Ka-Caw!

Experiments with Wind Watchers are finally concluded unless GCT release another tengu profile I didn't know about.  I'm pretty happy with how the warband now functions and how it performs.  I do suffer from being out-activated however, but then again I can completely ruin someone's day: we're talking serious Negative Play Experience here.  So I'm loving it from my side of the table of course.  I expect some form of errata will hit it eventually.

Theme: Wind Watchers

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Hokibo
Kotenbo
Tarobo
Zephyr Guard x2
Air Kami x2 (maybe swap one for an Earth Kami)

Deflection
Spiritual Harmony

Basically I run around killing stuff with Hokibo and Kotenbo with little or no consequences.  It's glorious.  I'd like to test out the warband against a few other factions, namely the Ito Clan is the one that concerns me.  Mark Bonatti surprised me when he brought along the Shadow Wind Clan last time we played, but that was in the previous iteration of the Wind Watchers warband, which didn't bring Kotenbo for the extra hitting and staying power.  I have a vague concern about ranged attacks, but it's nothing I don't think I can handle.

The warband does want to get an advantage early and try to keep it before it runs out of steam, but that's more of a reflection on myself as a player.  It's how I like to play most games.  It's very different to my White Mesa theme warband which likes to grind its way through the enemy warband, but uses the odd sneaky trick to appear in strange places.  There's a couple more iterations of the White Mesa I'd like to try out before the UK Masters regardless.

Jim's going through various iterations of Cult of Yurei stuff, though he's not enjoying how the Tengu Decension *will* get to your support models, and very quick too.  I really wish I'd brought the camcorder with me for our last game, that would have been an amazing soundbite to have on hand.  So instead I get heaps of chaff to wade through most of the time, not something I particularly relish, but it does help me identify the weaknesses of the warband.

Going back to the Shadow Wind clan though, it was very educational seeing them in action with the full special card treatment.  I think House of the North Star (is that right?  The one that gives out free enhancement and soulless) is going to be the default theme, but not owning the cards myself, I can't say that with utter certainty.  Soulless and disguise is pretty bloody potent though, especially in VIM scenarios just now, but I'm still waiting on the errata concerning VIM animals, disguises, and flank to be released.  That would solve that particular thorn.  Katsumi and Kerasu are both pretty scary to fight against, as they're MS 4 profiles with Brutal (1), but I didn't find the rest of the ninjas worth worrying about as the tengu have plenty of Sixth Sense to go around.

It's Bird, Definitely not a Plane

It looks like people voted for the tengu in the Bushido Facebook poll, I thought the Minimoto were going to get it (and I voted for them) but a late surge in votes pushed the tengu to the front.  I was wondering if GCT were going for the long-nosed tengu or the bird people route, I'm not surprised they opted for the long-nosed tengu since GCT seem to stay as close to traditional Japanese mythology as possible for most of their supernatural creatures - or at very least give a hefty nod in that direction.

The Temple Bushi and Kazuhiko are both painted and based.  Quite happy how they came out; again, not my finest work, but good tabletop quality and I'm just happy to have a mostly painted force rather than trying to make each model a masterpiece.  Yes, there will be (bad) pictures since my digital camera went the way of the dodo a long time ago, and I don't have the big lights I used to photograph my Sunshine Kriel models.  Once there's daylight again I'll whip out the smartphone and take some pictures.

The Temple Bushi was a real asset in my demo game for Martin Casey and his Savage Wave - though we discovered that the Bakemono Archers aren't quite all we thought they were going to be.  It could just be a starter box thing though, I had a word with one of the other Savage Wave players later and he was telling me about the general tricks the Bakemono Horde can pile onto the table once you throw in the characters.  Well, that's for Martin and the other Savage Wave players to test out.  Zuba was pretty awesome though, he blatted Naoko rather handily before Kenzo finally took the oni down in a few rounds of combat.  I really like Kenzo, he's definitely my favorite troubleshooter for the Ito Clan.

The new tactic of focusing on the majority of the objectives, rather than ALL of them seems to have worked out nicely.  Just piling my guys towards a limited number of objectives and getting an early scenario activation or two really helps.  I can see how problematic armies like the Prefecture ashigaru lists are for scenarios since they can give the ashigaru extra activations.  I noticed that I could reach the objectives at the end of turn one, but I had no more activations to utilize them.  With Hanzo and/or Junichi can easily get to an object and still have an activation or two to do scenario actions on turn one.  Bloody Prefecture.  I'll just have to kill them all.  Or I can run the Ito Clan version of the list using Satoshi and lots of my own ashigaru.