather reasonable $40 (£31) when it’s released – although there’s no release date given for the time being.