Upon the Temple Steps

Temple of Ro-kan: Suchiro

Hmm, been a lot longer than I thought since my last update.  The Bushido community is starting to grow now, and we have a lot of interest from members of the gaming club whenever I bring in my swamp board (still WIP I'm afraid, also a bit of a failure in game board design - slopes are bad!).  I'm doing demo games over the next few weeks to rope more people into the game.  There's also a Bushido Scotland Facebook group for anyone interested in joining.

On the painting front, I picked up Suchiro to start off my Temple force - The plan is to collect a model or two a month for Temple until I have the full selection and paint them up slowly so I can really bring out the best of the models.  As you can see, my Suchiro came out pretty well, there are some errors you can see in the photo (particularly the 'bleed' from the wash I applied to his belt) but those have been fixed.  I also can't figure out how to get his eyes to look like they're open without painting his actual eyes in - though it looks like he's focusing Ki with his closed eyes, so I'm happy to leave it.  The rock was a bit OTT and might be something I'll sort out at a later date.

The Ito Clan models are almost all done, I finished Ayako since I prefer playing the more active shisai style lists over the raw brute force the samurai and ashigaru lists bring.  I decided that the Ito Clan are fun, but a little lacking in the tricks that allow you to pull off those amazing wins at the last second.  That may change with the next couple of releases (one hopes) but I really enjoyed painting Suchiro, I'd like to do more models like him rather than Masunagi and his bajillion quilted squares, so the Temple of Ro-kan may be my painting project for the foreseeable future.

Puppet Strings

I've been getting a lot of games against Jim and his new Cult army, and it's certainly an interesting experience.  I try to vary my lists each time we play so that Jim gets a new play experience and can see a variety of tactics.  For me, it's very different from playing against the Savage Wave - there are a lot of models I just can't target with Ki feats as they're either kami or soulless.  I also have a very hard time dealing with Kato's marionette when Jim uses it, mostly because it's durable and tends to be placed behind the battle line.  Part of me wants to make lists with Itsunagi to deal with things like that, but his rice cost and what it forces me to sacrifice in my list makes me very wary.

Nezumi seems to be a really irritating model for me to play against, as I constantly get him down to 1 health, and then he just refuses to die - Ki feats suddenly miss, attacks whiff, it all goes horribly wrong.  The Gaki seems to be a very solid  model for the Cult too, with good stats at a low rice cost.  I really dislike Kato, but that's more of a product of not being able to get to him most of the time, and every time the marionette does a Ki check, I roll a 1 and lose a model for 7 activations.

On my end I'm liking using Takeji as he is almost guaranteed to put damage on an enemy model provided he's the model attacking.  Naoko continues to be something of the linchpin of my particular play style, I just can't get enough of blind, and I really like being able to activate "Slither", allowing her to threaten the further away objectives or just get up the board.  I'm trying to get a similar use out of Chiyo and her leap trait, but it's not working out so far.

In my next couple of lists, I think I'm going to attempt bringing both Akimoto and Naoko to see how doubling up the impetuous works out.  I'm hoping it gives me a little more flexibility in how I start my turn, ideally with either of the two models at an objective - my great failing at the moment, I often leave Naoko away from an objective so she doesn't get to either take it or contest it at the start of the turn.  Maybe it will sell Akimoto a little better to me, as at the moment I think he's a terrible, terrible choice for any list known to man or beast.

My Body is No Temple

Played against Dave tonight and his bakemono horde on the Envoy scenario - which ended in a draw, though that was my own fault really - and Dave is definitely out practice, so I can't really count it as a 'win', even if he did end the game with only one model left (Wu-zang).  I opted to use the shisai/debuff list since Dave chose the 'more painted models' option rather than the 'new hotness'.  My other list is more based around purely killing things.  I was thinking I could swap out Naoko from my debuff list and replace her with Kaihime, but that will have to wait until the archer is painted.

Now that I'm fully stocked with all the currently available Ito Clan, I'm starting to look around at the other factions available.  Strangely, the Silvermoon Trade Syndicate is very enticing, even with their tiny range of models at the moment.  If the STS continue with the starter box themes I can see them becoming true scenario monsters.  The applications of Tsubaki alone gives me the heebie-jeebies.  For a faction with more models available, the Temple of Ro-Kan look interesting, but I'd like more models like Suchiro with his half-robe rather than guys in jogging bottoms like Riku and Kenko.  Maybe it's time to sharpen up my sculpting skills.