Redvers and Son Get Into Bushido

After the draw we fought out the night before, we did battle again but this time opting for one of the scenarios. The scenario calls for three tokens to be deployed across the centre line, 6” apart (these are depicted in our game by the grey resin chess pawns). The tokens all start the game as neutral however models can interact with them when in base to base contact by using an activation to ‘pray’. This allows the model to then change the status of the token by one ‘step’ so a neutral token becomes ‘friendly’ to the side that just prayed and hostile to the opposing side. Praying to a hostile token turns it neutral. At the end of each of turn 4, 5 and 6, the side with the most friendly tokens gains a victory point.

My son ran the same list as he did in his previous game but, for completeness, here it is:

• Master Ekusa (who’s a monk riding a tortoise and can heal, remove activation tokens and stops attacks due to his zen like demeanour)
• Hotaru (a monk who likes fire)
• Yim (a monk who’s strong and linked to iron)
• Saruka (another flame monk and can also cast a fireball like ranged attack)
• Kuma (an angry, bo staff wielding panda who can root opponents to the spot while slapping them around)

In addition, my son had selected a couple of terrain pieces that allow extra Ki generation for his models. Ki allows the activation of special abilities and boosts regular stats and the TRK are big Ki users. He also selected some trap cards as well.

I changed my list slightly by dropping the two plague rats and Risu and bringing in Yama Uba,

• Mo Ises (an assassin that likes stabbing people in the back)
• Mokoti (dreadful in combat but can control enemy models)
• Yama Uba (a scary ‘woman’ whose face is replaced with a teeth ringed maw and has the handy ability of being able to replicate any statistic or ability of a character they are in base to base contact with)
• Ibara (Can handle himself in combat and can throw some fire around at range)
• Hozumi Maha (a ronin who can also control enemy models)
• Tenbatsu (another ronin who’s a combat monster)

In addition, I equipped Ibara with the Violence Fetish enhancement card which gives him a boost in melee combat.

My notes and pictures for this battle are a little patchy….

Turn 1.

The usual moving up into position. Nothing significant happened.

My son placed Master Ekusa on his right flank with the Kuma and the rest of the monks through the middle. I paired my team up with Tenbatsu and Ibara on my left, Mokoti and Yama Uba through the middle and Hozumi Maha and Mo Ises down the right flank. My plan is to try and loop Mo Ises round the back to open up the option of backstabbing someone.

Turn 2.

Tenbatsu is able to attack Master Ekusa. Annoyingly, Ekusa radiates a zen aura that stops you using any attack dice however Tentabsu has the Counter Strike Defence skill that, in the event of a successful defence, you can make a damage roll. I thought this was sneaky however my son saw straight through this and used a push defence that just moved Tenbatsu out of base to base meaning that his counter strike defence automatically failed. So a bit of a waste of an action from me. 

Mo Ises managed to cast obey on Kuma who then turned around and whacked Hotaru for a couple of points of damage – you’ve got to love the obey spell.

My son moved Saruka into melee with Mokoti and caused 2 damage to Mokoti. However, in doing this, he exposed Saruka’s back to Yama Uba who moved in from behind to make a surprise attack. This, coupled with the support of Mokoti allows Yama Uba to roll a lot of dice against Saruka’s 1 dice. The attack was successful and Yama Uba has the Critical Strike skill meaning that any damage roll resulting in a double on the two dice used, automatically kills. I rolled a double, Saruka is killed and my son was not happy.

Turn 3.

Master Ekusa goes first and casts his Peace spell on Tenbatsu that succeeds and removes all of Tenbatsu’s activations for the turn, rendering him useless.

Yim moves in to melee combat with Yama Uba and uses his fists of steel ability to increase his melee attack and does 2 damage. 

In return, Yama Uba uses her ability to take any ability of a model in b2b and selects fist of steel. My son thinks this is very unfair, especially as Yama Uba’s attack back on Yim causes 4 damage!

Mo Ises attacks Kuma from behind and shanks him in the back for 4 damage and a further 2 poison damage (that gets taken at the end of the turn if the counters aren’t removed beforehand).

Understandably, Kuma (and my son) isn’t happy about this turn of events and so Kuma kills Mo Ises with an almighty whack with his bo staff that would have been enough to kill Mo Ises twice.

Mean while, Hotaru has interacted with one of the scenario objective to turn it friendly to the Temple of Ro-Kan (TRK).

Turn 4.

Yama Uba continues her battle with Yim, inflicting another couple of wounds (Yama Uba is quite handy in a fight!). Meanwhile, a bloodied Kuma manges to get hold of a largely useless Hozumi Maha, but Hozumi is able to sacrifice some of his ghosts that he has summoned to avoid damage. 

We then have a rules issue following Yim’s return attack on Yama Uba. After spending 10 minutes reading the rule over and over again, we ruled that both parties deal damage and both end up dead being removed. (After the game I went through it again and came to the conclusion that the correct reading was that both sides would have failed and no damage would have been dealt but as we both lost a model, neither of us were particularly disadvantaged)

On the left, Ibara, Tenbatsu and Ekusa take turns in interacting with the scenario token, with the eventual result being the left token (from my perspective) is Cult of Yurei, the middle token is TRK and the right token is neutral. Therefore, at the end of turn 4, no Victory Points are issued.

Turn 5.

Kuma wastes no time in battering Hozumi Maha to death. I move Mokoti up to do something about the centre token but Horato interacts with the central token keeping it TRK friendly. I start moving Ibara across to the right to capture that token but he can only get into btb with it and doesn’t have enough activation to interact with it meaning it stays neutral this turn. Ekusa again successfully uses his Peace ability on Tenbatsu and Tenbatsu loses all of his activations and with Ekusa’s last activation, he interacts with the left token to make it neutral. 

At the end of turn 5, the left token is neutral, the middle TRK friendly and the right neutral. That’s 1 VP to TRK.

Turn 6.

Final turn and a desperate attempt to pick up a VP to get a draw. I have models in contact with all three scenario tokens so there is a chance. Ibara turns the right token friendly to the Cult but then my son charges Kuma into Ibara for the kill. Kuma really is a melee monster. Ekusa and Tenbatsu trade interactions with the left token meaning it stays neutral. 

As a last throw of the dice, if Mokoti can cast Obey on Hotaru, he can move her away from the centre token and, in his last activation can turn the centre token neutral – that would mean a VP for me and a draw. We both threw all of our Ki and whatever else we could into the casting/resistance of the Obey spell. My son rolled spectacularly well and I didn’t resulting in the centre token remaining as friendly to TRK and, at the end of the turn, with 1 neutral token, 1 friendly to TRK and 1 friendly to the Cult, no VP’s were issued and my son won. He was very happy. But really, tabletop gaming was the winner, it’s not about the winning or losing but the enjoyment. But I’ll beat him next time!