Master of puppets ...

... but it is Yurei who actually pulls his strings.

 

Alright, I finished my last miniature from the starter set just in time, about an hour before our test-game.

I must admit I’m not entirely happy about how he turned out, as his skin looks a bit unnatural and flat in places (especially on his hands and arms).

The skin-colour is a bit hurdle as I expected, it is somewhere between a tan and white skin. Unfortunately the colour I choose was a bit too dark and not quite Asian. I hope to do better next time, although I have very little miniatures to paint with an Asian skin tone as most are either spirits, monsters or undead.

The overall look of the starter is fine in my opinion and does have this dark and brooding feeling.

 

Our test game yesterday was a bit of a wakeup call, meaning it showed how much I (we) have to learn. I didn’t take any pictures as my friend is still waiting for his miniatures to arrive from Wayland Games and he was using proxies. It was also the first time I brought out my (unpainted) Secret Weapon Rolling Fields demo board.

We had to go through the rulebook a lot, but that isn’t so surprising for a first game. I’m not going to give a full battle-report, but here are the highlights of the game.

At the start we decided it would be a game with a variable game-length. Meaning we would start to roll to see if the game ended after the 3th turn.

1-      Minuro shot my armoured Kairai for three damage.

2-      Powered with 7 ki (one I stole from a kairai with Conspiracy of the Cult), I obliterated Hanzo at the start of the second turn with Ikiryo! Kato was too far away to bring him back as a kairai though.

3-      I moved the armoured kairai into melee with Jin, but despite to First strike and Precision strike I was saved from any wounds by my toughness.

4-      Hiro charged my armoured kairai in his turn with Unblockable strike and removed him from the game with a single strike (doubles), with no chance for a Rise test.

5-      Minuro shot the kairai farmer, but the kairai was saved once more by his toughness. I’m starting to really like that Trait!

6-      In the 3^th turn I managed to kill Jin with another blast from Ikiryo (hurrah for a 12” range), but again Kato was too far away. Sigh

7-      In the 4^th turn Hiro was surrounded by my two remaining kairai, Kato and a controlled ashigaru with a polearm, and still I was unable to do him any harm. In return he vaporized my kairai militia (another double). Damn the man is good.

8-      With the ashigaru no longer under my control, my kairai farmer down and Kato grievously wounded things looked very bleak. I was more than happy the game ended after the 6^th turn.

Which meant I scraped a meager (1 point difference) victory. If the game would have gone on I would surely have lost.

I’m a bit at loss on how to tackle Hiro, the guy is near unkillable and more than able to take on my entire starter set all by himself. I had thrown everything at him I had, and he walked away with a small scratch. Only Ikiryo was able to damage the guy as her Ki feat ignores armour. But with his Strong mind even an opposed ki test is a big challenge.

On top of that he has a lot of rerolls for various tests (Martial Prowess, Parry, ...), making it a big gamble to attack him in the first place.

 As his speed is average he is also too fast to ignore.

With their bravery and leadership, the Fear (4) of the kairai, even with chill, did exactly nothing and wasn’t worth the Leech.

I was also unable to perform any Rise test because all my models were instantly removed from the game and getting Kato into position to bring back killed opponents as kairai would mean putting him in charge distance of Hiro.

I could have focused on Hiro from the start with Ikiryo though, but Hanzo was a juicier target and would rob my opponent of a lot of advantages like Tactician and the ability to do extra actions with his ashigaru.

Well, lesson learned, now I have to find a way to do better next time.

 

Thanks for reading!