Dank Memes

Wow, it's been ages since I posted an update of any sort here.  I've just been busy and rather Bushido-less for a while now.  This is an update I actually wrote quite some time ago but never got around to posting.

Hokibo has now had his debut official game and he's pretty awesome.  He's already got a small errata too as Dominate should cost 2 Ki, not 3 as stated on his card - confirmed by GCT.  It's easily his most powerful ability and has a large impact on how you can do scenario play with the Tengu Decension.  I'll have to experiment a bit more to see how much mileage I can squeeze out of it. I've been using kenjutsu tokens a fair bit but I think those are probably the weakest option his profile offers.  I also realise that my last warband's failing was having too many insignificant models in it, I'll try to sort that out in future games.

Kappa

I've just finished my Kappa that will go with my Jung Pirates.  He's quite an enjoyable miniature to paint.  I've been experimenting with shading/highlighting with colours that aren't black/white and I'm very happy with the results.  The Kappa is a very good profile for 6 rice, but at the same time his abilities are very niche, a lot of factions won't want to use Quagmire as they have no Light Footed.  I'm thinking of using the Kappa in combination with two Kohanin as they have Light Footed and can follow him around unimpeded.

Pirates or Ninjas?

My kaizoku samurai is now finished!  I'm pretty happy with how he turned out, though I feel I've missed a few things out - especially now that I've taken the photo and can see ALL the mistakes I've made.  Next up for the Jung Pirates I'm going to work on one of the korusea (the guys with the fishing nets).  Hopefully they will go a lot faster than Minato did, but we'll have to see as work is bonkers at the moment.  What's really next up on the painting table is Hokibo so that I have more options for the Tengu Decension (unless GCT really do send me all the Jung Pirates (I don't think they will, but I asked anyway)).

Jung Pirates - Minato Jung

Speaking of Minato, his card is missing his ranged attack stats: 1/2/3, +1 damage modifier.  This is confirmed by GCT.

It looks like Wave 26 is going to be full of ninjas.  Players who didn't get them with the Rise of the Kage Kickstarter will be very pleased to know they'll be able to get hold of the ninjas soon.

Sea Robbery

Fairly behind on the updates, but work has been tremendously busy and I honestly haven't had a chance to play all that much Bushido lately.  I'd like to rectify this, and managed to get a game against Mark Bonatti's Ito Clan last Tuesday with my Tengu Decension, and it's actually quite terrifying playing against Ito when you know exactly what they all do.  I managed to squeeze a win out of nowhere through the ingenious use of the Focus action and an active Ki feat, but I was pretty sure it was in the bag for Mark for most of the game.

Metal Minato has been a joy to paint so far.  I'll work on taking some pictures up once I'm happy with where he's finished - I'm not sure if I'll attempt some tattoos or not, my previous experiences with tattoos have been godawful.  Having inspected my metal Minato against both the plastics and the online picture of the studio model, mine appears to have been badly moulded (sad times) but he's still pretty presentable - a lot of what I thought were model features turned out to be large flash, but it's painted and doesn't look weird, so it's staying.

My original plans for making a docks board have been put on hold and modified towards making a pirate cove for my future Jung Pirates.  This lets me ditch the idea of having fully cobbled/flagstone streets and I can go for something a little rougher for the main board.  My plan is to use the bajillion wooden stirrers I have to build up some wooden docks, with a main loading/unloading area in the middle for zones (or some cover in the case of a 6 idols scenario).  I wouldn't expect LoS to be further than about 8" on this one.  I may even get to use the 2 kilos of random offcuts from my original Bushido board (the swamp board).  My plan is to stop by B&Q for 25mm foam and plywood in the next couple of days.  Pictures will be posted!

Yo-ho-ho

Jung Pirates

I finally got hold of the Jung Pirates cards, and I really like them.  So much so that I'm prepared to throw the Tengu Decension under the bus and pick up the Jung Pirates instead when the time comes. Right now, there's only 4 profiles, but just looking at them and I can see the possible interactions already.  I really wish I'd ordered a full complement of metal pirates now (sadface), but like everyone else I'll have to wait for the faction general release.  I'll stick with the Tengu Decension for now (and probably use them at the next UK Games Expo) but it's the pirates I'm really after.

We've been playing a lot of Rise of the Kage at the moment, and I'm enjoying it quite a lot - quite possibly because I'm a bit of a sadist and I like being the guard player.  Unfortunately there's a fair bit of tweaking that needs to be done in order to balance the game out, we think we've hit roughly the right spot with the following modifications to the game:

The Guard player has to pay an Allocation token to play a card.  They can keep any tokens they don't spend at the end of the turn so use cards in the following Ninja Turn, but those will be reset as normal once it's the Guard Turn again.  (apparently I should not draw arrows using text, it makes the blogging software go crazy)

Guards can only be allocated a maximum of 1 noise token.  Avoids the Chuck Norris guard of death.

Guard bosses can be allocated a maximum of 2 noise tokens.  Just because the Guard Boss is the Chuck Norris of the mission, but too much Chuck Norris is a bad thing (to some people).

Wounds incur a -1 penalty per wound to the ninja's dice rolls instead of removing a dice.  This means a wounded ninja isn't completely useless as they no longer have any dice of the appropriate type, but a heavily wounded ninja is still pretty awful.

Ninjas place equipment and bonus cards face down on the ninja profiles until they are used.  This adds a lot of mystery for the Guard player, you never quite know if it's worth saving the Broken card or not.

Sabotage may be played to nullify any guard card.  This lets the ninjas actually do something about a guard card that's particularly nasty.

Remove the following cards from the Ninja Deck:
Intuition
Insight
Disturbed Again
Disturbed!!

Remove the following cards from the Guard Deck:
Surprise (2 amber alert guards)
Surprise (1 red alert guard)
There They Are! (3 guards)
Noise noise noise
Loyalty (Docks of Ryu expansion)
Hinderance (Docks of Ryu expansion) (any ninja dice)
Send For Help (Docks of Ryu expansion) (the -1x(guard) +2x(noise) one)

Certain Guard Boss specific cards may need to be vetted, but we haven't played enough with this iteration to know which ones - I think Oka will probably the most victimised for this.

Otherwise, play the game as normal.

Kage... Possibly Rising...

I've now tried out the Tengu Decension against a few more factions and players and it's becoming a lot clearer what they're good at and what they're not with the currently available profiles.  There's definitely a few holes in the faction: some bodyguard Tribesmen for the support tengu, and something to help deal with fear are the top of my list.  Right now they do suffer quite badly when out-activated since their ability to remove enemy models is weak.  I think I'm going to aim for sheer model count (like James Hasker has done) in the next couple of games.

In more important news: MY COPY OF RISE OF THE KAGE (with expansion) HAS ARRIVED!
Wooooooooooooooo.  It's all unpackaged and ready to be played on Sunday.

I do wish I'd ordered the Bushido cards for everything though, but I'm happy enough to be surprised when things actually come out.  It's a pretty big set of releases for Prefecture, and the introduction of the Shadow Wind Clan will certainly shift a few things in Bushido.  I didn't know the Jung Pirates would get some of their profiles revealed though, that really interests me - what's the faction schtick?

More terrain is available from Master Crafted Miniatures (who funnily enough did all the digital sculpts of the Tengu Decension from what I understand).  Lots of lanterns abound.

Wave 25 Concept Art

Prefecture of Ryu - Atsuchi & Hunting Akira

Temple of Ro-Kan - Master Enos

Ito Clan - Taisei

Silvermoon Trade Syndicate - Malosi

Tengu Decension - Scout of the Blue Gale

Tengu Decension - Hokibo

Small Blog Update: Concept Art

Just letting people know I've been hunting down the older concept art, and I've now completed all the entries from Wave 13 onwards.  I'll try to get the earlier concept arts as I find the time.

Wisdom of the Tengu

I'm really impressed with how the Tengu Decension warband played on Tuesday.  Granted Martin managed to rockblock himself with double Tribal Brutes being Stupid at terrible times, but it did help highlight just how manoeuvrable the Tengu Decension really are.  They're not fast in the traditional sense, but they can always go where they really want to go and there's not a lot you can do about it.

Sojobo the Exile is an amazing profile.  I didn't really visualise just how good he was since I've used the Temple of Ro-Kan profile for Sojobo during playtesting.  I also like that he fits into both themes right now, especially given the limited profiles available to the faction.  The first sneaky tactic I've found is flying behind enemy models, turning them around and then pushing them towards my warband.  It's a little clumsier than just slapping a control token on them, but your opponent now has to deal with Sojobo standing in the middle of their warband.  If he's been able to throw up Aegis of Blades, he can shrug that off that really quite easily.

I'm thinking of bringing a Gorinto to the White Mesa warband so that Nuniq will be able to use her Snare at least once a turn rather than every other turn.  It's one of those things that's worth testing, but it's probably over-thinking the situation a bit.  She's a profile I like, though I can see she's probably not for everyone.  Snare is very much a gambler's Ki feat: when it works there's flowers and sunshine; when it doesn't you wonder why you bothered spending the rice on Nuniq.  To bring the Gorinto in I have to ditch Fujin's Breath though, which is a special card I'm still evaluating - it's really hard to know if it's worth it in a particular game and is quite scenario dependent.  I'll try it out both ways and see how it goes.  If neither work all that well, Amaterasu's Riddle is it!

The Tengu Decension Have Landed

My Tengu Decension have arrived!  I have even finished assembling all the miniatures now, and they await sorting out their bases.  The wings are surprisingly sturdy on the whole, I only had to pin the wings on the Zephyr Guard and Zenkibo (since they use the same base body and wings).  All the other tengu have built-in pins so to speak and seem to be just fine with simple gluing.

Tarobo's miniature is amazing, though it does come in a bajillion pieces.

I'm quite pleased with their selection of special cards.  There's no obvious duds (hi there Shomyo to Orochi...) and nothing that screams overpowered.  I quite like the Spirit Trap event card, but you have to bring a shisai to get it; the only shisai available is Ryuhobo so the options are fairly limited right now.  Shepherds of White Mesa is a theme I really like with what's available, I'd probably move into the Wind Watchers theme once more tengu and some birds are released.

This week I think I'll be testing out a Shepherds of White Mesa theme:

Sojobo the Exile
Sanjakubo
Taliriktug (+Vial of Raijin's Breath)
Tarobo
Nuniq
Zephyr Guard
Kami of the Strong West Wind

Deflection
Fujin's Breath

The idea is to stun something with Tarobo or Sanjakubo, then try to beat the crap out of it as quickly as possible.  I'm probably going to run into issues with factions like the Savage Wave, as I don't really see how I'm going to be killing multiple bakemono every turn with this warband without a healthy dose of luck.  I'd also be interested to see how fighting against Temple works out as my warband is no longer filled with Steady models.

Time will tell however, as the faction is still very young and once it has more profiles to choose from, I might find a more natural niche.

Culinary Excellence

The wikia is both surprisingly easy and surprisingly tedious.  Adding images is a giant hassle, though I did just discover the 'classic' editor... It's much easier for me to create entries using the classic editor, but I've already done so many entries in the default editor, swapping over would require redoing a lot of work.  It's probably going to be a very slow growth, as I have a job and all that normal real-life weirdness that keeps eating my time.  On a side note: my culinary skills are pretty damn amazing.

Tested out the new revised dual-shisai warband with additional fighting models.  It works really, really well.  Yatsumata behind an objective with Camouflage (2) is stupidly awesome - hilariously so in fact.  The Jade Witch is really good with a samurai to throw Ki at, and she's constantly brimming with Ki as long as you're harassing your opponent.  The more conservative vipers are really nice to have around too, as I no longer have the temptation of Dark Secrets in the warband.  Now they can just lurk on the edges of the board, looking menacing until the time is right.

There's quite a lot you can do with this particular combination of shisai.  A little bit of a sneaky combo to do with Satuski and the Jade Witch is to land Death Sentence on an enemy model, then Psychic Drain all the Ki away so the enemy model can't clear the Death Sentence off at the start of next turn - or they could after generating Ki but then they'll have no Ki to use during the turn.  It's an interesting form of Ki denial.  Or you can simply Death Sentence an animal since they can't store Ki and thus can't remove the Death Sentence.

Orochi Snake Cult (50 Rice)
Yatsumata
Kenzo Ito
The Jade Witch
Satsuki
Temple Asp
Shimogamo Viper
Shimogamo Viper
The Blessed (theme)

I'd like to have put some special cards in there, but the cost of putting them in versus the models I wanted to take to shore up the warband moved me more towards better models.  I'm a bit stumped at how I'd take on certain warbands, but there's nothing like a little trial-by-fire to figure out solutions in a hurry.

Ka-caw

The Tengu Decension are now available for pre-order.  It's the starter box and 5 additional profiles: Sanjakubo, Ryuhobo, Hill Tribe Warrior, Buzenbo, and the Zephyr Guard.  With the additional profiles from the special cards, it's still a very limited selection of profile to construct a warband, but it's a start.

Buzenbo isn't as an amazing all-rounder as he was in playtest, but that was to be expected - there were only a trio of profiles to take at the top end of the faction, and he was the best by quite a large margin at covering all the bases.  I expect the majority of the big, scary profiles of the faction to be kurama tengu like Buzenbo: larger bases, maybe Wing Buffet as a Ki-feat (yes please!), and generally being a badass.

I really want to see what the Tengu Decension themes are, all I can really remember from testing is that one only allowed tengu on 30mm bases.  No idea what the theme actually did, but Sojobo is on a 30mm base...  Weirdly I'm actually looking forward to finding out what more of the tribesmen do in the faction, given that there's only a measly 3 profiles for them at the moment.

Tomorrow I'm playing against Mark Watson and his Silvermoon Trade Syndicate, I'm going to try a Ito Clan Blessed warband with the shisai without Naoko and more heavy hitters - so both Yatsumata and Kenzo.  Poor Saburo gets downgraded into a simple Temple Asp.  I was also thinking of trying out Yuui and a new test profile along with Kenzo for more mid-range rice costed fighting power, but I think that's more of a Mizuki type of thing.  Also uses a test profile and I haven't painted Yuui yet.  I'd rather go for the fully painted warband.

Double Trouble, The Wiki Begins

The Jade Witch is amazing.  No really, especially when you bring her in the Blessed theme.  I was really surprised since whenever I used her in playtest, things did not work out all that well - the theme was also slightly better in playtest and I imposed my own restrictions on it (no samurai for instance) since I believed it was going to get nerfed into the ground.  Back to the Jade Witch however...  She reaps in Ki like no tomorrow if you can position right - and not get the other shisai killed - and threaten your opponent constantly.  The sheer amount of Ki I was getting was pretty unbelievable, there weren't many turns when she wasn't at maximum Ki.  I'm going to try her out in a few more games, and I'm curious at how the warband will handle bad match ups - like the Death and Decay theme from the Cult of Yurei.  Badly I suspect.

I'm also trying out new things with the Shimogamo Vipers, being much more conservative with them and trying to play for later game rather than trying to win by turn 4.  Rather than trying to declare melee actions all the time, I may as well do the odd disengage just to keep them alive and keep them harassing my opponent.  That and I don't need to use Dark Secrets on turn 1, that's just a luxury.  Unfortunately I'm a now person, not a later person, so like the scorpion crossing the river I'm having to fight against my nature to make it happen.

This week's Tengu Decension reveal is Ryuhobo, one of the Koroko (owl) tengu.  He's a very nifty support model, but quite defensive in how you use him.  If I were to list similar support models, I'd say he's like a mix of Shuichi/Old Zo?  He's nice to have in most warbands but I think he'll fall by the wayside for most people since he's not an aggressive or particularly proactive profile.  I quite like him with any of the big hitters of the faction, Ryohobo keeps them up and running.

Oh yes, I started to create the Jumo Ring wikia.  It's still a big work-in-progress but I hope to create something that other people will maintain on their own until I destroy it in a fit of pique!  MWAHAHAHAHAHA!  Or you know, it ends up running itself.  The plan is to keep adding the bare-bones of a few profiles each day until there's an entry for everything, and then start filling in the gaps with more solid tactics and techniques.

Riddle Me This, Riddle Me That

My special cards arrived in the post the other day.  I'm happy with how the Ito Clan themes came out, though I suspect I'm extremely unlikely to use the Lords of Izu theme - it's just not my thing really.  The Blessed theme on the other hand is pretty much every Ito Clan warband I ever make, so free bonuses for me!  Woohoo.  It's not quite as good for non-shisai as it was in playtest, but the benefits you can choose every turn are still pretty good to have.  Hugely disappointed with Shomyo to Orochi though.

The generic cards bring a particularly horrific one to the types of warband I like to play: Amaterasu's Riddle.  This card just plain out takes me out of the game for a turn.  I'm sure on the following turn I'll have the Ki to do some real nastiness, but still, I'm 90% sure there's I'd rather be able to use my Ki feats this turn than have lots of Ki next turn.  It's a card you just can't rule out if you're planning a tournament warband.  I think people won't use it for ages, then someone will figure it out (cough cough) and suddenly it'll become the new metagame.

The Cult of Yurei themes are also worth looking at.  One allows just about every model in the faction except kairai, the other one is almost exclusively for kairai.  The kairai one is actually hugely viable with Desecrated Grave and Haunted Well.  I think the Desecrated Grave is ruinous for a lot of early scenario push warbands, it allows you to place up to 2 kairai immediately in contact with a midline objective or for them to start within a zone.

Having said all that, it's going to be interesting to see how the game is going to shape up over the next couple of months as people get used to the new special cards and two new factions being released (granted the Shadow Wind ninjas will only be available to the Rise of the Kage backers).  I'm really feeling the Tengu Decension at the moment, I just need to sit on my hands for a month.

Not Yurts

Tengu Decension Starter Set

The latest post about the Tengu Decension is up.  Go forth and check them out!  It looks like the faction colour is yellow.  The cards for the starter box are also revealed, so we get a taste of how they play.

I was supposed to be working today but I discovered that my Suzuki Jimny (it's a really small jeep) has 2 flat tires.  I have one spare tire, but not two, so I'm somewhat housebound until the tire shop around the corner gets some of the appropriate tires in stock.

Today's quite a busy day for Bushido.  The Tengu Decension starter box has been revealed in all its painted glory, and the latest errata is out too.  There's a lot in it concerning traits with conflicting effects now nullifying each other (which I ruled a while ago, but I'd erroneously taken a sentence from the melee timings and got it confused with conflicting traits - now it's actually official).  The Controlled state seems to be in the errata but only to change a couple of words: "requires" turns into "removes".  There's an important list of alternative profiles and which models to use for them when you utilize the new special card sets.  If you're wondering which models to buy with your latest order, you better have a look at the errata.

Been on a mad painting drive lately, Mizuki and both Shimogamo Vipers are nearly finished.  The Takashi/Ito Ancestor is done, but all that model required was a whole load of drybrushing.  All three of the currently available profiles for the Tengu Decension are now fully painted, though I'm not happy with how one of them came out - I was attempting to paint purely by washes since the model has a lot of grooves and ridges, and it didn't come out very well.  I would have done a better job with normal highlights.

Now that the background art for the Tengu Decension is out, I can sit down and make some houses for my future hill tribesmen.  They seem to live in pueblo-style houses, which are ludicrously easy to manufacture with foam board and some round wooden dowels.  Before the artwork I was considering making some yurts or tents.  I'll try to churn out a couple tomorrow and then figure out how to give the illusion of height on my Tengu Decension themed board.

Birds of a Feather

Wave 23 is now available for pre-order.  Gogo, order your new stuff!  Don't forget the new special card packs - if you're buying packs and you already have the first set, you'll need both the Generic Special Card Pack 1, and the Special Card Pack 2.  I'm super-excited to see how the themes ended up.  Shisai and Mizuki-hooooooooooooo.  That's a Thundercats reference you heathens.

I think testing for the Tengu Decension is over, many of the profiles have vanished from the testing forum.  Toby (the T of GCT) put up some pictures of some sort of warrior tengu and a crow tengu on Twitter, so I believe the tengu are actually really close to release - the expected date is in August around the same time as Rise of the Kage.

From my own testing, I'm not sure if they're my natural niche like the hebi-centric Ito Clan warbands I usually like, but we'll have to see.  At the moment the number of profiles is very limited, and seems quite focused on being able to fight - which is probably more in tune with the normal playerbase.  I expect that more profiles will come out more in line with what I'm looking for eventually, just not immediately.  I'll be giving one of my more direct fighting warbands a go on Tuesday, and then I think it's back to the Ito Clan until the Tengu Decension full release.

Sojobo

I'm working on painting Sojobo and I'm finding him really easy to paint for some reason.  He looks amazing.  I'm not really sure what the difference is with my painting, but he looks a bajillion times better than my Ito Clan stuff.  Maybe it's because I've started using the hand holding the miniature as a palette?  I ran out of metallics (or I've put them somewhere strange, I can't find any in the flat) so I can finish his claws and staff tomorrow after I visit the shops.

Testing for the Tengu Decension continues.  I think I'm just missing out on the more interesting (to me) profiles - I think the faction lacks the crow tengu at the moment.  Right now it's very mobile within a melee, but there's no way to get out declaring melee or disengage actions.  They also hit like small school children.

Back from the Masters

Well that was a very enjoyable UK Games Expo.  I got to play Bushido, speak to some very drunk store owners/distributors, and I met Wayne Reynolds (WAYNE REYNOLDS).  Super cool guy to speak to; I've loved his art ever since I saw the Eberron covers back in 3e D&D.  He even gave me a copy of his Visions of War book, though I'm not 100% sure if he gave everyone who bought prints a copy or whether I got a copy because he liked chatting to me (I did save him from a horde of hardcore MtG people - let us say they did not prioritise hygiene).  Highlight of my weekend really.

Back to Bushido though!  I didn't place too well, having won 2 games, and lost 2 games.  Half my games were entirely down to dice being bad for the losing player, my dice were horrific when I played against Chris Hales (who won the Masters), and Peder Harty's dice were equally as horrific when he played me in the next round.  It wasn't pretty.  Jim came 2nd, which is probably due to me losing to Jason Enos (LEJ) in final round and pushing Jim's strength of schedule up.  I feel like I would have fairly comfortably won my last game if Yatsumata hadn't rolled triple 1's on defence and exploded, but these things happen to everyone and we're playing a game involving pushing around little metal men.  Getting worked up over something like that isn't worth the time.

In the end I chose Yatsumata over Kenzo simply because no one plays Yatsumata, and I regretted it as soon as I played my first game.  The Mizuki warband excels with the Naoko/Kenzo combo since Kenzo can reach a target that has been blinded, Yatsumata cannot most of the time.  So stick with the warband I've actually been playing next time!  Regardless, now that the Masters are over, I think it's time to shelve the Ito Clan for a while, I want to do some play-testing for the Tengu Decension.

So the plan is to move from snakemen to birdmen.  So far I've come up with a few fairly gimmicky warbands that rely heavily on denial and are pretty light on the tribesmen.  There isn't a huge variety of profiles to work with yet, so crafting my normal type of warband (Ki feat heavy, lots of tricks) is fairly difficult.  Testing will commence on Tuesday!

Off to the UK Masters

Yep.  Off to the Bushido UK Masters tomorrow.  I'm sure I'll pretend to do a write-up of my games (and probable crushing defeat).  Then go back to improving at DotA 2.  Remember guys, control beats fighting 75% of the time.

Wave 23 Concept Art

Prefecture of Ryu - Goshi

Savage Wave - Nightwing Swarm

Cult of Yurei - Kami of Choking Fog & Blighted Earth

Ito Clan - Tamotsu

Silvermoon Trade Syndicate - Rakki

Trial and Error

Looks like it's nose to the grindstone for Bushido over here right now.  I picked up my Bushido UK Masters tickets for the UK Games Expo the other day (along with Jim's tickets) and it looks like it's time to start churning through as many games as possible before the big weekend in Birmingham.

Jim and I did a quick practice game a little while ago, I used a tweaked version of Raynzy's warband, and Jim was trying to get a Waku warband to work.  Neither of us were particularly happy with how our warbands worked out.  Waku is one of those models that is missing just that little something, and I found the lack of sneaky tricks in Raynzy's warband to be not to my liking.  I'll try out some other warbands, but it looks like my Mizuki warband is the one I'll be concentrating on, at least until I see what the next wave of Ito Clan special cards do - there could better be an amazing shisai-based theme.  AHAHAHEHEHOOOHAHA.

I got to play against Adam and his Savage Wave this week at G3, though I do feel bad for pulling out the Mizuki warband to see how hard/easy it was to deal with Rashka.  The oni is psychologically terrifying to see across the table.  You just know he's going to hurt a stupid amount if he ever gets into melee.  However, I should have still brought a more beginner friendly warband along, as no one likes having control tokens on their models, it's a bit of a negative play experience.  Next time we play I'll bring a more direct fighting force methinks, probably something more like a Satoshi warband.

I will say that the majority of my early games were filling with bloody control tokens on my stuff, and I learned how to deal with them pretty quickly.  My main issues with control tokens is what happens when there are lots on a single model, you just lose the model for the whole game at that point, it's not cost efficient to try to remove them.  On the other hand though, certain factions do have the means for removing enemy tokens in great numbers.

The next game I have scheduled is just before I go to Houston for a fortnight, against Martin and his Savage Wave.  I think both of us are wanting to play around with the latest playtest releases.

Owlithic

Yay!  More concept art releases this week, including one of the Tengu!  I'm not sure about whether I'll pick up the Tengu - I'm more interested in the Minimoto Clan - but I do think they'll be a hit with the Bushido player base.  Feast ye eyes on Naigubu the Ancient (an owl tengu apparently):

For the Ito Clan though, I was vaguely surprised it was Yuui getting released.  When I was playtesting her, she would bearmaul everything she touched for some reason.  She's not particularly amazing in combat, she's no Kenzo, but I'd just roll either amazingly well or my opponent would roll really badly.  I do hope this trend continues when she's released.  The minor spoiler I shall provide is that she's an ashigaru.  Rejoice Satoshi warband players.  Oh, and she was Yuui Ito for a while before we all asked why an Ito was an ashigaru, not a samurai.

For non-Ito Clan concept arts, I really like Honoka & Hakushi.  It does make me interested in making an animal themed warband, but maybe a bit further into the future as currently there aren't all that many animals for the Silvermoon (leopard, death chicken, weasel).

Size Does Matter

No, the blog isn't dead, there just hasn't been anything going on over the Christmas period until a week or so ago in the world of Bushido.  Wave 21 is now available for ordering, and I have already received and assembled my Shimogama Vipers (and their stupidly large wings).  I really thought they'd be roughly the same size as the fire kami miniatures, instead they're almost as large as Yatsumata.  I honestly have no idea how to fit them into my carrying case - I suspect it's time to buy a bigger case.

After the long break, and now that I have the Shimogama Vipers in hand, I can get back into the Bushido groove.  It's been good seeing Adam get more games in and he appears to be enjoying the game.  We just need to kick him into getting some painting done.  Bushido is just one of those games that looks really, really good with nice boards/terrain and fully painted warbands.  I need to dig all my paints out and get the few Ito Clan models I haven't finished done.

Lots of interesting things happening with the current playtest subjects.  I'm making plans to head over to Common Ground Games in mid-April (18th or 19th - my birthday!) and I'll bring all my test stuff for people to play around with - and hopefully provide me with some feedback.

Wave 22 Concept Art

Prefecture of Ryu - Takashi Ancestor Spirit

Temple of Ro-Kan - Kyuubi

Cult of Yurei - Yama Uba

Savage Wave - Rinsho

Ito Clan - Yuui

Silvermoon Trade Syndicate - Honoka & Hakushi

Slow Day

Woohoo, news from GCT!

It's not very good news, but it does let us know production of models will continue.

Also, with the delay, Gordon (the G in GCT I believe) has put up the Shimogama Vipers profile in the Ito Clan forums.  BEHOLD!

They're so sexy in my warbands.  No support model is safe.  MWAHAHAHA.  I could go on and on about how the vipers function in my lists, but it tends to be something like: pick a support, swoop in, kill them with poison.

Unfortunately I've not been playing any wargames recently, being in a board gaming mood and trying to design a D&D campaign that has a coherent story *and* setting, but Adam Davies has started to play Bushido, picking up the Silvermoon Trade Syndicate and Savage Wave - he tends to go into the deep end, so I'm pretty sure he's got everything for both factions at the moment.  It'll be good to have a Silvermoon player who's a bit more ruthless and focused so we can see all the broken that comes out.

A number of threads are opening up on the forums discussing different warbands within a faction.  The Temple lists I find quite interesting, and the Ito Clan forums have always had a number of different warband discussions goings, this time it seems to be focused on warbands with only 6 models (I just don't get it).  What I do like about the game is the sheer number of different warbands there seem to be out there.  There are usually some staple figures in every faction (Tra-peng for example) but the rest of the models seem to shift around quite drastically.