Post by Saynt on Jun 5, 2015 7:55:36 GMT
Bushido is a small-scale miniatures game by GCT studios that continues in the spirit of Confrontation, using a small warband of characters where "every model is important" to crush your enemies. This can mean a variety of things, as smashing your foes into the ground may not be the most effective way to win. Scenarios range from contested objectives to zone control to specific model elimination, keeping the game fresh and requiring different strategies than KILL ALL ENEMY if you want to succeed. Really the game relies heavily on model activations and attempting to deny these to your opponent either through force or guile.
The rules are available for free online Here if you'd like to peruse them yourself, alternately there is a hardcover rule-book available that contains some beautiful artwork and fluff. Additionally GCT Studios posts the profiles of every miniature they release in their store, so if you want to give the game a shot with proxies before buying in it is incredibly easy. This and the similarities to Conf are actually what got me into the game; the company was willing to put everything out there and rely on the strength of the system and the sculpts to sell models.
The game is played on a 2"x2" table, which at first I was skeptical of, but the size makes for high-action, fast games and also means that I don't have to find a place to store a 8'x4' table, and can have 8 different locales and boards for that space if I really wanted to go nuts. The game also encourages using a TON of terrain, they recommend that 1/2 to 1/4 of the table be covered by terrain of various types which really adds to the tactical difficulty and balances some ranged attacks that otherwise would be pretty crazy.
Each player composes a list of figures based on their "Rice" cost, which is at the lower right corner of every card. Typical games are anywhere from 35 rice (starter-set size) to tournaments of 50 rice. Larger games are possible but in my experience not common, and 50 seems to be the sweet-spot for balance. There are also special card packs that grant abilities or artifacts that you can add to your warband if you end up with a few odd rice laying around, some of which are quite useful.
Each miniature has a card, with some of the unnamed characters having one card with two wound trackers. These list Melee skill, Ranged attack, movement, Ki generation, special qualities, and Ki feats. The cards actually contain most of the rules you need for the Ki feats as long as you can familiarize yourself with the iconic shorthand that they use to abbreviate what kind of test or action you need to do to activate the model. The special qualities (or "traits" as they're listed) are a bit harder to familiarize yourself with. I recommend printing out the trait page from the PDF just to have it on hand for your first couple games until you get used to your warband.
There are currently 6 factions in Bushido with an 8th on the way in August with the release of their tactical board-game Rise of the Kage, and a 9th faction, the Tengu, currently being teased on their website. The factions are:
The Prefecture of Ryu: Typical Samurai and Ashigaru with the addition of Arabesques and Matchlocks on some units. These troops are hard-hitting and VERY solid for beginners, being both strong and survivable. Their main features are their armor and the ability to manipulate activations and gaining pass tokens through various abilities. In addition to the Samurai and Ashigaru, they have Shugenja, a ninja, and the game's only Dragon (who is a real monster).
The Ito Clan: Samurai and Ashigaru, but with a serpentine influence. The Ito's dark secret are that they have what's called the "Blood of Orochi" which, if indulged, will slowly mutate them into horrific snake/human hybrids or hebi-men. Their special mechanics focus on movement, either ignoring penalties or being able to move and the attack, Poison, which deals damage at the end of each turn, and being able to hit first in combat. The Ito's special magical unit, the Shisai, focus on manipulating and spreading poison in addition to their spellcasting role. There are also monstrous snakes and winged snakes, with more serpents waiting in the wings!
The Cult of Yurei: The monsters of Asian legend rise to the call of Yurei. These include your typical porcelain mask zombies, Nezumi (rat monsters), and various evil spirits and monstrous things wearing human form. They even have a young orphan girl who can externalize her rage into a physical (and very difficult to deal with) manifestation and a woman who can kill a unit just by looking at it, which leads to some humorous attempts to avoid having her in your Line of Sight. Mechanics revolve around Fear which functions similarly to how it does in other games and Resurrection based on a die roll determined by the Rise(x) value on a model's card.
The Savage Wave: These are the big and little guys of the game. Bakemono are basically gremlins/goblins and Oni are huge, hulking brutes who use things like half a torii arch or a tree as weapons. Unlike in other games, however, you can't just run your little guys in as a suicide squad while your Oni runs around smashing whatever's left. It takes careful management and use of the Bakemono to set up the Oni to deliver true punishment. They also have some other monstrous units that come to their aid. Their mechanics are focused on exhausting and stunning enemies while the Oni are the war machines, dealing out huge damage or knocking units prone.
The Temple of Ro-Kan: The monks of the game with powers. Think crouching tiger hidden dragon with magic. The faction is a mix of Monks, Peasants, and Kami (Spirits embodying natural forces like air, water, fire, etc.) with the addition of some of the less horrific monsters of Japanese legend, Kitsune (half human/half fox) that can change form, Anthropomorphic raccoons, and a Tengu call this faction home. Their mechanics focus on holding off the enemy, Ki manipulation, and using strategic and coordinated attacks to survive long enough for you to score scenario points.
The Silvermoon Trade Syndicate: This faction is made up of Merchants, Sumo wrestlers, "Women of the Evening", and other street people who make a living through the criminal organization known as the Silvermoon Trade Syndicate. They focus, as may well be expected, on dice manipulation and re-rolls, as well as other feats that bend the rules in their favor. Many models also come with the "push defense" that if they are successful will knock attacking enemies backward.
The Shadow Wind Clan (pending): Mysterious Ninja who rely on small, elite squads to accomplish goals that a horde of less experienced bushi would fail. So far we know that they're going to stick to a small model count and perhaps use more special cards to make up for the deficit in numbers. Mostly speculation until August
The Tengu (pending): Anthropomorphic birds with powers of legend! The tricksters of Japanese Lore, there is one of these guys currently in the Temple of Ro-Kan and the only other reveal was artwork for an Owl Shugenja-looking-model.
Each faction above with the exception of the Shadow Wind Clan and the Tengu currently has a starter set out that you can pick up either from GCT studios directly (to earn their reward currency, silvermoons) or in the US you can get them from FRP Games or CoolMiniOrNot, although the CMON models are on closeout, so you can get a better deal but there will be no restocks. Typical price is around $44 for the initial buy-in and the starter boxes are pretty well balanced against each other so you don't really need any more than that to play. (but who can resist collecting/painting more am I right?) The only caveat that I've encountered is Yurei can be slow for some objective capturing (zombies don't move so fast) and the Silvermoon Trade Syndicate takes some time to get their combos down. Ryu seems to be the most straightforward of the starters and they're kind of the "White hat" faction of that does it for you.
Once you've built your lists, you take turns choosing Terrain until you have the reccomended 1/4 to 1/2 coverage with various visibility and passability types. One player (chosen randomly) sets up the terrain and the other selects their deployment zone. In many of the scenarios it is within 1" of the edge of the table along one side, but it could also be in a square in the table corners. Scouts can deploy a bit further out.
Who deploys first is determined by a die roll which can be affected by some models abilities. This is important because based on their setup you can try to figure out which objectives/zones they'll be heading to and position your forces to best counter their strategy.
Once setup is complete, each turn begins with a Tactical Role with the winner going first.
Most tests (Melee attack, Ranged attack, etc.) are resolved by rolling one or more six sided dice and looking at the result. In most tests you take the highest die you roll as your value and add +1 for every additional 6 you roll. Any 1's rolled can't be used towards the test-and don't count toward total number of dice rolled, which is how you break a tie if the test is opposed.
The players take turn activating models, and each time a model takes an action it's "condition" worsens by one degree from Rested to Tired, Tired to Exhausted. So you can activate a model for 2 simple actions in one game round or one complex action, but exhausted models take a penalty to melee defense so it's a matter of deciding when and how to spend your activations to both keep your models safe and gain scenario points.
Damage is dealt through a wounds table on which you roll 2d6 +/- modifiers with various success levels that will be familiar to any confrontation veteran and if a miniature takes part in any combat, it's condition worsens by a degree. You can thus "steal" activations from a model by ganging up on it with other models and forcing it to defend itself, but you have to spend your own activations to do so so every choice you make has to keep your long-term goals in mind, not just "is this good for me this turn" but "will this contribute to me eventually winning the game? Is this a goal I should be pursuing?"
The special abilities models have sometimes cost "Ki" to use, which is a special resource (Kind of like mana gems in Conf.) that all of your models generate automatically at the end of each turn. The more "magical" models have abilities to Steal Ki, Transfer Ki, and gain more Ki so you can focus your resources where they'll do the most good. Ki can also be used to boost stats, sometimes to truly crazy levels, if you really need to kill an enemy or make it to an objective on that activation. There is a set limit to how much Ki your models can store, but you'll most likely be spending it too fast to hit that limit, as the Ki abilities are often too good not to use! For Example: Master Ekusa, the monk on the turtle in the starter set, generates 3 Ki a turn and has a Ki feat that costs 4 Ki that allows him, once per turn, to target any model within 12" and make an opposed Ki Test. If the model fails, it immediately decides to contemplate its own existence and becomes exhausted. That's huge!
The game is (relatively) easy to learn as wargames go while having enough depth and meat that once you start adding on to the starter boxes you really have to think about your overarching strategy. It is fast to play, often with games lasting only an hour or two. And finally it is quite fun and really strikes me as a slimmed down and streamlined version of Confrontation of Fantasy Asia
There are not a lot of Fantasy Asian themed miniatures games out there and of them I think that GCT has hands down the best sculpts. Looking at what Ral Partha, Clan War, and some of the historical stuff out for Samurai and Ashigaru, I feel that GCT really captures the detail of the armor and the flow of motion the best. Some of the early Starters (Prefecture of Ryu I'm looking at you) have sculpts that strike me as less elegant, but the company has really grown into producing great minis. Compare Hiro's sculpt from the starter to the sculpt of Aiko Takashi and you'll see what I'm talking about. They've also gotten better at sculpting female faces as they've gone along. The Female Yariman and Atsuko have pretty rough faces, but since they've gotten much better.
What the game really suffers from is a lack of video battle reports which I'm hoping someone creates soon, there were a couple guys putting together videos but then they just kind of fell off the map. I would also LOVE an "offical" set of hard plastic or wooden tokens to use for things like tired, exhausted, and poison instead of printing out the sheets GCT provides and gluing them on buttons.
As a personal side-note: in addition to the wargaming aspect, these minis are perfect for Alderac's Legend of the Five Rings roleplaying game, if that tips the scales for anyone. I've run a L5R campaign for my friends since 2000 and these minis are great for representing PC's and the threats they face. I wish GCT would have started producing them sooner!
The rules are available for free online Here if you'd like to peruse them yourself, alternately there is a hardcover rule-book available that contains some beautiful artwork and fluff. Additionally GCT Studios posts the profiles of every miniature they release in their store, so if you want to give the game a shot with proxies before buying in it is incredibly easy. This and the similarities to Conf are actually what got me into the game; the company was willing to put everything out there and rely on the strength of the system and the sculpts to sell models.
The game is played on a 2"x2" table, which at first I was skeptical of, but the size makes for high-action, fast games and also means that I don't have to find a place to store a 8'x4' table, and can have 8 different locales and boards for that space if I really wanted to go nuts. The game also encourages using a TON of terrain, they recommend that 1/2 to 1/4 of the table be covered by terrain of various types which really adds to the tactical difficulty and balances some ranged attacks that otherwise would be pretty crazy.
Each player composes a list of figures based on their "Rice" cost, which is at the lower right corner of every card. Typical games are anywhere from 35 rice (starter-set size) to tournaments of 50 rice. Larger games are possible but in my experience not common, and 50 seems to be the sweet-spot for balance. There are also special card packs that grant abilities or artifacts that you can add to your warband if you end up with a few odd rice laying around, some of which are quite useful.
Each miniature has a card, with some of the unnamed characters having one card with two wound trackers. These list Melee skill, Ranged attack, movement, Ki generation, special qualities, and Ki feats. The cards actually contain most of the rules you need for the Ki feats as long as you can familiarize yourself with the iconic shorthand that they use to abbreviate what kind of test or action you need to do to activate the model. The special qualities (or "traits" as they're listed) are a bit harder to familiarize yourself with. I recommend printing out the trait page from the PDF just to have it on hand for your first couple games until you get used to your warband.
There are currently 6 factions in Bushido with an 8th on the way in August with the release of their tactical board-game Rise of the Kage, and a 9th faction, the Tengu, currently being teased on their website. The factions are:
The Prefecture of Ryu: Typical Samurai and Ashigaru with the addition of Arabesques and Matchlocks on some units. These troops are hard-hitting and VERY solid for beginners, being both strong and survivable. Their main features are their armor and the ability to manipulate activations and gaining pass tokens through various abilities. In addition to the Samurai and Ashigaru, they have Shugenja, a ninja, and the game's only Dragon (who is a real monster).
The Ito Clan: Samurai and Ashigaru, but with a serpentine influence. The Ito's dark secret are that they have what's called the "Blood of Orochi" which, if indulged, will slowly mutate them into horrific snake/human hybrids or hebi-men. Their special mechanics focus on movement, either ignoring penalties or being able to move and the attack, Poison, which deals damage at the end of each turn, and being able to hit first in combat. The Ito's special magical unit, the Shisai, focus on manipulating and spreading poison in addition to their spellcasting role. There are also monstrous snakes and winged snakes, with more serpents waiting in the wings!
The Cult of Yurei: The monsters of Asian legend rise to the call of Yurei. These include your typical porcelain mask zombies, Nezumi (rat monsters), and various evil spirits and monstrous things wearing human form. They even have a young orphan girl who can externalize her rage into a physical (and very difficult to deal with) manifestation and a woman who can kill a unit just by looking at it, which leads to some humorous attempts to avoid having her in your Line of Sight. Mechanics revolve around Fear which functions similarly to how it does in other games and Resurrection based on a die roll determined by the Rise(x) value on a model's card.
The Savage Wave: These are the big and little guys of the game. Bakemono are basically gremlins/goblins and Oni are huge, hulking brutes who use things like half a torii arch or a tree as weapons. Unlike in other games, however, you can't just run your little guys in as a suicide squad while your Oni runs around smashing whatever's left. It takes careful management and use of the Bakemono to set up the Oni to deliver true punishment. They also have some other monstrous units that come to their aid. Their mechanics are focused on exhausting and stunning enemies while the Oni are the war machines, dealing out huge damage or knocking units prone.
The Temple of Ro-Kan: The monks of the game with powers. Think crouching tiger hidden dragon with magic. The faction is a mix of Monks, Peasants, and Kami (Spirits embodying natural forces like air, water, fire, etc.) with the addition of some of the less horrific monsters of Japanese legend, Kitsune (half human/half fox) that can change form, Anthropomorphic raccoons, and a Tengu call this faction home. Their mechanics focus on holding off the enemy, Ki manipulation, and using strategic and coordinated attacks to survive long enough for you to score scenario points.
The Silvermoon Trade Syndicate: This faction is made up of Merchants, Sumo wrestlers, "Women of the Evening", and other street people who make a living through the criminal organization known as the Silvermoon Trade Syndicate. They focus, as may well be expected, on dice manipulation and re-rolls, as well as other feats that bend the rules in their favor. Many models also come with the "push defense" that if they are successful will knock attacking enemies backward.
The Shadow Wind Clan (pending): Mysterious Ninja who rely on small, elite squads to accomplish goals that a horde of less experienced bushi would fail. So far we know that they're going to stick to a small model count and perhaps use more special cards to make up for the deficit in numbers. Mostly speculation until August
The Tengu (pending): Anthropomorphic birds with powers of legend! The tricksters of Japanese Lore, there is one of these guys currently in the Temple of Ro-Kan and the only other reveal was artwork for an Owl Shugenja-looking-model.
Each faction above with the exception of the Shadow Wind Clan and the Tengu currently has a starter set out that you can pick up either from GCT studios directly (to earn their reward currency, silvermoons) or in the US you can get them from FRP Games or CoolMiniOrNot, although the CMON models are on closeout, so you can get a better deal but there will be no restocks. Typical price is around $44 for the initial buy-in and the starter boxes are pretty well balanced against each other so you don't really need any more than that to play. (but who can resist collecting/painting more am I right?) The only caveat that I've encountered is Yurei can be slow for some objective capturing (zombies don't move so fast) and the Silvermoon Trade Syndicate takes some time to get their combos down. Ryu seems to be the most straightforward of the starters and they're kind of the "White hat" faction of that does it for you.
Once you've built your lists, you take turns choosing Terrain until you have the reccomended 1/4 to 1/2 coverage with various visibility and passability types. One player (chosen randomly) sets up the terrain and the other selects their deployment zone. In many of the scenarios it is within 1" of the edge of the table along one side, but it could also be in a square in the table corners. Scouts can deploy a bit further out.
Who deploys first is determined by a die roll which can be affected by some models abilities. This is important because based on their setup you can try to figure out which objectives/zones they'll be heading to and position your forces to best counter their strategy.
Once setup is complete, each turn begins with a Tactical Role with the winner going first.
Most tests (Melee attack, Ranged attack, etc.) are resolved by rolling one or more six sided dice and looking at the result. In most tests you take the highest die you roll as your value and add +1 for every additional 6 you roll. Any 1's rolled can't be used towards the test-and don't count toward total number of dice rolled, which is how you break a tie if the test is opposed.
The players take turn activating models, and each time a model takes an action it's "condition" worsens by one degree from Rested to Tired, Tired to Exhausted. So you can activate a model for 2 simple actions in one game round or one complex action, but exhausted models take a penalty to melee defense so it's a matter of deciding when and how to spend your activations to both keep your models safe and gain scenario points.
Damage is dealt through a wounds table on which you roll 2d6 +/- modifiers with various success levels that will be familiar to any confrontation veteran and if a miniature takes part in any combat, it's condition worsens by a degree. You can thus "steal" activations from a model by ganging up on it with other models and forcing it to defend itself, but you have to spend your own activations to do so so every choice you make has to keep your long-term goals in mind, not just "is this good for me this turn" but "will this contribute to me eventually winning the game? Is this a goal I should be pursuing?"
The special abilities models have sometimes cost "Ki" to use, which is a special resource (Kind of like mana gems in Conf.) that all of your models generate automatically at the end of each turn. The more "magical" models have abilities to Steal Ki, Transfer Ki, and gain more Ki so you can focus your resources where they'll do the most good. Ki can also be used to boost stats, sometimes to truly crazy levels, if you really need to kill an enemy or make it to an objective on that activation. There is a set limit to how much Ki your models can store, but you'll most likely be spending it too fast to hit that limit, as the Ki abilities are often too good not to use! For Example: Master Ekusa, the monk on the turtle in the starter set, generates 3 Ki a turn and has a Ki feat that costs 4 Ki that allows him, once per turn, to target any model within 12" and make an opposed Ki Test. If the model fails, it immediately decides to contemplate its own existence and becomes exhausted. That's huge!
The game is (relatively) easy to learn as wargames go while having enough depth and meat that once you start adding on to the starter boxes you really have to think about your overarching strategy. It is fast to play, often with games lasting only an hour or two. And finally it is quite fun and really strikes me as a slimmed down and streamlined version of Confrontation of Fantasy Asia
There are not a lot of Fantasy Asian themed miniatures games out there and of them I think that GCT has hands down the best sculpts. Looking at what Ral Partha, Clan War, and some of the historical stuff out for Samurai and Ashigaru, I feel that GCT really captures the detail of the armor and the flow of motion the best. Some of the early Starters (Prefecture of Ryu I'm looking at you) have sculpts that strike me as less elegant, but the company has really grown into producing great minis. Compare Hiro's sculpt from the starter to the sculpt of Aiko Takashi and you'll see what I'm talking about. They've also gotten better at sculpting female faces as they've gone along. The Female Yariman and Atsuko have pretty rough faces, but since they've gotten much better.
What the game really suffers from is a lack of video battle reports which I'm hoping someone creates soon, there were a couple guys putting together videos but then they just kind of fell off the map. I would also LOVE an "offical" set of hard plastic or wooden tokens to use for things like tired, exhausted, and poison instead of printing out the sheets GCT provides and gluing them on buttons.
As a personal side-note: in addition to the wargaming aspect, these minis are perfect for Alderac's Legend of the Five Rings roleplaying game, if that tips the scales for anyone. I've run a L5R campaign for my friends since 2000 and these minis are great for representing PC's and the threats they face. I wish GCT would have started producing them sooner!
