Redvers and Son Get Into Bushido

For this game, my son went for his Temple of Rokan faction but a new list based around animals. In it, he took,

Kuma – the bo staff wielding Panda who’s very handy in combat

Biyba – A large shaggy dog

A silverback gorilla – not overly subtle in its approach and a ‘generic’ model in that it is not specifically named (like a lot of the other models in the game)

Kawa no Rojin – this is a peasant farmer riding a large and angry water buffalo

Koji – a small boy monk with an affinity with monkeys

Koji’s pack – an unlimited supply of small monkeys (although only two on the table at a time) that work very well with Koji

Kongu – a gorilla who has learnt martial arts

For my side, I thought I would lean into the fire token list, so went with,

Waku the Soul Collector – to slap fire tokens on everyone

The Wanyudo – this is the flaming wheel demon who also dishes out flame tokens

Hikari – a dead witch to boost my Ki generation

Akuba – the sister of Hikari who can dish our flame attacks and raise a skeleton during the game

4 Animated Warriors – these are cheap skeletons with my idea of using them to run interference with the enemy and allow my high value models to sit back and blast fire attacks out

We selected a scenario with 6 idols spaced equally around the centre of the board. All of the idols start as neutral but models in btb with an idol can use an activation to influence it and change the idol from enemy to neutral or neutral to friendly. At the end of Turns 2, 4 and 6, the player with the most friendly idols gets a Victory Point and most Victory Points at the end of the game wins.

We both had some small terrain and event cards to boost our warbands.

To add to the confusion of this game, my son doesn’t have the models, so he proxied a lot in, which is why the pictures may not make a lot of sense!

Turn 1.

This was quite an easy turn with models moving up the board to get into position. Kuma was able to get quite far forward and this allowed Waku to blast a fire attack off but while it hit, no damage was caused.

Below we see the initial deployment and the end of turn 1

Turn 3.

I moved my animated warriors out in front of my ‘heavy hitters’. This allowed the monkeys from Koji’s pack to launch an attack against one. As the pack is a ‘group’ the two monkeys get to act in tandem. Fortunately, they both failed their Fear tests (as skeletons cause Fear) which meant that they could not roll more dice in attack than in defence. This combat resulted in no wounds.

Koji then got involved and was able to cause a wound to one of the skeletons who then activated and returned the favour, dealing out two damage to Koji. This is good for me as while Akuba is on the board, she allows all Skeletons to restore 1 wound at the end of the round.

My son continues his aggressive approach and charges the Silverback into the Wanyudo. I would have preferred this to be the other way around but it’s not the worst result. The silver back, despite being quite a big boy, fails his Fear test, so is restricted in its attack dice pool and fails to cause any wounds. In return, Wanyudo causes 3 wounds and sets the silver back on fire, handing out some fire tokens (with damage taken at the end of the turn if the tokens are still there).

Kawa No Rojin gets in on the act of attacking Wanyudo. This isn’t great for me as being outnumbered starts to reduce your dice pool and this is telling as Wanyudo takes 2 wounds from Kawa No Rojin. 

With two opponents close, Wanyudo activates his Ki feat of inferno. This causes a fire blast and all models within 2” get another fire marker, so that’s the Silverback and Kawa No Rojin with markers.

Waku shoots his fire attack at Kawa No Rojin giving out another fire token.

The Silverback is able to leave combat and attacks Waku. Waku has a special ability allowing him to swap with another mode, so I do this with Wanyudo but this just results in Wanyudo taking some wounds and is removed from play. The only upside here is that the Silverback picks up another fire token – its now a very angry gorilla!

Kuma, Biyba and Kongu spent the turn trying to either get around the melee or getting into btb with an idol.

As the last part of my turn, Akuba uses her once per game Ki ability to summon another skeleton and I use my ‘Crush the Oppressed’ event card which doubles all of the tokens that enemy models have – so that’s now a lot more fire tokens on the Silverback and Kawa No Rojin!

At the end of the turn, we calculate the fire token damage. Kawa no Rojin dies and is removed from play. The silver back takes 4 wounds but it’s not enough to remove him but he still has two fire markers left (you always remove 1 token of each type and if more than one exists, you remove tokens until you have two left).

No idols had been interacted with, so it is a draw at the end of Turn 2 and no victory points are scored.

Turn 3.

Koji’s pack continue their attack on the skeleton and cause a wound. The skeletons are cheap because they have the ‘critical wound’ weakness, which basically means that if a double is rolled on the wound roll, it’s an auto kill. This is what happens here and I remove one of the skeletons. Koji is also able to do the same to the other skeleton that is on my left flank, so within quick order, I’m two models down!

Hikari is able to attack Koji and the poor lad is scared. He’s not able to hold off the dead witch and Hikari butchers the lad. But removing Koji enrages his pack of monkeys who all attack Hikari. Fortunately, Hikari is able to hold them off for now.

Akuba, still behind the skeleton wall, is able to cast her Ki ability on Biyba and causes 3 wounds. Biyba doesn’t like this and attacks and kills the skeleton in front of it. 

Kongu moves into attack Waku and delivers an almighty blow, killing the soul collector. I try to respond by attacking Kongu with a skeleton but Kongu kills that as well with some handy dice rolls. 

In very short order, my left flank is collapsing and my right flank is gone. Kuma is still standing next to an idol and turns it friendly. 

At the end of the turn, reduced to a single skeleton, Hikari and Akuba, I offer my resignation, I’m not going to be able to hold off the hoard of animals AND turn enough idols to win the game. 

Overall, a fairly brutal defeat for me.