Bushido - board completed and second game

It was some time ago that I was introduced to Bushido the game and I had decided to build my own two-by-two board. However, the decision to have a large water feature (in keeping with my faction's theme of trading) meant that its construction required more work than had planned. The problem was caused by the time taken for the water effects to dry. I used different makes of water effect resin and I layered it to thickly. Only myself to blame. However, the original plan of getting a muddy river bed did eventually work. A 4Ground rice hut, an oriental bridge from Sariassa Precision Limited, a river junk model from a pet shop (which was originally designed for the bottom of a fish tank), Plastcraft Games swamp walkway set, some model crates, and some ornamental pebbles, as additional scatter terrain, finished the board off nicely.

Above: The completed table with terrain (sorry for the blurry photograph, but It was the best I had, to show you the board).



So Mike B. invited three of us over (Ed, Joe and myself) for a Bushido evening. A fifty rice points limit meant that, whilst working on my Scourge for September's Drop Zone Commander Invasion tournament that afternoon, I had to also build, paint and base my Golden Sentinel model so that I had enough points of my Silver Moon Syndicate to go to battle.

Whilst Mike (Ito Clan) played Ed (Prefecture of Ryu), Joe and his Savage Wave played me. This is only my second game of Bushido, and I am still getting my head around the mechanics and the special rules. However, due to Joe being very kind, I did manage to achieve a victory. In his list Joe was using two very powerful fighters, Zuba (13 rice points) and Taisho Tenbatsu (12 rice points) and to make up the numbers, he had six smaller, less effective and less expensive Bakemono.

I, on the other hand, had a cast of thousands...well, ten models in fact, two of which were animals:

- Fitiauma, a Sumo wrestler (9 rice points)
- The Golden Sentinel, a Samurai warrior (8 rice points)
- Saki, a femme fatale, willing to bat her eyelashes to distract any enemy model (7 rice points)
- Zo, a manipulator of the Ki power tokens which allow models to perform special abilities during the game (6 rice points)
- Kyoaku-Han, a fighter (4 rice points)
- Kyoaku-Han, a guy armed with a crossbow (5 rice points)
- Sukuratchi, the animal handler (5 rice points)
- Okkete San, Sukuratchi's chicken (2 rice points)
- Wakasu Akuma, Sukuratchi's stoat (1 rice point)
- Sukoshi Kani, a little girl who has the ability to lay a carpet of spikes (3 rice points)

Above: My models deployed

The mission in our game was to 'own' as many of the six objective makers placed on the table. Scoring was done at the end of turns two, four and six, after which the game would end. The winner would be the player with the highest total objective points at the end of turn six. We used turtles counters for the objective makers.

Above: My Kyoaku-Han fighter crosses the river bridge to confront Joe's two most powerful combat monsters. No prizes for guessing the result.

Above: On the other table Mike's Mizuki model took control of Ed's own gun wielding Minuro figure! Mike achieved a victory. The poisoning ability of his figures is really strong.

Above: The bridge continues to be the focus of the activities in our game.

In our game Saki managed to distract Zuba from the plans Joe had for him. And this set the example for the rest of the game, where my models kept Joe's combat specialists occupied and my Sumo model and the Golden Sentinel took out the remaining Bakemono at their leisure (although, in one combat a Bakemono did do four wounds to the Sumo!). By turn four, my numbers had began to tell, and by turn six I had managed to secure the win. I must thank Joe again for an excellent game and that he was very kind and patient as I stumbled through the rules. Very much looking forward to playing again.

Happy wargaming.