Board game
Onitama
אוניטאמה
Designed by Shimpei Sato
MeepleMates notes for Onitama
Public snippets combine board game metadata with MeepleMates play history so visitors can evaluate the game for real group play and game night planning.
- Onitama is available as a public board game page on MeepleMates for group planning and collection tracking.
- Best with 2 player according to player poll data.
- BoardGameGeek average rating 7.33 and BGG rank #364.
- Groups use this page to connect Abstract Strategy metadata with real play history, ratings and game night notes.
Onitama is a two-player, perfect information abstract game with a random starting set-up. On a 5x5 board, both players start with five pawns on their side, with the main pawn in the middle.
Each player has two open cards that each display a possible move for any of her pieces. There is a fifth card that cannot be used by either player. On a player's turn, she chooses one of her cards, moves one of her pieces according to the chosen card, then replaces the card she used with the fifth card. The other player then chooses one of his cards, moves accordingly, and exchanges that card with this fifth card - which is, of course, the card the first player just used.
Moving onto one of the opponent's pawns removes that pawn from the game. Taking the opponent's main pawn, or moving your main pawn into your opponent's main pawn's starting space, wins you the game.
Categories
Abstract Strategy
Mechanics
Hand ManagementSquare GridGrid MovementPattern MovementStatic Capture
Best with how many players
1
Not rec.
2
Best
2+
Not rec.
Community votes from BoardGameGeek
Language dependence
No necessary in-game text(25 of 25 votes)
Sub-rankings
- Abstract Game Rank#21
Videos
BoardGameGeek7
Review3
Session3
Instructional1
External data
No Wikidata data is stored for this game yet. If the scheduled enrichment has run recently, Wikidata probably has no BGG mapping for it.
Latest Wikidata run: ok · 09/12/2026.







