Rumble Nation – a Terrific, Minimalistic, Japanese Strategy Board Game

Comparison Between the Old, Regular Version and the New, Deluxe Version

A couple of years ago, I got a great recommendation from the Board Game Barrage podcast: The minimalistic area majority board game, Rumble Nation. It only takes about 30 minutes to play, is easy to learn, and is cheap and compact. And all of this while still offering a lot of player interaction and interesting choices.

Closeup of the deluxe version, showing areas on a map with some tokens on it. There are also some nubmered disks.

A rundown of the game:

You're competing for control over 11 areas in feudal Japan numbered from 2 to 12. These will give 2-12 points to the winner (and half points for second place). The winner is the person with the most points.

The game has two phases: One where players will take turns, and there are both chance and choices – and one where you'll see who wins the fights. (But with no chance or choices.)

In phase 2, the person who has the most armies in an area will win it. But here's the most interesting part: You'll determine the winner in order, from 2 to 12. And if you win area 2, you'll be able to add reinforcements, 2 armies, to every adjacent area you have at least 1 army in (and that hasn't been determined yet). So, prioritising high numbers is great, as you'll get a lot of points. But low numbers will give you a lot of extra armies in other higher value fights!

When placing armies, in phase 1, you'll throw 3 dice. You then combine two of them to determine where you place them (if you select 3 and 6, you'll place them in the 9), and the last die determines how many you'll place (half its value, rounded down). You can also, once per game, use a special card ability.

This means you'll place between 1 and 3 armies every round – so everyone won't be done in the same number of rounds. You can't (without using special abilities) move armies you've placed. So, in general, it's best to be the last to commit your armies – but the game has handled this in an interesting way, by having the tiebreaker in the phase 2 fights be whomever finished their phase 1 first.

And as mentioned, phase 2 is 100% deterministic, so the game wraps up really fast and smoothly.

I ordered the original version from Japan, and it’s been a treasured possession. But recently, I was looking at some other games from Japan, and saw that they had made a deluxe version 🖇️ of it – so I ordered it.

I got it in the mail today, and wanted to show how it compares to the original, as I haven’t seen this done anywhere.

The deluxe box next to the regular one. The former is narrower, but taller. Borth arts are of a castle in the background with soldiers in the front. But the deluxe is less cartoony.

The rules

The only gameplay changes compared to the base game is that one tactic card is nerfed a bit,¹ and that the deluxe version includes a Daimyo variant/mini-expansion.

While playing with the latter, you’ll remove two armies and instead be able to place your extra large token as an army.² At the beginning of the game, you will have drafted an ability, you can use once, related to this Daimyo piece.³ So this adds a third option in phase 1, in addition to throwing dice and placing armies, and using one of the publicly available tactic cards. It seems interesting!

But an important difference is that the deluxe version is Japanese only, while the regular version was both Japanese and English. Luckily, the BGG community has come through, and English rules can be found here. Also, only the daimyo cards are language-dependent (but they also have iconography you can learn).

Four of the tactic cards, including the nerfed Retreat card.

All-Japanese daimyo card. I think the art is great, and the cards are large.

The components

The corresponding components laid out: A tactuc card, some player pieces, dice, point tokens, and tiebreaker token. Also a daimyo card from the deluxe version.

The yellow cubes are armies, and the kabuto is just for the player to keep in front of them to indicate their player colour. In the regular version, there are only 3 dice, which gets passed around. The token with the katanas are used for the mentioned tiebreaker.

In the deluxe version, every player gets their own dice set, and they’re really nice. I also like the new armies (even though I do have a soft spot for cubes in board games), and that the big piece gets game time. The card art is also nicer in my opinion – but the tactic card quality is about the same (while the daimyo cards are in an even higher quality).

Hexagons are huge in board games – but I think this is the first time I’ve seen heptagons! In general, I’d say the tokens in the middle are a more sideways move, compared to the others, though.

I’m someone who does value how a game looks and feels. But I also value it being compact – both on the shelf, during transport, and on the table.

I'd say the box is a bit larger – but not too bad!

Inside the deluxe box, without the board.

Inside the regular box, without the board.

However, the only thing I think is a pretty pure downgrade, when going to the deluxe version, is the board. (I’ve added the English names to the original board – so disregard that if you’d like!)

The boards set up next to each other. The eluxe board is more green and blue, and less pastel, and is about 20% larger in both directions.

Closer image of the whole regular board.

The original board gets somewhat congested in the end, and the deluxe components are larger. But it’s still a bit annoying that the game now needs more board space.
I think I like the palette less (even though it fits nicely with the rest of the art direction, which I do quite like).
Even though it adds boats, it lacks some interior details from the original.

What I would give it, though, is that the combination of size, colours, and lack of details makes it even more readable. But that wasn’t a big problem with the original.

Closeup of an area, showing little rivers and cute buildings.

I love the little rivers and buildings. And as they're pretty muted, they don't hurt the readability.

The deluxe board only has very same-y mountains all over the interior.

Compared to the original, the deluxe board is pretty bland, in my opinion.

All together now

Both boards, with an on-going 3-player game.

Here's (almost) all the components, for a 3-player game. (There would be one less katana/tiebreaker token, and in the deluxe version every player would have a daimyo card.)

Deluxe close-up of the are around Kyo, with some meeples out on the boad.

Deluxe close-up of the are around Shuri Castle, which shows a boat illustration on the board and the nice textured player coloured dice.

The player dice are unnecessary, but really nice. They are heavy and have this good-looking texture.

Verdict

The good:

Nice box- and card-art.
The box isn’t that much larger.
The daimyo variant seems like a decent addition.
Good player components.

The bad:

Larger board presence.
Only Japanese rules and components (we’ll see whether I’ll apply a fix for this or not)
Duller board art.

In general, though – Rumble Nation is a terrific board game for the price and complexity, that I greatly recommend picking up 🖇️. And the deluxe version is good – which is fortunate, as it’s the only one I can find at the moment.

Bonus images

As a side note, here are the other games I ordered from amazon.co.jp:

Rumble Nation Deluxe, The Rail on the Hill, Cavy 'v' Cavy, Exhaust, and Merchant of Goldfish.

I’m especially happy with the addition to this little collection:

Goat 'n' Goat, Sheep 'n' Sheep, Capybara 'n' Capybara, and Cavy 'n' Cavy.

Retreat used to be that you could return up to 3 soldiers – but now it’s 2. That’s probably a good change. ↩︎
This counts as 2 armies in a fight, but only 1 army while placing. ↩︎
So, the tactic cards are available to all players all game, and it’s first-come-first-served, while the daimyo abilities are selected at the beginning of the game, and you can choose when to use it. ↩︎