Eventually...Test of Honour

This is one of those blog posts that has been lurking in Draft Limbo for several months and was doomed to never see the light of day.  I have a couple of these which get started in a fit of enthusiasm and then fall by the wayside.  I usually end up deleting them as they aren't relevant but this one has survived the cull and, thanks to a bout of painting, has finally seen the light of day.

I bought Test of Honour back in April at Salute.  I've always been a fan of Samurai based games and played quite a few using Ronin (by Osprey)...amazingly when I checked on the blog posts, my last game was 5 years ago!  I'd picked up some of their smaller packs a while before and eventually weakened and bought the boxed set as it was going for a good discount at Salute.

So what's in the box?  Well...lots of stuff....

Card 'top down' buildings...I'll use model buildings instead

Lots and lots of figures

movement bases for 3 figures

Guides for assembling the figures... still a bit confusing...

The figures are actually the old Wargames Factory figures and are exceptionally fiddly to put together.  They come with legs separate legs, bodies (in 2 halves) and arms...and that's before you start working through the variety of heads and weapons they can be equipped with!  There are enough figures supplied to make 30 figures which is more than you'll need for a game so there is plenty of scope to have some variety in the weapons and poses.

I had real problems working out the arms in particular...it might just be me but I have real trouble picturing what the eventual pose will be until I've glued the arms on.  As I use superglue this can mean that I end with figures in very bizarre poses which are no use for holding weapons.  Eventually I'd managed a production line system for the figures which seemed to work better and I'd grasped which arms did what.  

The other issue I had is the range of weapons: the figure below is holding a sword with what appears to be some kind of ball on the blade.  I'd wondered if he was using his katana to slice oranges for his lunch but apparently it's actually meant to be positioned the other way round as though he is drawing it from the scabbard and the ball fits into one of the hands (if you've worked out which hand is which)… he's since been given a katana-ectomy and has a nice new sword without attached fruit.

My only other niggle with the figures is that they feel very light but this was easily remedied by gluing a penny underneath the base.  This might all sound a bit moany...the figures are actually very nice.  I've put together a dozen of them and I'm pleased with the results.  I chickened out of trying to paint the Mon patterns on their Sashimono and bought some transfers from Veni Vidi Vici.  A handy tip I'd found online was to use the 25mm transfers for the large flags and 15mm for the individual sashimono.

Now to work on another dozen or so figures and then actually try the rules out!

Civilians from Perry