Day Out

A good day of Bushido at Common Ground Games yesterday.  Got to play against Mark Watson's Silvermoon 'Buto-herd' and show John Sinclair's Temple the ropes.  Did a bit more test profile testing, but don't really have more to add than my feedback so far.  I used the test profile(s) in the game against Mark, and didn't in the game against John, and I felt remarkably less active in the second game.  Really looking forward to Wave 20.

Behold Master Akari while we're here:

The first game was quite intimidating.  Fighting a trio of buto is just scary with the sheer amount of health they bring to the board.  It's really a case of staring at them and thinking "how the hell am I going to kill all that stuff?"  The answer is: start with Old Zo.  Then kill everything that isn't a buto.  Finally, work on killing some buto.  The Death-Chicken didn't put up much of a fight, after seeing it maul the Wraith, I was a bit surprised it just keel over and die when I attacked it.  Clearly Kenzo was made of sterner stuff.

The game against John Sinclair was a real eye opener for me, as Shisa and the Grey Pilgrim combined with Ekusa's Aura of Serenity is a giant pain to deal with.  None of my models can attack or use special defences, John had no such problems with his soulless models.  It's certainly a way to get some easy outnumbering going as none of my models can dance around with side step defence anymore.  It is rather subject to bad match ups against certain Cult lists though.  I didn't use any test profiles against John as he's just not as experienced at the game as most of the Glasgow players (we're notoriously hardcore about our game(s) of choice).  Unfortunately for John I opted for an early scenario rush style of list, and we were playing Ryodo.  So I just rushed into the middle zone, pretty much ignored my own zone apart from a couple of token defenders, and then threw as many of my mobile models into his zone as possible.  Then it was just a case of maintaining a scenario point lead until the Temple models eventually collapsed from poison.

Round One: FIGHT!

There were some entertaining games had by the other people there, Martin's Savage Wave against Dave's Prefecture was hilarious, with Martin having a very secure 3-0 win magically turning into a 1-1 draw.  Dave's ashigaru list is interesting to see, it has no samurai at all.  I couldn't tell you how Jim's games went, most of mine lasted longer.

John Sinclair had a much cooler way of making tokens than what I've been using - the condition tokens I had made are just really big, I'd rather have something a little more compact.  John used white 16mm tiddly-winks and custom printed circular sticky labels, and they look much better.  So I'm going to order some tiddly-winks and see how printing my own sticky labels works out.  I'm probably going to keep my tired/exhausted base rims however, you can see one on the Wraith in the picture above.

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.

Two-Swords, One Heaven

My enthusiasm for Bushido continues.  The Ito Clan starter box arrived and I've already finished Ito Itsunagi - probably the most powerful member of the Ito Clan.  He's not as good as I could have painted him though, as I tried to paint on his tattoos and it all went horribly wrong and had to redo a lot of his flesh.  He's still passable, but definitely just tabletop quality now.  Ah well, at some point when I'm drowning in time and money I may get another Itsunagi and try again.  For now though I'll settle for getting a fully painted force.

My first real game is scheduled for next week (the 28th) against Dave Hamilton's Prefecture of Ryu force.  The Prefecture are the 'standard' samurai force: samurai with ashigaru retainers.  No weird powers or unusual creatures for the most part.  The Prefecture seems to be the faction for rocking straight up to someone and beating them down.  Just about everyone in the faction has plenty of armour, which makes it very unlikely to kill anyone in a single exchange without access to Sharp or Armour Piercing.

The Ito Clan on the other are all about dancing around the combat, or evading a direct fight when possible.  Nearly everyone has access to Side Step Defence (basically, I get to walk away if I succeed at defending in melee), most of the samurai in the faction can do it with no penalty.  Unfortunately most of the models in the starter box are very fragile, it is very much a case of protecting Itsunagi while he kills everything.

I actually prefer the old starter box with Ito Kenzo and Naoko over Ito Itsunagi and Akimoto.  The snakeman Akimoto really doesn't seem all that useful to me, he can become very terrifying, but to do that he can't move and he can't be in combat.  Other than that though, he's terrible in combat, has no ranged attack... he's there to generate Blood of Orochi tokens (you can use those to give models in your army the Poison special ability, the lethality is determined by how many Blood of Orochi tokens you spend on an individual model).  Sure Itsunagi is a powerhouse, but Naoko is so much better than Akimoto, while Kenzo isn't miles off from Itsunagi.  Fortunately I have ordered Kenzo and Naoko, so I may have the option of either version of the starter box.  I'll just bring what's painted, so probably the newer 'normal' starter box.

On the hobby front, I seem to have developed a weird taste for building bamboo hedges out of toothpicks and copper wiring.  It's very easy, and I may end up with a disproportionate number of hedges to other terrain.  My board has been put on hold after Mark Bonatti asked how I made all the terrain seamless (he thought it was modular) at which point I slapped myself on the forehead and then decided to make modular terrain instead.  I do need to pick up a giant bag of clump foliage for my hedges though, these tiny GF9 tubs are not cost-efficient.

Update: I got fed up with Itsunagi's terrible skin and redid it (again) so now it's a much smoother blend.  It's much better but it's still just a good tabletop quality.  Pictures once the whole starter box is finished.