Bushido - My First Game

Let battle commence - Mike's board is coming along a treat.

The club venue was not available this week so Mike generously hosted a couple of Bushido games at his, and agreed to give me my first game using my Silver Moon Syndicate figures. We played 35 rice points.



Prior to the game I knew that counters were a thing so I had visited the Covent Garden Bead Shop (21a Tower Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9NS) where they have a Hugh range of beads, including those with an oriental theme, idea for the game.

Each model has card that give you their stats and skills. The four fish are the number of cross bow bolts I have.

The mechanics of the game involve you and your opponent alternating between activations until all of your figures have acted twice, at which point they are exhausted for that turn. Our game lasted six turns, which I believe is standard. Much like Infinity you can decide in which order to activate your figures and you can return to any of them at any point as long as they not exhausted.

The cross bow armed guy not keeping far enough away from an enemy model. Bother!

Again, much like Infinity, you have opposed rolls when in close combat, and when carrying out a special skill you have an unopposed roll.

Johnny Morris and his animals (a reference for the older generation) and my Sumo make an effective team.

The aim in our game, taken from the rule book, was to manipulate three objectives placed down the centre line of the table so that they became friendly. The objectives started as neutral, and by spending an action in base to base contact you could make them friendly. However if you turned an objective from your opponent's state of friendly it becomes neutral. You then had to turn it a second time to make friendly for your side. At the end of the second, fourth and sixth turns you would score a point if you had more friendly objectives than your opponent.

The game in the balance - Quick bring more Orange Squash, the drink of champions.

Mike was playing the Ito Clan and one of his models, Ito Itsunagi, has gained a reputation in practice games as being a close combat monster. He certainly looked the part being a bare chested model armed with two swords. Nasty. Also, the Ito Clan are able to call upon poisoned weapons which cause additional wounds at the end of a turn. Very nasty.

Early on in our game I realised how good my cross bow armed figure was at ignoring armour on models.  However, so did Mike, and he managed to send a guy over to tie him up in close combat. My umbrella armed lady of the night also managed to hold Ito Itsunagi up in fisticuffs (I can only imagine she had shown a bit of leg and it had put him off his game!). Also my Sumo wrestler and Animal Handler were going great guns on the left flank.

Turns two and four passed and we were still level pegging. But, the previously distracted Mr Itsunagi finally came to his senses and dispatched his date and then proceeded to put a number of my other models to the sword. By turn six I had no one left to party and Mike had won the game, one point to nothing. There is of course a lot more to the game than my brief description given above, but I shall leave these to another time, i.e. when I have a chance to fully understand them.

Happy wargaming.