Onitama (Way of the Wind)

There’s a very good reason I’ve taken a long time to review Way of the Wind. I love Onitama, both the base game and the Sensei’s Path expansion. I always want to teach people the basics, before I introduce an expansion with mechanical changes like Way of the Wind. Unfortunately, that often meant getting interrupted and never getting to the expansion, and then the universe conspired against us ever playing it together again. Rinse and repeat with the next friend.

That being said, Way of the Wind isn’t actually all that different. In the box, you get a Wind Spirt miniature, 2 new Move Cards, and 8 Wind Spirit Cards. You place the Wind Spirit in the centremost space on the board and replace two of the standard Move Cards with Wind Spirit Cards.

The basic Move Cards can be used as normal, to move your Master or Student pawns. Or, it can be used to move the Wind Spirit. The new Wind Spirit cards have two moves on them. The top move is used first to move your Master or Students, then the bottom move must be used to move the Wind Spirit. You must use both moves unless one of them isn’t legal, in which case that move is ignored.

If the Wind Spirit moves into a space with a Student in it, they switch places. This makes for some exceptional offensive and defensive opportunities. The Wind Spirit can never move into a Master’s space, nor can a Master or Student move into the Wind Spirit’s space.

If you want to tweak the game with more or fewer Wind Spirits mixed in, you can do that. I generally play a best-of-three series when I play Onitama. If you shuffled the new cards into either of the previous card sets (or both if you like) you could play a best-of-five (or whatever) with a random number of Wind Spirit Cards in each game.

I love Onitama. I was honestly uncertain about messing with a game that’s biggest strength is its simplicity but Way of the Wind adds a new challenge, without spoiling that straightforward elegance. The cards still fit nicely in the original box, and the Wind Spirit fits reasonably well for not having a dedicated space like the other figures.

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