Redvers and Son Get Into Bushido

The only terrain I have for 28mm is old 40k stuff which won’t really work. The MDF buildings from Sarrissa will cover the building needs but I now require some other terrain pieces and ‘dressing’. I’ve therefore fired up the 3D printer and gone shopping/scouring My Mini Factory and Thingiverse for useful stuff.

I downloaded a lot of stuff and the 3D printer has been working overtime, with barely a minutes break. Here’s what I now have ready for clean up, priming and painting

So plenty to get painted but hopefully will be fairly quick as it is terrain and I think you can get away with a slightly lower quality paint job when compared to the actual miniatures. At least that’s my theory.

The downside is that I have ruined my attempts to reduce my pile of potential. I have a progress update on this on my other project here:

Stuff what I been painting

The game is played on a 2′ by 2′ area and requires some terrain to block line of sight etc. I don’t have any Japanese/Eastern influenced terrain so something I need to correct.

For the buildings, Sarissa make some options for Bushido, Test of Honour etc that fit the bill. For other stuff, I will fire up the 3D printer and either buy the STL or design them myself in Blender.

Here’s what arrived from Sarissa

So we’re now the proud owners of,

2 x Rice storage huts

1 Dojo

1 Simple house

1 Samurai measuring sword

2 lanterns

Time to get building

Overall, it’s a really nice starter set and a very reasonable price entry point. The faction starter sets also look excellent as well although we don’t yet have any of those (not yet at least!). The models within the box are Ronin and are considered mercenaries in the game, with each model being an individual character. While you can’t play Ronin as a faction, you can recruit individual Ronin into your faction if they align with that faction. Each faction can recruit at least a couple of the characters in the starting set, so you should be able to get mileage out of this set whichever way you go. However, to get you going, the 10 characters are built around two warring families with the younger member of each family being in love – it’s a story I’ve heard somewhere before…. This setup will allow you to play a small game right out of the box.

I’ll start with the (minor) negatives first. The rule book is a little unclear in places and could do with some additional examples. Some parts require reading a couple of times to get the full understanding. And I think that in a couple of places, there are minor errors. Nothing significant and common sense should reveal the correct answer. I also don’t like the token set. It’s printed on thin card rather than the thicker card stock you find in most board games. This makes the tokens very bendy and less durable. And I struggled to pick them up with my fat fingers. I appreciate that this was probably a cost decision, but thicker, better quality tokens would have been nicer. Finally, there are also a lot of special rules that requires a lot of diving into the rule book. I’m sure that after a few games I will learn them, but our first game was a little slow.

Otherwise, this is a great game. The rules, once learnt, allow for a great skirmish. It’s alternative activation but with the option to activate the same model in two consecutive turns (if it has the counters to do so) so both players are always engaged. Individual turns are quick and the game develops rapidly. I like the options to enhance certain attacks/defences through use of ‘Ki’ (in game currency generated by some characters for spending on such things) or to use Ki for special moves, magic etc. There’s a lot of flavour here.

It’s also worth noting that the game is scenario focused although we have yet to try any of those. Our games so far have just been about learning to play.

The models are also lovely. The ones included in the box are resin and the blisters are either metal or resin. They all come with their character card as well. Most are single piece although a couple in the starter set were two part (which I’ve not stuck together yet to make painting easier).

Getting into the game is reasonably easy, with a newish starter set available, Bushido Risen Sun. This contains everything you need to get playing and also doesn’t force you to pick a faction. Here’s what’s in the box,

A5 Rule book

10 Miniatures and bases

30 cards (10 detailing each miniature and the rest as upgrades etc)

Token set

I also purchased another three ronin models and the ronin card deck to provide a little more option and variability.

We like a good game in our house and I’ve always enjoyed gaming since I was knee high to a grasshopper. My son also seems to enjoy gaming, with Star Wars Imperial Assault being one of our go to games for some fun. He’s currently 11 and board games provide some structure for him to game within. We’ve tried WHFB before and while he enjoyed it, the rules, free form elements of the game and the time to play the game didn’t gel fully with him. Digesting all of the meta-game, army design and rules was also something not that interesting to an 11 year old.

I thought it was time to try something new and look at a smaller, skirmish style game. Something with a low model count, an interesting setting and rules that could be picked up reasonably easily. I was also hoping that we could both get involved in the hobby side of building/painting the models. He was on board with the idea.

We looked at Saga, Frost Grave/Star Grave, Bushido and Battletech. My son is more into the fantasy gaming idea but was certainly drawn toward Battletech – the idea of big stompy robots appealed to him. Frost Grave was also an option as he has recently started playing D&D with his friends and he really enjoys the character progression side of the game. But the option to have ninjas, samurai and angry animals attacking each other was the winner – Bushido it was.