A blog full of Khador flavoured shenanigans.

Hello again.

Last weekend I took part in the UK Hordes & Warmachine Masters held at the UK Games Expo in Birmingham. Although my gaming left a little to be desired (I retired with a record of 2 wins and 3 losses after 5 games) I wanted to put a post up about the great game I discovered at the Expo. 

The game in question is Bushido! Produced by GCT Studios.

Set on the Jwar Isles it is a fantasy oriental skirmish game for 32mm miniatures.

Now first things first I LOVE everything ancient Japan, or for that matter anything with the feel of ancient Japan.

In gaming terms there isn’t that much out there other than historical stuff. There is Legend of the Five Rings, not much RPG’ing or CCG’s near us, and although I still have a load of the Japanese style goblins that Rackham made for Confrontation they went to pre-painted plastics soon afterwards and we all know what happened next.

So with these lovely oriental miniatures in front of me I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. However I resolved to do what any good gamer in my position would do…

Buy the shinies!

This didn’t happen straight away though , mainly because I couldn’t decide which faction to go for, but after a quick demo (just a run through of the basic rules) and a lengthy discussion with one of the games designers I plumped for The Prefecture of Ryu and The Temple of Ro-Kan.

What do these names mean though? I hear you cry!

Well here is a first impression run down of the four factions that are currently released for the game.

The Prefecture of Ryu – Samurai, plain and simple.  The starter set consists of one samurai, in full armour wielding a Katana, and his merry band of ashigaru (foot soldiers) one of them a sargeant wielding a massive no-dachi (a two handed sword as long as a man is tall) .

Temple of Ro-Kan – Shaolin monks. Their starter set consists of an elderly monk sat atop a giant tortoise. Yep tortoise! He is acompanied by a couple of bad ass looking monks with rules such as Fists of Iron and Body of Oak and two lowly peasents who look to be there just to carry luggage.

The Cult of Yurei – Undead puppet masters. These look to be the real bad guys of the game. In the starter you have an evil puppet master who seemingly controls the rest of the force, a ghostly geisha, an undead ashigaru (complete with two katanas) and two undead peasants. From speaking to the guys at GCT they have a cool little fluff point that they are all controlled through the masks that they wear and the puppet master can essentially put a mask on one of your guys to gain control of him!

The Savage Wave – Giant oni and there goblin friends.  As I have said giant oni (demons of ancient Japan) and their goblin friends, also known as bakemono. The starter set for The Savage Wave consists of an oni wielding a massive hammer and six bakemono, carrying an assortment of arms. From the look of things these guys are the obligitory horde faction.

So there I stand with my Samurai and Monks. I love what I have but for some reason I’m still not content. Anyway this is Saturday lunch and I have another game to play.

Sunday comes and so does the afore mentioned dropping out of the Masters. Without much else to do I go back to take another quick look at the Bushido stand, this time however I stop for a full demo using all the rules for each of the miniatures. After which I realise why I am not content with my previous days purchase.

You see there is something of a problem with this game. I love all of the factions! Accordingly I picked up the last two starters and I now have all four. I have come up with paint schemes for each of the factions so hopefully I will be able to put brush to miniature sooner rather than later.

In summary, there are many good things I could say in praise of the game but I’ll try to keep it brief…

The demo boards. Wow! Both the 2×2 boards looked excellent and even before I knew what the game was I wanted to have a demo, just to play on the excellent terrain.

The mini’s are all excellent sculpts with  superb paint jobs, not only on the studio models, but the demo minis too and lastly fantastic casting quality too.

Finally the rules. Intuitive, free flowing, quick to learn and most of all fun! 

I would like to pass special thanks to Toby who took the time to talk me through the game, it’s background and show me some pictures on his iPhone of up coming releases. Also to Carlos who spent the time late on Sunday to give me an excellent demo game.

Here is the link to the games website where you will find out more information about each faction, quickstart rules and stats (that are all free to download) and the forum, that so far looks to be quite a hive of activity.

Thanks a lot for reading and let me know what you think of the game.