Gunsen: The Battle for Toshi Ranbo Board Game (Legend of the Five Rings, 2-6 Players)

Seven clans. One fortress. Forty-five minutes, and somebody is going to be furious.

Gunsen: The Battle for Toshi Ranbo puts you at the head of one of Rokugan's seven Great Clans — Crab, Crane, Dragon, Lion, Phoenix, Scorpion, Unicorn — all fighting over the same castle. Each clan plays differently. Each one is also carrying a secret agenda nobody else can see, and that is the part that makes it sing. You can read the board perfectly and still be reading the wrong person.

What a gunsen actually is

A folding war fan. Generals used them to signal orders across a battlefield when shouting stopped working, and here they are your win condition — get seven of them out and the game is over. You are not swinging a sword. You are pointing, and hoping everyone was looking.

How it plays

Area control, with a tableau you build up as you go. Move your heroes, take villages, win battles, bank resources, and turn all of that into revealed gunsen before anyone else manages it. There are several routes to seven, which is why the table never quite agrees on who is winning until somebody suddenly is.

Thing is, most area control games of this size start to sag at five or six players. This one is built for a full table and still lands inside the hour. That is a rarer combination than it ought to be, and it is the main reason we brought it in.

In the box

• 1 main board and 1 battle board
• 24 clan hero standees and 3 mercenary hero standees
• 6 custom battle dice
• 12 village tokens, 6 battle tracking tokens, 4 upgrade tiles
• 1 Toshi Ranbo tile, 3 shrine tiles, 3 watchtower tiles
• Order cards and battle tactics cards
• 90 resource tokens — 30 influence, 30 wood, 30 koku

The details

• Players: 2–6
• Playing time: around 45 minutes
• Age: 14+
• Designers: Ben Rosset and Matthew O'Malley
• Publisher: Office Dog
• Setting: Legend of the Five Rings — Rokugan, the Emerald Empire
• Released: 28 August 2026

If you know Legend of the Five Rings from the card games, this is the same world at table scale — clan rivalries, elemental magic, and a lot of people being extremely polite to each other while planning something. If you have never touched L5R, it does not matter in the slightest. Nothing here needs homework.

Sent sealed. All our products are sourced from trusted, genuine distributors.

Free UK delivery on orders over £50. Tracked as standard. Ordered before 3pm on a working day, we aim to dispatch same day.

Sealed product can be returned within 30 days, unopened and in original condition. Items opened live on stream cannot be returned once opened.