Ninja Wars (1998)

About this game

Proudly touted as a "NON-collectable card game," Ninja Wars is a simple battle game with single die rolls determining victory. Each player gets three town cards of identical strength and five randomly dealt hero cards with values ranging from 1 to 5. Players are dealt hands of five action cards they can use to attack players towns and heroes or to strengthen their own heroes and towns. Gold cards are also in the action deck which allow players to bolster the value of an attack card. Battling players each roll a die and add the scores of either their attack and gold cards (for the attacker) or the hero/town and training cards (for the defender). Play is simple and quick for a battle card game. The randomly assigned heroes can create unfair situations, however.

Does it fit your group?

• Group size. Works with 2 to 4.
• Rules load. At 1.0/5 this is a light game — explain it in a few minutes, good for a table that has not played much.
• Age. The publisher suggests 10 and up. That rates the rules rather than the artwork, so judge the box yourself for younger players.