Redvers and Son Get Into Bushido

I’m very behind on keeping this project up to date at the moment. But before Christmas, my son had purchased some reinforcements to his Temple of RoKan warband and these proved to be quite handy (see some previous battle reports). I also need some reinforcements so added some more models to my collection. First up to be painted is Ikiryo.

In game, Ikiryo is a glass cannon. She’s not cheap and gets to roll a single die in melee, so you really want to keep her out of BtB as, with only 4 wounds, she’s going to get minced pretty quickly. But you don’t take her for her combat abilities.

She does come with the Fear special rule with the highest challenge rating. To add to this, she also comes with Terror (anyone succeeding their Fear roll has to re-roll it) and Dread (anyone taking a Fear test does so with one less dice). So there’s a pretty good chance that anyone trying to enter BtB is going to end up with the Frightened state (which applies a bunch of de-buffs). So she has some defence if she does find herself in combat.

Her main abilities are the two Ki feats that she has. First up, is the Touch the Void ability. If she activates this before a damage roll is made, for each Ki point spent, 1 wound is cancelled. In addition, the attacker takes 1 wound. Handy.

Her other main ability is Look into the Void. For 3 Ki points, she can target anyone who has line of sight to her and within 8″. The target must take a Ki Challenge test against Ikiryo and if they fail, they take a damage roll. Basically, she has laser eyes to blast away at the enemy from behind the front line models.

The model itself is a simple two piece, with the parasol being a separate cast piece. This was easy enough to attach to the model but I did paint it up first. For the paint job, I wanted to aim for a Geisha look and aim for an ornate kimono. Basically, very different to the rest of my warband.

The kimono is a base of deep sea blue and I’ve shaded with a nightshade wash. I’ve then highlighted up using deep sea blue and increasing amounts of ice blue. The edging and belt (called an Obi I think) is purple with off white/purple mix for highlights.

I’ve opted for a pale skin with a light brown mixed in for shading. Once completed, I’ve painted over the face with a thin off white glaze before applying a red lipstick and makeup.

The parasol is a crimson red, highlighted with a mid red. Off white for the rest of the parasol.

I wanted some Japanese influenced design on the kimono. I would like to claim that my free handing skills are good enough to paint this on, but they aren’t. Kimono transfers aren’t really found in the wargaming world, so I turned to the world of nail transfers and, after a lot of searching, found some flower based transfers that looked close to a cherry blossom look. These were carefully applied to the sleeves and the rear of the kimono.

Basing was once again an acryllic dry earth given a brown wash. Then flocked with a dead grass.

My son wanted to use some Fire kami in his warband list and we didn’t have any models. This was easily rectified through the medium of Thingiverse and a 3d printer and the search term ‘fire elemental’. A quick resizing of the stl and 2 hours in the printer and we had a couple of fire kamis ready to paint.

In game, all kami (of which there are quite a few) are cheap and cannot interact with objectives. They also tend to be weak in a fight and low health. However, they all have the Durable special rule meaning they can only ever take a maximum of 1 damage per combat, so they take a little bit of effort to remove. They all have an annoying ability which either buffs your own troops, or debuffs the enemy. In the case of the fire kami, it can shoot small fire balls which causes damage and a flame attack. So in conclusion, they are annoying enough to want to kill but insignificant enough to really make you question whether you should be wasting your time on doing so. They really create a dilemma for the opposition.

Painting wise, this was a really basic and quick paint job. I watered down a yellow, orange and red and then based the entire model in yellow. While the paint was still wet, I’ve picked out the higher areas in orange and then red. This was all slopped on and I’ve allowed to the paint to mix on the model. Finally, once dry, I gave everything a yellow glaze (or two) to tie it all together. It all took a couple of hours.

Not perfect or going to win any awards, but quick and good enough for the table top.

We played this game before Christmas but it has taken me this long to summon up the courage to tackle the project system to upload it! This was a quick game, so I’ll keep the report brief (at least for me!) but hopefully this will keep the usual suspects who like these battle reports happy.

Firstly, the mission. Having played a few games now, I definitely see that the game is designed for scenario play. Some factions and builds are not meant for a straight up fight and can win a scenario without killing a single enemy model. With this in mind, we opted for the simple 3 idol scenario with a game length of 6 turns. Scoring takes place at the end of turn 4, turn 5 and turn 6 with the side with the most scenario points gaining 1VP at the end of each of the listed turns. You gain one scenario point for each ‘friendly’ idol. Idols start the game neutral and can be turned friendly if a model in BtB spends an activation to interact with it. The idols are deployed along the centre line at 6” intervals.

My son opted for his Temple of RoKan and wanted to use his new models he picked up early December. His force was,

Master Po – This is a master monk who despite looking like a fat bloke who like a cuddle, is a combat monster. Hard to hit but he hits back twice as hard

The Grey Pilgrim – A ronin who is handy in combat but comes with a very useful lightening bolt ranged attack that can be buffed with Ki to make a second attack within 3” of the first target

Riku – a monk who has an affinity with water and includes a Tsunami Ki ability that effectively washes everyone backward across the board – useful for moving enemy models off of the objectives

Tsutsumi – a monk who has a sonic blast ranged attack that leaves targets prone (and therefore vulnerable to combat monks!)

He also took a Gorinto terrain piece to generate an extra Ki point per turn

I ditched my Cult of Yurei and opted for the Kiyozumi family that we got in the original start set that we picked up. Just for something a bit different. This allowed be to play the Kiyozumi Theme list giving me the bonus of turning one objective friendly from the start (I picked the middle objective) and during one turn, I get to win all tie breaks. Useful! In my list was,

Kiyozumi Kicho – Handy in combat and has some sneaky Ki feats

Kenmeina – an Ashigaru who can handle herself in combat and has some durability with her armour

Kiyozumi Sadaka – a Samurai and I’ve equipped with a card providing some defence against opposing Ki attacks

Kiyozumi Haiboku – a Samurai with a bow for handy long ranged attacks

Kiyozumi Hinadori – a healer who I’ve also given a golden sword in case she gets into combat

Turn 1

I moved my models up behind the fence to get a bit of protection and use some of my ranged attacks to soften the enemy up. My son was aggressive and ran forward to the idols, really wanting to get into position to get into combat. I was able to get Sadaka to use her ranged Ki ability to drain the Grey Pilgrim of some Ki which will limit here ability to launch lightening bolts

Turn 2

My son kicked off turn two by activating the Grey Pilgrim. The pilgrim used her Ki feat of Rajins Rage which allows any successful lightening bolt hit to leap to any model within 3” for a second attack. She proceeded to zap Kicho for a point of damage and then managed another point against Sadaka. I got off lightly on that attack as it could have been a lot worse!

Haiboku used his Dai Kyu long bow against the Grey Pilgrim as retribution for her lightening attack. This went very well, and he was able to skewer her for 4 points of damage. I was feeling pleased with this….

Riku, the water monk, charged into Kenmeira. During the rolling of the melee dice pool, I managed to roll all 1s. My son, who has an uncanny ability to roll good dice, rolled very highly resulting in a massive success level in attack. He managed 8 damage, which is a huge amount in one turn, especially given that Kenmeira has armour that reduces the damage roll. Kenmeira is not able to withstand such an attack, and dies.

Master Po then gets in on the action and attacks Sadaka. Fortunately, Haiboku is close by and activates his Bodyguard ability, switching places with Sadaka. Having fought Po before and knowing how good he is in combat, I went full defensive and used Haiboku’s push defence ability. This works, as Po’s attacks fail to get through and Haiboku can then push Po back 1” out of BtB and combat. A lucky escape!

Looking to overload Po, I get Kicho to attack him and she is able to land 1 damage, but this is annoyingly cancelled by Po’s tough ability, so the combat ends without damage.

My son, looking to take out Kicho, uses The Grey Pilgrim’s Lightening Bolt attack against Kicho. But, as she is in BtB with Po, he has to roll off to see if he hits Po. Amusingly for me, he does, and Po gets zapped for 1 damage. I laughed, my son didn’t.

With Po exhausted (out of activations), I got Kicho to press the attack. Being exhausted automatically removes a dice from your melee pool, so this makes an attack on the mighty Po slightly easier. You allocate your melee dice pool secretly and also select any available special attacks/defences secretly as well. My son put all of his dice into defence and opted for the Counter Strike Defence special defence. In this case, if Po’s defence dice pool beats Kicho’s attack pool by 2 or greater, then Po gets to make a damage roll. And this is exactly what happens and Kicho takes a point of damage.

Turn 3

My son gets the initiative and wastes no time in activating Po who is still locked in combat against Kicho. Kicho is grossly out matched and despite me putting all of my dice into defence, Po used his Crushing Wave Strike Ki feat (which means I must remove my highest defence dice), it wasn’t enough. Po was able to deliver a blow that killed Kicho.

With two models removed from my faction and I’m nowhere near any of the objectives, I’m in deep trouble. I try to strike back with Haiboku’s long bow but manage to miss everything. Riku then uses his tsunami Ki feat, which requires all enemy models to take tests to avoid being pushed backward 8” (or up against any immovable terrain). I fail most of the tests and my warband is now scattered and further away from the objectives.

The Grey Pilgrim is now able to get into combat with Sadaka and does so. Sadaka does her best but takes 2 wounds. My attacks are just not getting through and causing damage. 

Po continues his rampage and moves into combat with Haiboku. Haiboku rolls a lot of defence dice but is not enough to avoid taking another point of damage. 

Finally Tsutsumi gets into the action and attacks Hinadori in the rear which gives him a lot of bonus dice to his attack. It’s too much for Hinadori who takes a massive 8 damage, which would be enough to kill off most of the models in the game and Hinadori is no exception. 

Turn 4

This is a scoring turn (at the end) and despite losing over half of my warband, I’m actually still in the lead! But in reality, it is all over quickly as the Grey Pilgrim quickly despatches Sadaka and Po takes out Haiboku. Overall, it’s a very one sided game and my warband is completely crushed.

Conclusion

My son was very aggressive and Master Po is certainly worth his points value, providing a lot of consistent melee output. I was overwhelmed from the start and never got into the fight. 

Interestingly, had we been playing a tournament game, tabling your opponent doesn’t automatically give you a win. The game automatically stops when an opponent is completely defeated and as this happened in during turn 4, there was never a scoring event and the game would therefore have finished in a draw. Had I survived to the 5th turn and still had the one objective scoring for me, I would have taken a victory point at the end of the 4th turn and then won the game. There will be many out there that would disagree with this, as tabling your opponent surely means that you win, but this does create an interesting dynamic to the game. Even in list building, you need to think about which of your models will handle the scenario objectives and which will be providing another role. 

While doing research for the project, I stumbled across the above picture. These look lovely and should be on my gaming board to help with the immersion. So off to Thingiverse I went and found me some lovely stl files. A few hours later and my 3d printer spat out the resin models.

I’m a big believer in immersive terrain that looks good but not spending hours and hours on it. After all, the focus is on the models and not the backdrop. The lanterns were given an airbrushed red while the tiles were painted with a cheap green. I thought about dry brushing and shading the red but couldn’t be bothered – I’m not sure it will elevate the models much. I did however attempt some OSL. I’m not very convinced by the effect though. I applied a dark green ink to the tiles and then dry brushed with a lighter green. A bit of black and gold completed the paint job. Simple but quite effective.

As I was working on lanterns, I finished the mdf lanterns that I got with the buildings that we bought right back at the start of this project. Again, not much effort expended on these.

A number of the scenarios in the game require some objectives. These need a facing as they can be interacted with for scenario points. I had been using some resin blobs that look a bit like large chess pawns but these detracted from the immersion, especially given that they were painted a metallic blue.

Back to Thingiverse and after a quick search, I found some small shrines which suit the job. These got the same red as the lanterns, black for the roof and a grey for the stone base. A quick black wash and dry brush to bring them up. I again attempted some OSL on them to provide some indication as to the ‘front’. Not convincing, but a lot better than the metallic blue pawns!

Both I and my son wanted to add to our factions and so both asked for Bushido stuff for Christmas. For me, I opted for the Yuta or Yurei boxed set which is a themed box around 4 witches (or Shugenja). They were all given an offer of power by Yurei with the catch that all four sisters had to agree. Three did, one didn’t, so the box contains the three living witches, each with their own powers and the fourth witch who is now a kairai (or zombie). It also contains a couple of skeleton warriors. The witches can synergise with a skeleton build, a kairai build or some of the other servants of Yurei, so gives plenty of options.

My son wanted to expand his Temple of RoKan force with the new Kitsune models. These play differently to the monks that he currently has, being fast around the battlefield but a little more fragile. He also wanted the Ashinaga Tenaga model, which also fits into his faction. This model is based up a Japanese myth around two men, one with long legs and one with long arms, who worked together to catch fish. In game, the model provides a useful harpoon and net which allows Ashinaga Tenaga to move opposing models around the battlefield. Very handy for getting the enemy out of position

I’ve spent the week building my son’s models. This ranged from easy to downright nightmarish. The Kitsune went together very well with only minimal clean up. They are quite fragile though, so we’ll have to see how long they last….

Ashinaga Tenaga took me the best part of two hours to get together. It only came in four parts – the metal net base, the chap with the long legs (Ashinaga), the torso of the long armed chap (Tenaga) and the harpoon. The problem is that everything never quite lined up and it all needed to be pinned. This was hard given that all of the bits were often thinner than my usual pinning wire I use, requiring the use of 0.5mm and 0.3mm wire.

These, coupled with some one off purchase made back in November by both of use, means that the arms race has well and truly started!

In the last update, there was a desecrated grave with a grave stone that came from Oshiro Models. This was part of a set of grave stones and it seemed a shame to not paint up the rest and make a bigger terrain piece. While I was buying the graves from Oshiro, a cooking station and a hand wash also fell into the shopping cart.

For the grave stones, these were exactly the same paint job as the desecrated grave (luftwaffe grey, nuln oil and then a dry brush). These were all mounted on a plasticard base and then smeared with acrylic mud. Once dry, it all got covered in static grass.

The cooking station is a simple little set of 4 resin pieces and will add that ‘lived in’ feel to the table top. This is all mounted on plasticard as the graves above.

The hand washing station is a 6 piece resin set and I had ‘fun’ pinning the supports to the roof and then to the base. I’ve opted for a grey with black wash for the reed roof as this will tie in with the rice huts that I built early in this project. I’ve also opted for the same red as used in the other terrain pieces to again tie this all together. In the water trough, I’ve poured some of the resin water that I used for the pond, just because I could.

I’ve put together a few faction specific terrain pieces and time for some more. In this case, more Cult of Yurei terrain that you can purchase into your warband to provide enhancements.

First up, we have a Haunted Well. In game, this removes the Courage, Bravery and Leadership skills from opposing models, so particularly handy if the Cult really wants to double down on the fact that many of the models have the Fear trait.

For this model, I just searched the usual 3d printing sites for a suitable option. I looked hard for a suitable Japanese flavoured well but didn’t find anything that would sensibly fit on a 30mm round base, which this terrain requires. So I ended up with a more western flavoured well. I thought about how I could make it ‘haunted’ but drew a blank, both in the 3d modelling perspective and the the painting perspective.

Once printed, this got luftwaffe grey for the stone, a nuln oil wash and then a dry brush. The wood was flat earth, dark brown wash and then an Iraqi Sand dry brush. The tiles were a cheap green acrylic (as I’ve used on some other terrain) followed by a green ink wash and then a dry brush highlight of goblin green. I usually varnish everything in matt but in this case, I used a gloss on the tile for that far Eastern glazed look.

The Cult can also have a desecrated grave as deployable terrain. This is particularly handy if you want to run a Kairai (zombie) warband as it allows you to deploy your Kairai next to the grave, rather than on your back line. So a great way of catapulting your forces forward.

Rather than 3d print this, I found some great resin models through Oshiro Models. And while I was on the site, it seemed a shame not to buy some of their other stuff, but that’s my next post.

So this was an easy build. Grey for the stone, nuln oil wash and a dry brush. This was then stuck to a couple of 40mm (base size for this terrain) plasticard discs (to give it a little height). The grave was glued to the base and then some acrylic mud was smeared across bottom. To make it ‘desecrated’, I created a hole at the front of the grave as if it had been dug up. Some brown and then red was stippled on to create a blood effect. And then the whole lot got flocked. Easy

I’ve always wanted to try creating a watery terrain piece using resin and Japanese ponds give me the perfect excuse, especially as I found the below 3D printed option for sale. It also came with a bridge that for some reason didn’t make it into the picture.

After a quick prime, I thought long and hard about the water colour. Ponds near me all seem to be a muddy brown, which isn’t very appealing and doesn’t shout ‘Zen Japanese garden’. Using the air brush, I eventually went for a black in the middle, over sprayed with a dark sea blue. Toward the edges I’ve opted for t a lighter tone to try to create the image of depth. I’m aiming for a clear or very lightly coloured resin, so the base needs to do all of the work here.

I didn’t like the grass effect, so covered this with an acrylic wet mud affect and also spread this into the water area to try to mimic the bank disappearing into the water.

I painted up some of the decorations. The lily pads were goblin green, a green ink wash and then a quick dry brush. The bamboo/reeds were Iraqi sand given a brown wash and the fish were given a silver base and then a very thinned down orange was applied for the gold fish and orange and red splotches for the koi. These all got stuck down before the resin pour (apart for the lily pads).

Everything was now ready for the resin. I purchased a two part resin and mixed it with a couple of drops of blue ink and tried a test pour. This worked surprisingly well. I then measured some water into the pond to see how much resin would be needed and to check for gaps. With the correct measurements, I mixed up the resin/ink and poured away. Once set, I noticed that I didn’t quite manage to remove the surface tension along some of the bank and the resin ‘folds down’ but otherwise, I was quite pleased with everything.

I then got hold of some water effects to make the ripples and carefully applied a thin layer, including trying to make a wake effect for the fish. I didn’t want to apply too much as this is a pond and not the North Atlantic.

I then needed to paint the bridge (Flat Earth base, heavy brown wash and then an Iraqi Sand dry brush for the wood, a scarlet for the hand rails). Before this could be put in place, I marked out its position and flocked the ground before putting the bridge in place.

Overall, I’m quite pleased with the effect. (And yes, for those that hate stepping from 3D printing, you can see this on the rocks, but I’m ok with it)