Battle for Rokugan

The game begins by centering the board and randomly placing face-down territory cards in their designated locations. Players then choose their clans—such as Scorpion, Unicorn, or Crane—and take their corresponding player screens, secret objective cards, and starting hand. Combat and control tokens are separated into their respective pools or bags. Control markers are distributed according to player count, and initiative and starting player cards are sorted to determine the first player for round one. Finally, specific tokens like scorched earth and peace are set aside near the board.

The ultimate goal in Battle for Rokugan is to accumulate the most honor points over five rounds by strategically conquering territories, controlling province groups, and fulfilling secret objective cards assigned during setup. Players must carefully balance military expansion, resource management, and bluffing to outmaneuver rival clans.

Each of the five rounds consists of three main phases: Upkeep, Placement, and Resolution. During the Upkeep phase, players determine initiative, draw combat tokens to fill their screen pools up to six, and draw a territory card. In the Placement phase, players secretly place various combat, navy, shinobi, diplomacy, raid, and bluff tokens face-down on the map. Finally, in the Resolution phase, all tokens are revealed and resolved simultaneously, determining control of contested territories.

Scoring takes place at the end of the game after the fifth round. Players earn honor based on the flower icons present in the provinces they control, points from fulfilled secret objective cards, and specific faction bonuses. Certain regions like the Shadowlands yield no honor, requiring careful territorial selection.

The game officially ends upon the completion of the fifth round's resolution phase. Final honor scores are calculated from all controlled territories, objectives, and special cards, and the player with the highest score is declared the victor.