It's Too Bright

EXCITING TIMES!  RISEN SUN IS AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER.

All the capitals, but honestly, if you're reading this blog, you already know Risen Sun is available.  The Pre-Order will end on the 1st of July, so it won't all be available before the UK Games Expo.  There are a number of things I'm proud of with the work I put into Risen Sun, but two stand out in particular: the redesign of Satou Kioshi, and my suggestion for the cover (though someone else has obviously done all the hard work).

"I actually like the plain white with the logo.  Could go with traditional Japanese bookbinding pattern along the spine."

LOOK AT THAT.  LOOK AT IT!  I mean, the binding is on the wrong side, but it's still a gorgeous-looking book.  My OCD also noted that a corner of the title label has folded over.

The downside to Risen Sun (Risun?) is that I cannot afford all the new goods to update my collection.  I've ordered rulebooks, ronin cards, and Eldest Brother for myself and Jim; and two factions for each of us.  I don't have any of the models in the Prefecture starter box, so I ordered that too.  My Ito Clan updates and Jim's Savage Wave are going to have to wait a while.

Not Just a Lucky Number

I travelled to Rotterdam to play in the Benelux Bushido Masters and thoroughly enjoyed the trip.  I did spend an inordinate amount of time walking around with Hannah - so much so that I was walking with a limp a day after my arrival in Amsterdam.  I blame my new walking boots for that, the right one doesn't seem to grip my ankle very well.  Guess it's back to trainers only for now.

I came second, again using the Satou clan style Prefecture.  I was beaten out by a Death & Decay warband, which was also my only loss - and even then I'm pretty sure I could have won with a minor shift in tactics.  I also got to play against a whole range of new things and discover things I simply didn't know about, such as: why does Dudiko have Pierce (3) natively on her bow?  This is something I discussed this with Jason afterwards and we had an "oh yeah, we could have done this instead" moment about it, but it's too late to fix now.

There were three Prefecture players, out of 8 players.  All the warbands were quite different, though the other two Prefecture players both brought Katsumoto, which tells me his stock is quite impressive.  I didn't see him getting used to his full potential, he was more of an Order battery.  On the other hand, using Dominate against something like Death & Decay is usually quite pointless.

I would like to play around with the Jung Pirates before the UK Masters in a couple of weeks, having now brought the same Prefecture warband to tournaments twice now; but Jim isn't wanting to play Bushido until the cards come out, so I don't have anyone to practice against.  I'm getting more sold on having a sideboard over theme bonuses, but that's also something I'm going to have to explore a bit more.

Another thing I'm discovering is that seven models is absolutely fine for a warband size.  I'm used to having eight with the Jung, but the results with seven models on my Prefecture warband says seven models still gets results.  I'm going to try to get a few more Jung Pirates models painted up, but I'm going to keep the Prefecture stuff on hand for the UK Games Expo.