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“A true master is an eternal student”. And regarding Onitama, this expansion is the greatest embodiment of this. Onitama: Sensei’s Path might look like quite a small expansion, but the truth is it’s an absolute must have if you love the base game.
What’s In The Box?
The base game Onitama is an abstract two players strategy game with easy to learn rules, quick set up but particularly thinky. If you’re a fan of chess, you will be a fan of it, hands down.
This expansion, Onitama: Sensei’s Path, adds a great level of replayability by doing something very simple to the game: adding more cards. No rules are changed and nothing new is added apart from the 16 new cards that bring in some exciting new types of movement which allow for more variety and possibly quite more exciting games (some of the new movements are wild!). These cards come in a nifty and cute little box which unfortunately serves not much purpose as you’ll immediately start storing the expansion cards together with the main game.
Gameplay
I’m a big fan of Onitama, and the first few times I played it I fell in love with it instantly, but a flaw got soon exposed: there just wasn’t enough variety of movement cards. Sensei’s Path basically doubles that number and brings in some really exciting cards to avoid having to deal with one of the possible drawbacks of the base game: a dull draw.
Certain cards in this expansion have really aggressive positions which can make or break a game depending on how they are used and that also makes certain matches more exciting and faster to play than usual, making the overall experience of play better. On top of this, the variety of cards added by Sensei’s Path is not only a great addition to replayability, but it also makes it harder for seasoned Onitama players to take advantage of certain card combinations to steamroll their opponent by making plays and utilizing board positions that are pretty much indefensible due to lack of available response.
Final Thoughts
In my opinion, Onitama: Sensei’s Path is a must have if you plan to keep Onitama in your collection. The level of variety and replayability added is huge, it makes the game more unpredictable and exciting which in turn just brings the base game to another level. The only bad point I can think of it is that it should’ve been included with the base game from the start. You may consider it a bit pricey if we look at the fact that each card is costing around 75p each but if you play Onitama you need this in your life, trust me you’ll never look back!
