Ming Warrior Pokie
Released by the pokie developer Ainsworth in 2016, Ming Warrior is set in ancient China, and has shadowy images of horses, knives, ceremonial swords and battle flags to help give this game a sophisticated appearance.
Laid out in a classic 5 reel, 3 row format, there’s 20 paylines to bet on, with players able to stake as little as 0.01 per spin, or adjust all the way up to a huge gamble of 2000.00.
Wild substitutions, scatter wins and 2 free spins games, each with their own special features will add variety to the normal run of play and even if the features are not triggered, players should still enjoy spinning up some nice wins in a game that has a new twist on a popular theme.
Playing Ming Warrior
Although there’s loads of pokies that have traditional Oriental symbols plastered all over them, Ming Warrior takes a different path and concentrates on the many battles that took place in the ancient history of China.
So anyone expecting the usual lotus flowers, pagodas, vases and so on, will either be disappointed or pleasantly surprised to find these unusual symbols, and each has been designed with great care to make this pokie stand out.
The theme is enhanced by the background to the reels which features a shadowy temple with wide steps and decorated columns surrounding them, and the Ming Warrior himself brandishing a sword below the main part of the game, while on the actual reels, there’s a greyed-out picture of warriors charging on their horses towards an unseen enemy, with red flags and swords raised. It’s pretty dramatic stuff.
Ming Warrior
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Players win by lining 3 or more of the same symbol across an active line, on adjacent reels running left to right, and will need to stake 0.20 as a minimum to qualify for all combinations that land across the game.
Although much of Ming Warrior looks very impressive, the usual playing card symbols 9, 10, J, Q, K and A will create the smaller wins. At least they have been designed in a Chinese-inspired font and like the other symbols, they are also partly in shadow which is quite effective.
Landing 3, 4 or 5 of the number 9 symbol will pay out 5x, 15x or 50x the amount staked per line, while the K, Q and A are each valued at 5x, 25x and 100x. The biggest rewards for lining up standard symbols are found when the horse lands across an active line, with 20x, 75x and then it’s a big leap to 1000x when 5 appear.
Bonus Features
The Warrior turns up again as a wild symbol who can replace any other, apart from the scatter, to complete winning lines. The wild is only valuable when it substitutes for another, as there’s nothing to be gained even if a full line of 5 wilds lands right across the reels.
A silver coin is a scatter symbol, so it won’t need to land on any lines and can literally be scattered all over the reels, with players winning anytime 3 or more appear at once. Instead of multiples of the amount staked per line, scatter pays are multiplied by the total bet per spin, with 2x, 20x or 100x paid out with 3, 4 or 5 of them.
Free Spins Rounds
In an unusual twist to normal practice, 3 or more scatter symbols will trigger not just a single bonus game, but a randomly picked choice of 2 free spins rounds.
Each round consists of 10 spins, but if the wild symbol helps to complete a winning line in any game, the value will be multiplied by 2x or 11x depending on which bonus round is triggered. If 3 or more scatters appear again, then 5 extra spins are added on.
Like many Ainsworth pokies, the main symbols are worth slightly less during the bonus games, which seems a little unfair, but as the spins are not costing anything in the first place, players are not actually losing out on anything.
The Verdict
This is one of the better-looking pokies out there, at least it is for anyone looking for a game which focuses on the art of war, as battle scenes, weapons, warriors and flags give it a distinctive design.
The bonuses are quite standard, with wild wins and scatter payouts being found across most pokies and the free spins games can either be a reasonable round with a 2x multiplier for wild substitutions, or a highly rewarding game with much bigger potential payouts.
There’s nothing actually wrong with the bonus features, it’s just that they are nothing particularly new, so anyone who is draw to the looks of Ming Warrior should find this to be a pretty good game.