Knife

It seems like I haven't played Bushido in a really long time.  Which is true.  My D&D campaign dominates most of my spare time these days.  That campaign has allowed me completely unrestricted freedom in my creativity, and I'm discovering that I'm good at running power politics.  I think the real core of power politics is that most people just want power for its own sake.  They don't need any mad drive or reason behind it, they simply want it.  There are plenty of real world examples of this.

With everyone being stuck indoors for now, I've broken out the Bushido again and resolved to get my Jung Pirates fully painted as a faction - though I'm not sure I have all the models... I will check on this once everything I have is painted.  Tora and Jori are sitting on my table right now with the base coats all done.  I just spotted my metal Yuji as well.  Great.

The new Core cards to make up the faction decks to twenty cards each have presented the Jung with some interesting options, though the most important one is Knife.  This weapon is a game-changer for the Juhin:

• Fujiwaro Ran is an okay profile at best with a -1 strength modifier on her melee weapon.  All her abilities are on her profile though, not on her weapon.  This makes her significantly better for 1 rice, giving her an effective +2 strength boost, and an extra Special.
• Yuji's core problem is that he lacks the means to get out of melee once an enemy model gets to him.  Now he can easily get out of combat.
• Tora doesn't need it.  She's great as she is, but you can boost her melee weapon strength up with it if you want to.

Another massively significant card is Attack from Above for the Decension.  Its applications are obvious.  You fly into melee, you hopefully murder something.

I really want to build a Pacifism-focused Decension warband, but I sold on my Decension a while ago.  It probably wouldn't be too much effort to get the warband in question, but I have plenty of models that need painting already and it would just be the single warband I would be getting.  I'm still thinking about getting a bakemono horde so that I have a fun option to play, especially against newer players.

Having written all that, I’ve just come up with an utterly disgusting Queen of the Waves warband.  If Ben can get a Vassal mod up and running, I think I’ll test it out.  The sheer amount of control it offers makes the samemiman a lot safer and easier to use than normal...  I’m missing one model from it, but that’s an easy obstacle to overcome.