Samurai #3... Ronin

 

So the final game of our Samurai trilogy unfolded last week (current score son 2, me 0).  Having played a couple of games of Test of Honour we decided to dig out the Osprey rules, Ronin...

I haven't played these for ages but had good memories of them so we decided it would be interesting to compare and contrast with ToH.  In many ways these are a more straightforward set of rules with alternate figure activation and nice straightforward dice (plus modifiers)... no fancy dice required!

The USP for these rules is that each figure has a number of counters in their Combat Pool each turn. At the start of each round you secretly select some for attack and defence, so you could, for example, fight an entire round on the defensive... hoping to hold off your opponent until reinforcements arrive.  Alternatively you could throw everything into multiple attacks and hope to finish your opponent off, but risk being injured in the process.  Counters can also be used to enhance attack or defence rolls or to boost your chance of gaining the initiative in the round.  I believe a similar system is used in Osprey's En Garde rules which I own but which are still in the great 'unplayed rules' pile.

I used some beads for attack and defence counters: I picked these up at a local Hobbycraft and they have a suitable 'Go' style about them...

Some figures also have additional bonuses and skills in certain weapons to add to the list of things to forget each round.  Our game pitted a band on Bushi (or regular warriors) against some Sohei monks who were defending their temple.

The quiet temple...

The monks rush out to defend the temple...

The Bushi arrive, determined to loot the temple

Ashigaru armed with Teppo (or arquebus) take some
long range shots across the river...

The melee concentrates around a rice store.

Neither of us made any attempts at subtlety.  I had split my troops and one of my Samurai and an Ashigaru armed with a spear made a brave rush towards the river but were quickly driven back by Bow and Teppo-fire, leaving the Samurai badly wounded and out of the fight.

Everyone else was drawn into an increasingly brutal melee which I really ought to have won.  At one stage I had a 2:1 advantage in numbers but my son fought a defensive couple of rounds, holding me off long enough for some extra monks to arrive to balance the odds.

more Teppo-fire rings out but with little effect...

The markers in the picture above indicate light or grievous wounds so you can see how bloody the fight was!  Despite my early advantage, the battle slipped away from me and my troops were cut down, leaving the monks victorious and me conceding a 3-0 defeat in our latest round of games.

On reflection we decided that we preferred these to Test of Honour... nothing wrong with ToH but these felt less chance driven and had more elements of tactics and skill in choosing where and how to balance attack and defence. That's enough Samurai for now though... time for them to retire to the loft to lick their wounds and find something else for our next game.

More Test of Honour/Ronin...

I'm feeling very proud of myself...I bought some buildings a couple of weeks ago at Colours and I've actually built some of them!  Normally purchases would lie in a bag for several months (who am I kidding...years!) quietly maturing like a fine wine before I get around to building or painting them but a fit of enthusiasm meant I took on a couple of my Japanese buildings and even painted some figures, bought (I think) at Salute earlier this year.

The figures are a boxed set of Chobei's Renegades from Warlord Games. 

According to his Wikipedia entry Banzuiin Chobei was a "historical street tough" who became a bit of a Robin Hood type figure.  I liked the description on his Wiki page of him setting up an "employment agency for Ronin".  

The Test of Honour figures are pretty fiddly to put together...separate bodies, arms, legs, heads and weapons... but I've now managed to work out a system for working out which arm goes where and these went together much quicker than my previous efforts.

Looking at discussions online there seem to be optimal builds of Test of Honour forces in terms of weapon choices but I just went with what seemed like a good mix...I can't be faffed with tweaking force composition to that extent.

The man himself...quite a 'chunky' chap!

The buildings are from Sarissa Precision.  Making things isn't really my forte and I was quite worried about fitting these together, especially the watermill,  but they were actually surprisingly straightforward.  There were a  couple of points where an extra pair of hands would have been useful but it was a lot easier than I expected.  Both are really very pretty and should look good on the table

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

Saturday update - Forager figures and house building

Last year I picked up the Forager skirmish rules via a Kickstarter...of course as usual I haven't actually played the rules although they look pretty good and I had an interesting chat with the authors at Salute.  I was interested in how adaptable they might be for later periods such as Colonial: the authors weren't convinced that the mechanics and ranges etc would hold up for that period although I'm still fairly optimistic that they would work with minimal changes.

Actually my plans for Colonial skirmish is to use the Horse and Musket version of A Fistful of Lead.  I've played a couple of excellent games of this at Eric the Shed's (Link) and they should work very well, especially for multiplayer games.  We're planning to try this out next month so I'll need to get thinking about scenarios.

Back to Forager...the Kickstarter also included French, British and Guerilla figures (and Cacadores but I didn't sign up for them).  The figures are interesting...quite chunky and caricatured and at first I wasn't overly impressed but actually they have grown on me and I've now painted them all up.  They'll make a useful addition to my Napoleonic figures, either for Forager or for Sharpe Practice.

As it has been a wet Saturday I've also been working through some of the buildings that I'd picked up at Salute from TT Combat.  Building things really isn't my strong point.  I'm notoriously ham-fisted when it comes to any form of DIY.

The first of these to be completed is this 28mm Japanese Minka...I wasn't actually sure what a Minka was and when I googled it the first entry was an article on an American/Korean porn actress by the same name!  After a bit more googling (and hoping my wife doesn't look too closely at my browsing history) I discovered that a Minka is a traditional Japanese house for farmers, artisans and merchants.  It only took 30 minutes of so to stick it all together and I managed to avoid putting anything on back to front or upside down!  TT Combat have instructions for some of their buildings (including this one) online but worryingly they don't have any instructions for their Cowboy range which are next in my building queue!  This did seem fairly self-explanatory though so hopefully it will all make sense.  The model comes unpainted but with some coloured card for the timber frame and the roof and I reckon needs little more done to it.

Next was a 4Ground  28mmWild West store.  This looks a bit more impressive as it is pre-coloured but was, again, pretty straightforward to build.  I did find that some of the lugs that fit the roof onto the main building didn't align very well so just chopped these off!

Finally we have a 15mm ruined house, again from 4Ground.  I found this in my box of WW2 stuff when setting up for the game with Keith last week (see my previous post) and must have bought it a couple of years ago but had forgotten all about it.  Again it all went together surprisingly smoothly.  I have a good mind to send photos of these to my old woodwork teacher...I was asked to stop trying to make things in Woodwork classes as I was 'just wasting wood'.  On second thoughts that might be a bit weird...

I have built a house...

Well, not exactly a house...it's actually a Japanese Rice store but it has walls and a roof so that's close enough for me.

I bought this 4Ground rice store in October at SELWG to use with my Ronin figures and it has languished with my other purchases since then until yesterday when my wife spotted it and wanted to know why I'd bought things if I wasn't going to do anything with them.  Clearly she doesn't understand about the principles of buying stuff for wargames...these things need a certain time to mature.  Nonetheless I was inspired to make a start on the rice store and built it fairly quickly.

I'm pretty cack-handed when it comes to any form of building things...generally the rule in our house is that it's better to get someone in than to let me loose on any form of DIY and this proved no exception.  Like a lot of the 4Ground kits it has an inner wall which is built first and then lined with an outer and inner lining.  I completely failed to take account of the fact that there is a door and a window on 2 of the walls and managed to put the wrong parts on each side!  As I'd used Superglue rather than PVA this was a bit of a bugger but I managed to prise the pieces off without inflicting too much damage (but covering my fingers in glue in the process)...at least I didn't stick myself to anything...

The store has a Teddy Bear fur roof and my main question is why does mine look like Donald Trump!!!!

This is the house after the fur has been given a liberal coat of PVA/Water and a bit of a trim...now safely de-Trumped!

Ronin

Now that I've completed the 2 factions... sorry, Buntai... that I'd bought for Ronin, I've finally had a chance to actually try the rules.

Given the similarities in presentation and in the alternating figure activation, I wasn't sure if it was going to essentially be a far Eastern version of In Her Majesty's Name.  There are quite a few common features... single finger activation, equipping each figure with a range of skills or attributes etc.  Combat and turn sequence are quite different however.

Once Priority for the turn has been decided each player takes turns to activate a figure: although this is the Move phase, figures have the option to fire instead at a penalty. Combat follows [of which more in a second] and then there is an action phase.  This is where figures can do a range of 'other' thngs, ranging from removing heads [...giving bonus victory points to one of the factions] to firing again.  This does mean that bow armed troops [...sorry... Yumi...] can fire twice, albeit with penalties in each phase.

So far, so similar to other rules such as IHMN.  Hand to hand combat is where the game introduces some more specialised rules.  Each figure involved in combat adds a number of tokens to a combat pool... these can be used to enhance attack or defence or to try and gain initiative.  Players choose the combination of attack or defence secretly and then reveal their hand.  This allows figures to make multiple attacks, make fewer powerful attacks or to fight defensively.  It can make combat quite time consuming, especially if you end up with a mass brawl which does seem to have been the result in the games played so far.

The addition of a range of skills and attributes [eg acrobat, fast] or specialised weapon skills with suitably Eastern names [tetsubo-jutsu anyone?] mean there are a few extra things to bear in mind but not too many additional factors...  I find that we often forget these in the heat of battle if they become too numerous or complex.

Both games we played featured a skirmish between the local warlord's Bushi and some monks.  We decided that the Bush had turned up to collect some taxes from the local temple and had been met with armed resistance from the allegedly peaceful monks.  Scenery comprised the temple and Torii Gate from Sarissa Precision and some cherry blossom trees I found on line from a Chinese company...nice trees which were cheap and delivered surprisingly quickly. 

The Cherry trees

The Sarissa buildings were pretty easy to put together [even for me] but do need painting.  I haven't painted MDF buildings before... my only other ones from 4Ground came ready painted.  Undercoating seems to be the answer here as the MDF soaks up paint likes nobody's business.

The Sarissa Buildings

I played the game through twice... once with my son and then repeated at Guildford with Keith and Anthony playing and me umpiring. Both games descended into a hand to hand bloodbath with missile fire proving pretty ineffective... except when one of Anthony's musket [...sorry...Teppo...] armed troops ran up to point blank range and blasted away...definitely the way to use muskets! In both games players took to firing into hand to hand combats, taking the risk of hitting their own side without any compunction at all!

The Bushi advance on the Temple's prized vegetable patch!

 

 

All in all another really nice set of rules from Osprey.  I do like this size of game as it means I can actually get something on the table fairly quickly and then build on it rather than feeling daunted by the amount of painting etc. needed in advance.  The rules would also lend themselves to other periods without too much work.  They'd certainly suit other Renaissance periods, Pirates etc. but could be tweaked to suit Medieval or Fantasy games too,

Colours and more....

We went to Colours on Sunday, dodging the forecasted gales and downpours as we headed along the M4.  I've always liked Colours... the venue at Newbury racecourse is light and has plenty of space and there's always a good range of games and traders.  It's a bit of a trek but not too bad with a reasonable selection of CDs in the car.

The planned shopping list was quite modest... I'd hoped someone there would be stocking the Sarissa Precision building range.  I was hoping to get a couple of their Japanese buildings for my Ronin factions but sadly couldn't find any (more on these later).  My son and I have also been debating changing tack on our WW2 project...we'd bought some of the Warlord Games figures ages ago and have built them but not painted them yet (actually he's further ahead in the painting stakes than I am).  Lately though we've been thinking that we need to downscale to 20mm or 15mm.  With 28mm there is no scope really for introducing vehicles or armour which we're both keen to do, so we spent some time at the show pondering the ranges available and the relative merits of each.  I think we're tending to 15mm...now we just need to agree a period.  I think we're both keen on early war and my son spotted the Early War Miniatures Belgian range which took his fancy!!

Our purchases did include the Empire of the Dead rules and a faction set of Werewolves.  The rules look very nice but there are lots of pictures and lots of fluff with relatively little content.  Looks fun though!  Nice werewolves which would fit into IHMN as well.

I also bought figures based on Inspector Le Brock and Detective Ratzi from Bryan Talbot's lovely Grandville comic book.  This is a steampunk themed strip set in a world filled with anthropomorphic animals.  I've always really liked Talbots comics from Luther Arkwright to the brilliant Tale of One Bad Rat and Grandville is fantastically drawn and great fun.  When I saw the miniatures I knew I needed them... I've no idea what I'll do with them though!

...what the finished figures should look like [hopefully!]

They're made by Crooked Dice and are excellently sculpted..  They told me they're planning some more animal characters from the strip as well so worth looking out for.

We'd checked out the bring and buy with no joy, but a later inspection revealed 10 nicely painted Samurai so my Ronin forces are growing faster than expected


Ronin

It's pretty obvious I'm a fan of skirmish level games and as I also love all things Samurai the new[ish] set from Osprey, Ronin were very tempting.  I haven't played a game as yet but based on a couple of read throughs the rules look pretty good.  In presentation they're very similar to In Her Majesty's Name... fairly concise with lots of pretty pictures and a range of factions to choose from as well as a points system to build your own.  Combined with a series of Buntai [Samural 'gangs'] from North Star it all proved too tempting.  I bought the Sohei monk buntai and a Bushi Buntai [regular Ashigaru and Samurai].  There are also rules for bandits, ronin, ninjas etc as well as Ikko Ikki, Chinese and Koreans so plenty to choose from.

The rules look fairly straightforward: opponents choose between attack and defence points each turn to determine how they'll behave and there are a host of special skills and abilities to help the lowliest monk defeat the most impressive Hatamoto.

the Sohei Buntai



...and the Bushi

Some of the Bring and Buy bargains

I've ordered a couple of buildings from Sarissa since I couldn't get them at Colours and some cherry blossom trees from Ebay to give some authentic Japanese flavour.



Game updates....

Charlie Don't Surf

I dug out my Vietnam figures a couple of weeks ago as Andrew at the club wanted to try out Charlie Don't Surf, the Too Fat Lardies rules.  I umpired as Andrew's US troops swept though a valley towards a village and walked into the inevitable NVA ambush.  The US troops were fairly well shot up until they were able to get into cover and begin to concentrate fire.  Kevin's NVA tried charging the US troops and were pretty well hammered for their pains. 

Both sides dug in in jungle cover and the US eventually managed to call in artillery [after several rounds of trying] which actually proved only mildly annoying rather than the devastating strike Andrew had been hoping for.  It did force the NVA to pull back and allow the US to drive on through the jungle.  By the end of the game the US had edged the win but at a heavy cost.


Chain of Command

Last night I played my first game of Chain of Command, the new Platoon level game from Too Fat Lardies [again... I think there's a bit of a theme here!].  Thanks to Keith who supplied everything we got to try out an encounter between US and German troops.  The game feels like a modified version of IABSM with Patrol markers replacing blinds.  These lead to the early stages of the game being a bit cat and mouse as each side tries to get into a good position.  The markers then form the deployment [or Jumping off] markers.  The mechanics are similar to a lot of the TFL games but... no cards!  Instead commands are determined by dice rolls which can activate sections or commanders etc but can also trigger the end of the turn.

The game played really well [not least because I won!!] and is ideal for this level of game.  Fairly bloody, although that might just have been Keith's unlucky dice rolling and good mechanics to reflect command and control and friction etc.

There are already additional lists appearing on line to complement the US, British, German and Russian ones in the rules.... including Belgians which neatly brings us back to the beginning of the post!