Bringing the Ninja Into the Dojo
The upcoming Hidden Blades expansion is the first time the Hidden Path Dojo will include hidden information. Up until now, every piece on the board has been visible. You can see every Disciple, every Sensei, every movement card in play. If you lose, you can think back through the game and point to the exact turn where things went wrong. The Ninja changes that rhythm completely. It moves in secret, it can share a square with another hidden Ninja, and sometimes the game literally asks you, “Are you sure they are standing there?” and lets you commit to that guess. This post is about the Ninja itself and what it took to make that one piece work inside a system that started life as a pure perfect information game. How the Ninja behaves The Ninja uses the same movement cards as everything else, but it sneaks in a second move each turn. On your turn you still start the same way: pick a card, move a visible piece according to that card’s pattern. That part has not changed at all. The Ni...