Age of War - Game Review

I was at one of the local game stores and saw a game called Age of War by Fantasy Flight Games.  It had a low price ($12.99) and the box had some nice art work.  It allows 2-6 players and plays in 15-30 minutes.  The thing that really drew me to it was the game designer is Reiner Knizia.  I have yet to play a game he's designed that I didn't like.  (I haven't played all of them, though.)  I decided to pick it up and see how it played.

This is a conquest game.  You are the leader of a feudal Japanese army trying to take over castles and claim territory.  You do this by rolling 7 dice with various symbols that represent infantry, cavalry, archers, and daimyo (leaders).  Each castle cards has a number of battle lines.  The more lines, the more points the card is worth.  You have to match the symbols on the dice to the card you are attacking.  Seems

easy, but you can't keep any dice from roll to roll.  You have to use the dice to claim a line.  You place those dice on the line and roll the remaining dice and try to claim another line.  If you can't claim a line, you can re-roll the dice, but you have to sacrifice one of the dice so you are rolling less dice.

Add in the ability of players to take castles from each other (with an additional battle line required) and things get pretty tense.  Once you have claimed all the castles of a particular territory they are safe from being taken and you get a bonus for holding the territory.

The game ends when all the castles have been claimed.

I played this with both 6 players and 2 players.  Both worked well and moved about as quickly.  Lots of back and forth.  It got a little tedious in one game when we were down to 2 castles to be taken and we just couldn't roll what was needed to defeat them, but it wasn't bad and I doubt that will happen often.

Overall, I give this game a big thumbs up and when was the last time you found a fun 6 player game for $13?