Testing Base

There appears to be a noticeable increase in the number of testers for Risen Sun, which can only be a good thing.  More feedback is always better at this stage, though some of the feedback is directly opposite my own.

I'm really enjoying painting my Prefecture, which is something I wasn't expecting.  I'm usually not a fan of painting armour, but something about the samurai armour just works for me.  Iiju has some awkwardness going on with how his hands join at the wrist, so I might end up using a plastic version from Rise of the Kage instead if he doesn't come out as well as I'd like.  So far though he's coming along pretty well.  Once he's complete I'll have done all the Hare clan models.

Given that there are more playtesters, there still isn't anyone else testing out the Jung Pirates, so I've been putting my Prefecture aside to test out the Jung.  So far I've found that Queen of the Waves is a very good theme for the Kami of the Morning Dew since you can place it in BtB with a friendly model and reliably get the heal off.  It’s often a bit of a trade off between getting a Heal off or being able to surprise an enemy model.  Next up for testing of Hibiki.  Could be interesting.

With new terrain deployment rules I'm finding that smaller warbands can quite easily function just as well as the larger ones.  This may be a reflection of the test scenario I’ve been using, since it encourages a simple punch up in the middle of the board.  I’ll have to design some new scenarios to help spread out warbands, preferable some that utilise the large based objective.

Rising Tide

The Minimoto Clan have arrived.  I got a starter box game against them using the Hare clan profiles and a future Prefecture Gunso.  The Gunso turned out to be terrible in my warband, but Kioshi was a bit of a star with Prediction.  It was very interesting to see how 'teamworky' the warband felt.  What I did feel I was missing was the Command trait.

The Minimoto don't have any tricks yet, so playing against them is just like playing against fighting Ito or Prefecture.  They're extremely vulnerable to control effects such as Slams, Immobilise, Held, good old Control with a capital C.  They're going to need the snow witches and more blacksmiths before that happens I think.

Overall, I'm super-satisfied with the Hare clan profiles and would be willing to lock them in their current configuration.  What this does mean is that I need to paint faster and order more Prefecture models so I can do testing with other stuff.  I'd like to try out something with Matsu, she's got a lot of story to tell.  I just had an epiphany on how the Hare clan samurai will work.

Testing games have been lined up for the next two weeks, so with the Hare profiles done, it's back to the Jung Pirates and it's time to test out a wider variety of profiles.  I'm going to try out Queen of the Waves one last time, then after that it's all about Minato and Hibiki to see if their themes work.

Passing Time

It turns out pass token Prefecture against Death & Decay Cult is very boring.  Having Critical Strike does tend to win out over Kairai though.  As it is, I really like the Prefecture, and I think I'll get more of it at some point.  I'll get this Hare warband painted up and hopefully try it out against a wider variety of foes, though probably go a bit lighter on the pass tokens.  I do feel like I have an answer for everything as Prefecture at the moment.

I tried out the unusual tactic for the Jung of Flanking with Ryota and Sho in my Queen of the Waves warband.  It didn't work out too well, so I think I'll put that particular tactic on hold for now.  The Kaizoku with Scout worked out nicely, it feels like you can definitely push up towards objectives more aggressively than normal with them starting just that little bit further forward.  I'm still getting used to how the new iteration of Jung Mari works, so I expect my game results to improve quickly if I continue to test her out.

We did discover that Corner Deployment has some issues with Scout, so I think it's going to change quite drastically in the near-future.  That way Scout and some other effects don't simply break the game by accident.

I did a test against the Ito Clan, and holy dice gods they’re terrifying to play against.  They’re across the board almost instantly.  I do like the updated Ayako, but I suspect she’s going to lose some abilities so that she fits on a single card.  She’s good enough to take as a solo shisai.  My Jung really didn’t feel like I had a good answer for Yatsumata appearing across the table from me, but I think everyone’s going to feel like they have this problem.  When you see one of the top end fighting models across from you, it’s going  to feel intimidating.

Prefecture probably has the best universal answer to these problems: a lucky SL0 Critical Strike solves most problems.  I do find it funny that a SL0 Critical Strike is scarier than a SL4 damage roll.

Blink Dog

My Prefecture of Ryu testing as begun.  And what an amazing debut game they had!  After a couple of test games I'm bewildered as to why people aren't destroying all their opponents with Atsushi and Shinobu.  That dog is ludicrously dangerous and mobile.  You can threaten the enemy board edge on turn one with it.  Why are Prefecture players not doing this?!  It's actually taken me a couple of games to figure out how to play against it, and even then I feel like I'm surrendering positioning to counter a 3 rice model.

I'm quite enjoying the Prefecture playstyle.  There's something to be said for being able to ignore most of the trap techniques to kill models in the game.  You made my model Impetuous?  No worries, I'll activate them after I use these 10 pass tokens.  I do see weaknesses in the faction, but that's to be expected, no faction has answers for everything.  The first thing I'm wary of is the lack of native Sixth Sense in the faction, and the next is that lack of Jump Up/Steady.  These are not problems I've previously had across my factions, it will take some getting used to.

I've tried out a new iteration of my Queen of the Waves warband with Jung Mari, and I'm happy with how it feels, though I'd like an unnamed 9 rice (new rice) profile so that I can get more models that use her captain buff.  The change to the Jung themes and the Kancho’s has effectively removed a benefit from each theme and put it on the appropriate Kancho instead.  It’s just occurred to me that the update to Flank to make it guaranteed reliable means that my Queen of the Waves warband is just that little bit more cunning and brings in an extra trick.  That gives my warband 5 models that either deploy further forward or use Flank...  hmmm...

Today’s testing will involve the Prefecture, and I shall report on Jim’s response to both warbands.

The Bear Does Not Dance

Interesting Minimoto related official blog post!
This is the sort of thing Jason and I discuss, along with more specific stuff like "Mari's profile still seems super-awkward, can we give her Voice of the Wind?".  She didn't get Voice of the Wind.  I was sad.

I really need to finish writing up my blog posts instead of letting an uncommonly long time elapse and lose the relevance of the post in the first place.

Risen Sun work progresses.  The special cards are pretty much done.  There will be some rice cost tweaking across the board, it is hard to price things precisely using theorycraft.  It's very interesting to see specific thematic rules developing within factions as we go.  For instance, the Ito Clan have turned into the Virtue token faction - they may not generate any more than anyone else, but they have the most options for what to do with any given Virtue token.

The Ito, Prefecture, and Jung are all in places I'm happy with, and I haven't really touched the KKZ or Temple as those are Jason's factions of choice, he'll be a lot more aware of their issues than me.  That leaves STS, Cult, Wave, and Decension for fine tuning now.  We actually designed most of the Minimoto using the Risen Sun system, which is why they fell a bit flat during testing as some things did not translate backwards.

Control Prefecture is something I've been looking at lately, but forming a coherent direct control warband with Prefecture is a bit difficult at the moment.  It's quite hard squeezing Yukio and a Golden Sentinel into a warband without losing a model or having to sacrifice some serious quality to get extra numbers.  I was originally going to just go with the starter box and then add the two Imperial models, but I don’t think the rice costs quite work out.  A lot of the basic Prefecture stuff has had an increase in cost

UK Games Expo 2018

Yes indeed.  It is almost time for the UK Games Expo.  I will be travelling down later with some friends.  I booked a room at the Metropole this year, at great expense - the cost has been doubling each year I've been going.  I think next year the plan is just to rent an AirBnB for the weekend and we'll just split the cost of parking each day.  There has to be a point where the hotels stop raising their prices... but I doubt it's any time soon.

While at the Expo, the plan is to play as many different things as possible this year, pick up some more D&D goodies, and maybe flesh out my Prefecture purchases so we can begin testing for Risen Sun over the next few weeks.  I expect Jason and I will have a sit down and discuss fine tuning profiles.  We've already revised a few things for simplicity and did a little re-jigging so that things require less long term bookkeeping.  The most common problem we have is coming up with ability names that aren't terrible Google-translate misanthropes.  This is where my writing background actually comes in handy - or I discover I've managed to come up with  the same name as something in L5R... that's happened at least 3 times so far.

Bit of drama on the Facebook front, Aaron in the US had a bit of an issue with someone on Facebook and has since quit the game and ditched his volunteering Retainer-stuff.  Pity really, he did good work at Adepticon and was prepared to do all the groundwork for the game.

Back to the Expo however, I won't be playing in the tournament this year - as usual - so I'll be running things again.  I didn't enjoy playing the bye players at BonesCon, it was very much akin to how I think kicking puppies would feel like, and there were some truly odd ways some people were interpreting the rules.  This time I'll go back to full time Rules Guy, and I can patrol between the tables again.

The Man With No Name

Had my first game involving Toshiro, the show special ronin, today.  And holy jeeblars he changes the game.  He's meant to, but even so, he does it in a really odd way.  Since everything with damage on it suddenly becomes Aggressive, the game turns into a bloodbath in a hurry.

After a few games against him, I think I've figured out how he changes the game.  As everything becomes Aggressive eventually, the game becomes focused on the alpha-strike.  Whomever attacks first has a distinct advantage.  This is probably why my Jung Pirates got destroyed, but my Ito Clan could just keep fighting.  The Ito Clan are really focused on being able to attack first, so Toshiro doesn't change the way they play too much.  Opponents of the Ito Clan might be the active player, but they rarely have the Initiative in a Melee Exchange.

My new Prefecture models arrived and I was busy gluing my fingers to bases and bits of metal while trying to put the miniatures together.  I do appreciate just how few pieces most of the Prefecture models are though.  Most of the starter box are single piece miniatures.  First up on the painting table will probably be Atsushi and Shinobu because they’re awesome miniatures.  I’m going to save Kioshi for quite late on since he’s my current favourite.  Hopefully I’ll have them all painted for just after the UK Games Expo so Risen Sun testing can commence proper.  I look forward to having 6+ pass tokens most turns.

There's been a lot of discussion about the new Death & Decay theme that was added, and I'm really surprised that people are having trouble with the basic Death & Decay.  It's not a hard warband to fight against, you just need to stop thinking you can kill kairai.  Simply use any special that lets you move them or your model and you end up shuffling them around the board.  The real problem is the Desecrated Grave, but that's already been sorted out in Risen Sun.

No Tortoise, Just Hare

I was looking at my all-time most popular posts on this blog in its various incarnations, and I was somewhat surprised to see the old tactical advice I wrote a long time ago concerning things like threat range and board control for Warmahordes.  So I loaded up the old articles, and I'm still quite proud of how they were written.  I'm disappointed in myself for using actual people, especially to illustrate negative points.  Still, there was a lot of good information in those articles despite my person skew on a few things like netdecking.  Once the new edition hits, I'll have to rewrite the articles to keep them current.  I'll probably also write a few on specific factions while I'm at it.

Jason and I spent the better part of a day going through special cards in the next edition and tweaking a few other things while we were at it.  My favourite work of the evening was coming up with the Hare clan mechanics.  The Hare clan profiles - Kioshi, Iiju, and Atsushi - were very diverse, but we came up with a way to link them all, and it does so in a way that is highly complementary to the existing Prefecture identity.  Satou Kioshi may actually be my favourite profile at the moment.  The clan's surname also got fixed while we were at it.

I've ordered a fair number of Prefecture miniatures, so expect to see some reports on how they play in Risen Sun over the next few months.  My first warband test will probably be the Hare warband, and then I think I'll move onto the more traditional warbands for the Prefecture.  There's some interesting things I'd like to try out with Bikou too since she pulls in some tricks from the Kage Kaze Zoku, but those can wait.

A Narrative of Cats and Spades

Aloha again amigos!  Good alliteration there.  Clearly this is going to be an amazing article about Bushido.

If you have access to a Retainer, then the cat is long since out of the bag: testing for the next edition of Bushido has begun.  I've done a bit of testing with the Ito Clan and the Jung Pirates, as those are my core factions.  Lately I've been thinking of picking up the Prefecture of Ryu since there have previously been some complaints that the faction isn't all that, it’s a bit late for me to prove them wrong but I do like how the faction is shaping up for the next edition.

For those without access to a Retainer, please consult the cat previously mentioned.  I don't think we'll see the release this year though as there needs to be a lot of testing done.  The factions have their identities more clearly defined; the Ito Clan for instance are all incredibly fast, but have less health.  Yatsumata is... well, she threatens the halfway mark of the board simply by walking.  The Jung Pirates are better defined by which captain you bring - you can already see how the captains will work with Hikibi.

Other important testing is for the Minimoto Clan - the Bear Clan.  The Minimoto have always been a big draw for a lot of people, though I'm not entirely sure why.  I was really impressed with the concept art of a Minimoto samurai in the rulebook, but I guess I've always preferred fast and cunning over brute force.  Though the Minimoto do bring brute force out in spades.  Such enormous spades...

I was asked to help with some of the storyline, so I went a bit mental and did pretty much everything.  Then found out none of it was needed, so it's just been gathering dust on my hard drive for a few months.  I decided that it seems a bit of a waste simply throwing it all in the bin, so I'll leave the first part here and see if anyone wants more.  The story contains no spoilers, new characters mentioned are simply there for narrative purposes.