Sunday 28 June 2015

Not Yurts

Tengu Decension Starter Set
The latest post about the Tengu Decension is up.  Go forth and check them out!  It looks like the faction colour is yellow.  The cards for the starter box are also revealed, so we get a taste of how they play.

I was supposed to be working today but I discovered that my Suzuki Jimny (it's a really small jeep) has 2 flat tires.  I have one spare tire, but not two, so I'm somewhat housebound until the tire shop around the corner gets some of the appropriate tires in stock.

Today's quite a busy day for Bushido.  The Tengu Decension starter box has been revealed in all its painted glory, and the latest errata is out too.  There's a lot in it concerning traits with conflicting effects now nullifying each other (which I ruled a while ago, but I'd erroneously taken a sentence from the melee timings and got it confused with conflicting traits - now it's actually official).  The Controlled state seems to be in the errata but only to change a couple of words: "requires" turns into "removes".  There's an important list of alternative profiles and which models to use for them when you utilize the new special card sets.  If you're wondering which models to buy with your latest order, you better have a look at the errata.

Been on a mad painting drive lately, Mizuki and both Shimogamo Vipers are nearly finished.  The Takashi/Ito Ancestor is done, but all that model required was a whole load of drybrushing.  All three of the currently available profiles for the Tengu Decension are now fully painted, though I'm not happy with how one of them came out - I was attempting to paint purely by washes since the model has a lot of grooves and ridges, and it didn't come out very well.  I would have done a better job with normal highlights.

Now that the background art for the Tengu Decension is out, I can sit down and make some houses for my future hill tribesmen.  They seem to live in pueblo-style houses, which are ludicrously easy to manufacture with foam board and some round wooden dowels.  Before the artwork I was considering making some yurts or tents.  I'll try to churn out a couple tomorrow and then figure out how to give the illusion of height on my Tengu Decension themed board.

Monday 22 June 2015

Birds of a Feather

Wave 23 is now available for pre-order.  Gogo, order your new stuff!  Don't forget the new special card packs - if you're buying packs and you already have the first set, you'll need both the Generic Special Card Pack 1, and the Special Card Pack 2.  I'm super-excited to see how the themes ended up.  Shisai and Mizuki-hooooooooooooo.  That's a Thundercats reference you heathens.

I think testing for the Tengu Decension is over, many of the profiles have vanished from the testing forum.  Toby (the T of GCT) put up some pictures of some sort of warrior tengu and a crow tengu on Twitter, so I believe the tengu are actually really close to release - the expected date is in August around the same time as Rise of the Kage.

From my own testing, I'm not sure if they're my natural niche like the hebi-centric Ito Clan warbands I usually like, but we'll have to see.  At the moment the number of profiles is very limited, and seems quite focused on being able to fight - which is probably more in tune with the normal playerbase.  I expect that more profiles will come out more in line with what I'm looking for eventually, just not immediately.  I'll be giving one of my more direct fighting warbands a go on Tuesday, and then I think it's back to the Ito Clan until the Tengu Decension full release.

Saturday 6 June 2015

Sojobo

I'm working on painting Sojobo and I'm finding him really easy to paint for some reason.  He looks amazing.  I'm not really sure what the difference is with my painting, but he looks a bajillion times better than my Ito Clan stuff.  Maybe it's because I've started using the hand holding the miniature as a palette?  I ran out of metallics (or I've put them somewhere strange, I can't find any in the flat) so I can finish his claws and staff tomorrow after I visit the shops.





Testing for the Tengu Decension continues.  I think I'm just missing out on the more interesting (to me) profiles - I think the faction lacks the crow tengu at the moment.  Right now it's very mobile within a melee, but there's no way to get out declaring melee or disengage actions.  They also hit like small school children.

Monday 1 June 2015

Back from the Masters

Well that was a very enjoyable UK Games Expo.  I got to play Bushido, speak to some very drunk store owners/distributors, and I met Wayne Reynolds (WAYNE REYNOLDS).  Super cool guy to speak to; I've loved his art ever since I saw the Eberron covers back in 3e D&D.  He even gave me a copy of his Visions of War book, though I'm not 100% sure if he gave everyone who bought prints a copy or whether I got a copy because he liked chatting to me (I did save him from a horde of hardcore MtG people - let us say they did not prioritise hygiene).  Highlight of my weekend really.

Back to Bushido though!  I didn't place too well, having won 2 games, and lost 2 games.  Half my games were entirely down to dice being bad for the losing player, my dice were horrific when I played against Chris Hales (who won the Masters), and Peder Harty's dice were equally as horrific when he played me in the next round.  It wasn't pretty.  Jim came 2nd, which is probably due to me losing to Jason Enos (LEJ) in final round and pushing Jim's strength of schedule up.  I feel like I would have fairly comfortably won my last game if Yatsumata hadn't rolled triple 1's on defence and exploded, but these things happen to everyone and we're playing a game involving pushing around little metal men.  Getting worked up over something like that isn't worth the time.

In the end I chose Yatsumata over Kenzo simply because no one plays Yatsumata, and I regretted it as soon as I played my first game.  The Mizuki warband excels with the Naoko/Kenzo combo since Kenzo can reach a target that has been blinded, Yatsumata cannot most of the time.  So stick with the warband I've actually been playing next time!  Regardless, now that the Masters are over, I think it's time to shelve the Ito Clan for a while, I want to do some play-testing for the Tengu Decension.


So the plan is to move from snakemen to birdmen.  So far I've come up with a few fairly gimmicky warbands that rely heavily on denial and are pretty light on the tribesmen.  There isn't a huge variety of profiles to work with yet, so crafting my normal type of warband (Ki feat heavy, lots of tricks) is fairly difficult.  Testing will commence on Tuesday!