Friday 27 September 2019

Sundering Sunderland

Jim and I went down to the Battle Bunker in Sunderland to play in a Bushido tournament over the weekend.  It's about a 3 hour drive from Glasgow, but we're both thirsty for opponents who are Not-the-Other-Person of our duo.  The tournament used an usual sideboard format - basically everyone had access to the Ordered for Battle bonus in addition to whatever theme they picked.  This didn't change anything for Jim or myself as far as I'm aware.

The warband I used was just the ronin Ordered for Battle version of my Conclave of Captains warband:

Jung Minato
Jung Hibiki
Kohanin
Itsiro Crab Swarm

Eldest Brother
+ Vial of Raijin's Breath
Hiroto, Drunken Master
Kami of the Morning Dew

Kamikaze (1 rice)
Rice Bail Barricade

Sideboard:
Kami of Reflection
Kami of Sapping Silt
Squall

Jim used Adam Cross' quad ninja warband.  The tournament was 3 rounds and a lot of fun.  The scenarios in round order were: the Idols, Seikyu, and Botoku.

All my games followed the same formula: play cautious on turn 1 as I have a big activation disadvantage.  Once Hiroto and Eldest Brother arrive via Flank I can really ramp up the aggression.  Use the Kami of Morning Dew and the Itsiro Crab Swarm to deal with anything really scary, and my kancho should be able to run around and pick their choice of targets.

No one exploited my lack of turn one activations, but the players at the tournament weren't experienced and this is a facet of the game that takes a little while to learn - I only really learned how to do it once I swapped over to Prefecture.

On the way home Jim and I discussed the way we play the game and who we play against, and I usually only get to play a warband I create about once, maybe twice, outside of a tournament.  This is because they turn out to be trauma inducing to play against - not something I want to subject beginners to while inducing them to Bushido.  To help alleviate this I've been thinking of getting a Bakemono Horde, it's a style of warband everyone can enjoy playing with/against: plenty of things die, and no one immediately feels overwhelmed playing against it (that may change through the course of the game as more and more bakemono start to appear though).