Snakes & Still No Ladders

Painting is progressing pretty steadily, and I'm happy that my Ito Clan force is getting visible painting progress.  I've just finished Chiyo, putting my starter box at 3/5 complete, with only the Temple Bushi and Sakura remaining.  Since Kenzo is sitting at 50% done on my desk I think I'll paint him next, even though he's not part of the normal starter box.

Another game against Dave's Prefecture today, at 35 rice, my 50 rice list reinforcements still haven't arrived from GCT - though they are about to ship out everyone's copy of the rulebook, so I can forgive them for the delay I guess.  I used the old starter box set (even if only Chiyo was painted out of that set) and it definitely feels like I get more out of it than the normal one.  Dave won 2-1 on that one, mostly because Bikou is total bullshit.

I do wonder how on earth certain models make it through any sort of play-testing, I only had to look at her card to go "wtf?"; actual play experience confirmed this.  Who gives a model that generates 2 Ki, a 2 cost Ki feat that lets her shoot 3 times?  Shooting is extremely powerful in Bushido for the most part, and 3 shots that ignore armour just... words cannot describe the feeling of design failure.  I mean, when you have a look at the Prefecture forum and see this, something needs a fix.  Personally I'd like to see Bikou's "Hail of Steel" being 1 Ki more expensive or being Rapid Fire (2) instead.  At the moment she picks someone within 8" and they just die if they have no Toughness.  Models with a 'death bubble' around them probably need a fix.

Other than her however, the game was pretty good.  Kenzo did his thing and became bogged down fighting Mizuchi for 4 turns before finally killing the the bloody dragon.  I did have some unlucky dice but Dave mostly just continued to defend as much as he could on Mizuchi.  Feint is a very powerful ability to activate, and if you want someone dead, definitely dedicate the Ki or resources to using that skill.  Sakura turned out to be a Ki battery yet again, though she did help a Temple Bushi take down Mikio, but I'm finding her to be rather disappointing at the moment.  I'd really like her to be more active.

In other news, I just gave Satoshi a new spear blade since my Satoshi did not have one when the model arrived.  So I rooted around my majestically large Warmachine collection to find a model with a suitable blade, and managed to pin the new blade to Satoshi's spear shaft.  It's a bit shorter than the original, but it's very strong.  Once Satoshi is done and I'll pick up another Temple Bushi and Takeji, I can then try a full Ito Clan ashigaru/samurai force.

Maybe I should make a special sub-section of the blog for my Bushido balancing feedback...
Update: Done!  There's a link in the side tab for my suggested changes now.  Or click here.