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!

As we now have some terrain and some constructed miniatures, we can play a game. I checked the rules of Bushido, and nowhere does it state that the models have to be painted, so, with some blu-tack holding them to the base, my son and I clashed over the tabletop.

For our first game, we decided not to play a scenario but to just fight it out. My son had clearly been thinking about his forces as he had already selected a 100 point force complete with some of the additional cards you can take, including some Temple of Ro-Kan specific terrain pieces. I on the other hand had to spend 5 minutes after set up trying to quickly put together a Cult of Yurei force.

For the Temple of Ro-Kan (TRK), my son had selected,

• 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.

For the Cult of Yurei, I picked the following,

• Mo Ises (an assassin that likes stabbing people in the back)
• Mokoti (dreadful in combat but can control enemy models)
• Risu (Handy in a fight but can cast some long range poison attacks)
• Ibara (Can handle himself in combat and can throw some fire around at range)
• 2 Plague rats (basically cheap chaff but can cause poison if they succeed in attacking)
• Hozumi Maha (a ronin who can also control enemy models)
• Tenbatsu (another ronin who’s a combat monster)

We threw some terrain down on the table and deployed along our back line.

Turn 1.

Like most games, turn 1 is about setting up for the rest of the game. I kept Hozume Maha back to focus on Ki generation so that he could unleash his command ability in later turns but otherwise advanced everyone forward behind the available cover. My son rushed forward around his terrain piece that dishes out Ki and started collecting as much as he could.

I activated a plague rat at which point my son threw down his trap card. I failed my test and my son then got to roll for damage. He’s always been lucky with his dice rolls when it counts and this was no exception as he rolled high, killing my plague rat out right – first blood to him.

Turn 2.

I advanced my other plague rat up the right side but it was charged by Hotaru and it died quickly in combat after Hotaru activated her fire ability. Mokati managed to control Saruka who I then got to attack Yim – this caused no damage but did mean that both Saruka and Yim used up their activations. Ibara is able to spray Yim with fire to cause some damage. Otherwise, the rest of the models continue to move into position this turn.

Turn 3.

I try to cast control with both Mokoti and Hozumi Maha but manage to roll snake eyes on both tests, failing completely. In reply, Kuma charges Mokoti and, in one of the most one sided battles ever, Mokoti is battered to death, taking 12 damage in one turn (he only has 6 health to start). To get some sort of revenge, I charge Tenbatsu at Saruka and cause 4 damage to her.

Turn 4.

My notes for this turn are a little brief, but Master Ekusa tried and failed to remove activations from Tenbatsu. Tenbatsu and what was left of the Cult of Yurei warband all attacked Saruka, failing to cause any damage or succeed with a command spell.

Turn 5.

Again Master Ekusa fails to suck an activation from Tenbatsu who finally extracts some revenge and kills Saruka in a bloody display of sword play. Hozumi Maha finally succeeds in getting a control spell off and takes control of Yim who promptly turns around and punches Hotaru in the face, causing a couple of points of damage. Hotaru then attacks Tenbatsu but Tenbatsu is no match for the young fire monk and is able to cut her down 

Turn 6.

My notes get very blurry at this stage but Kuma launches a full on attack at Tenbatsu using all of his panda based magic. This results in Tenbatsu ending up stunned and immobilised which is not a great position to be in with an angry panda. Kuma is then able to kill Tenbatsu but not without taking a lot of damage in return. Ibara and Risu, who have been skulking around the side to get into the rear of the enemy, blast Yim with their ranged attacks and Yim dies a horrible poisoned, flame-ridden death. 

At this point, I’m left with Risu, Ibara, Hozumi Maha and Mo Ises (who’s been largely useless so far). My son has a battered Kuma and Grand Master Ekusa. It was also getting late and so we decided to call it a draw. But both agreed to do battle the following evening as we had enjoyed the game so much. 

As my son’s faction is the Temple of Ro-Kan, I wanted to add some more temple-esque terrain that could be used in our games. Looking at some reference images, one of the particularly beautiful elements of a Shinto temple are the torii gates. Doing a little bit of research, I understand that these are the gateways that the gods use to enter the temple from their domain. The gods always walk through the middle, so when visiting, mere mortals should use the gate at the edges, not the middle.

There are plenty of stl files out there on Thingiverse and other 3D printing sites that have either been built in a sculptor or are 3D scans of real gates. I selected a couple and, through the wizardry of uv resin, ended up with the following.

I failed to take pictures of the painting process however it was fairly simple.

For the larger gate, I’ve used an airbrush to get the transition from black to red. It’s the same red that I have used for all of the terrain to ensure that there is continuity across the terrain pieces. The roof is painted with a cheap green acrylic paint from an art shop. This was then given a green wash and dry brush. The sign was Iraqi sand and then I’ve just used a permanent fine tip pen to write on it. I varnished the whole lot but left the green tiles with a satin varnish rather than matt to try and replicate the glazed tiles that you often see in China and Japan. I’ve then mounted the gate on some plasticard and used an acrylic mud to blend it in. Final step is static grass, making sure that I put more grass in the middle of the gate where no one will be walking (except the gods).

The smaller gate was much the same. The wood was a flat earth, heavily washed and then dry brushed with Iraqi sand. The rocks were a black wash over the grey primer followed by a dry brush of light grey. Again the whole thing mounted on plasticard and given a coat of static grass. I’ve flocked the rocks to attempt a mossy look and blend it in a little more.

Both my and my son’s birthdays were in May and we both asked for our respective starter sets. These were duly delivered and, in the case of my son, with a couple of extra models that he wanted. Most of the miniatures in Bushido are metal although the newer casts are now in resin. I’m not a big fan of metal as I find it difficult to work with. It’s very disheartening to paint everything up to then have an arm fall off because the contact wasn’t great or for the paint to chip off. But I’ve tried to learn from the past and we spent some time cleaning the models up to remove the mould lines as best we can. Soapy water and a toothbrush followed next before I put pins into as many joins as I could. A bit of green stuff to fill any gaps was the final step.

A couple of the Cult of Yurei are already on the painting bench as I forgot to take a picture of them before I started.

I also looked into what primer I should use as one of the problems with chipping is probably down to not using the right one. I’ve opted for a Mr Hobby metal primer based upon internet feedback. I’m hoping this will prevent any chipping problems once things are painted up – we shall see!

We’ve painted a lot of terrain but no actual models in this project. Until now.

Temple of Ro-Kan can field some constructs which are based on the statues you see at various temples in China and Japan. To create these, I went searching across various 3d printing sites to find 3d scans of temple statues. I’ve also collected some stl files for bases.

Once downloaded, using nothing more than the free windows  3D Builder, I can put the models together. In this case, I was able to import the stl files of the statues and the 30mm base into the same Builder scene. From the picture below, you can see that the statues are way out of scale to the base but 3D Builder allows rescaling. This is trial and error but eventually you can get something that fits on the base – just remember to scale in all three directions at the same time to avoid unusual geometry!

Next I need to fill the base up. This is achieved by creating a simple cylinder of the required size. Move the cylinder into position and merge the cylinder with the base. 3D Builder does all the hard work in merging the two meshes (and does this very well!). I’ve saved the base for future use to avoid repeating this step. You can import the base into Blender and create a rough ground texture or even add some rocks to the base (there is a Blender add on for creating rocks!) but in this case, I’ve left it blank as the statue will take up most of the base.

Finally, move the statue stl on to the base and ensure that the two meshes connect. This usually means settling the statue into the base which means that you lose a little bit of the detail on the bottom but done carefully, it’s not noticeable. If you don’t merge the two files, it won’t print although you can of course print them separately and glue them together once printed. But it’s easier to merge them now. Once happy with the connection, merge the two meshes which can take a couple of minutes depending on the power of your PC.

All that’s left is to export the stl to your slicing software and print them out.

I wanted these to look like bronze statues but to paint them quickly. For this, I will use Vallejo Bronze, Dark Rubber, Nihilakh oxide, German Camo Brown and Viking gold.

I started with a zenith highlight across both models before applying Vellejo Bronze. I can highly recommend the Vellejo metallics and the bronze went down every well.

Once the bronze was dry, I’ve given everything a dry brush of dark rubber, paying particular attention to the areas most likely to be touched or rubbed against. This helps take the shine off. Then I’ve applied the Nihilakh oxide before gently wiping it off before it could dry. This leaves the paint in the recesses.

The final step is to dry brush with the viking gold and job done. The German Camo Brown was for the base prior to the flocking stage. All that’s left is a couple of coats of varnish.

I’ve flocked with a summer grass mix (Temple of Ro-Kan is all about life and vitality), painted the base rim black and added the LoS markings.

In game, these fellas are pretty durable (actually having the durable special rule!). They can take the pain and can dish it out. They are also immune to things like fire and poison although suffer from being slow, so they aren’t going to dash across the board and claim any last turn objectives. They can be used as mobile cover as any units behind them can get a cover bonus from them. Finally, if they do collect any Ki, they can use it to gain an extra activation in the turn, which is very powerful.

Progress has been a little slow as I’ve been away but both my and my son’s birthday presents arrived, so we now have a Cult of Yurei starter set for me and a Temple of Rokan starter set for my son. I’ll take some pictures once we’ve put the models together.

Firstly, this is only vaguely related to Bushido in that it’s far Eastern influence but I was lucky enough to be taken to a swanky local restaurant. I went to the bathroom and opened the door to be presented by the following chap…..

As for actual project updates, I’ve finished painting the mdf measuring stick and a 3d printed prisoner transport. Nothing particularly clever about either of these but a handy tool for playing the game and another small piece of terrain.

Bushido uses three different base sizes (30, 40 and 50mm). Models also have fields of vision of 180 degrees and a forward facing. As the bases are round, these need to be marked on to the base.

To make sure that all of the bases are the same and to make marking the bases easier, I’m going to build a jig/template. For this I will need some MDF, some thick card and a circle cutter.

I’ve simply cut half circles out of the card of 30, 40 and 50mm radius using the circle cutter. The card is then glued to the MDF and once dry, cut down to a manageable size.

To mark the bases, I can simply fit the base into the required slot and the edge of the MDF will be the 180 degree field of vision. Simple!

I’ve also painted up some 3D printed fences to provide some low cover.

Simple approach with a mid brown, heavy dark brown wash and then dry brushed with Iraqi sand. The base was then given an acrylic mud compound and the static grass applied. Quick and easy.

While I’ve 3d printed some stuff myself, I also bought a couple of larger pieces. One of these is a Shinto Shrine. Before setting out to paint, I’ve had a quick look around for some reference pictures.

The model comes in two pieces which were given a grey primer. I’ve then just used the cheap acrylic paints from the Works, except for the red, which is a vallejo crimson.

The wood was given a heavy wash before an Iraqi sand dry brush.

The tiles I painted a dark green and then dry brushed with a goblin green.

Unfortunately, the model suffers from stepping from the print which makes washes and dry brushing harder. For the wood and tile areas, this isn’t such a problem however my first attempt at the stones looked awful as a dark wash ran into the stepping creating a lined effect.

Now I could have applied some plastic glue or other methods to smooth this out, but this is a terrain piece and life is too short. So I repainted the stones grey and applied the wash just between the rocks rather than all over. I’ve then carefully dry brushed with a light grey and the end result was passable, at least from 3 feet.

Final step was to apply some flock around the stones to hide the worst of the stepping and job done.