Haven't managed to get any painting done, oops. My painting desk is a clutter right now and I haven't had the motivation to organise it enough to start painting again, though it'll happen soon, don't worry.
In the absence of new painted models, I bring a peace offering of game photos however. Yes, amazingly, I managed to organise time for not one, but two games of Ronin over the last two days. This is probably some sort of personal record for time elapsed between buying a new game and playing it!
The good news is that Ronin is absolutely awesome. Great fun, super quick and simple to pick up, but after two games I'm already imaging how much fun campaigns would be with it. Not to mention using the ruleset for other settings, such as gladiators.
The two games we played were 100 and 150 pts respectively, just learning our way through the rules, and limited by what models came in the starter forces. I played bandits first time, and beat my brother who was using my Sohei (and who had abysmal luck with the dice). Then we switched sides and he returned the favour by annihilating my Sohei, who failed a few critical rolls. Hmm, I think the monks need to pray harder.
The results were a surprise to me, since from reading the rules, I'd been worried the Bandits would struggle to compete with the better trained, better equipped Sohei. Numbers really made a huge difference though.
I took some pics of the first game, but the ones of the second are better quality and better organised, so I'll stick with those. Behold my defeat.
My Sohei deploy at the edge of the village. We were playing straight annihilation, no scenario.
And the whole-table shot showing deployment:
After the first turn - I drew first blood, wounding a peasant and a yari-bandit, but his teppo armed gashira grievously wounded one of my Sohei - not a good trade!
Turn two marked a total pile in, as his superior numbers meant that I left my leader in a vulnerable position and didn't have any way to reinforce him. Oops. I killed a peasant, and wounded another, and thanks to some miraculous sixes on his defence rolls, my leader got away with only a minor wound. This was the critical moment of the battle - my leader rolled well enough to grievously wound his leader, but I re-rolled one of the dice, figuring I had a 50% chance of outright killing him, and only a 1/6 chance of making the result worse... and I rolled a 1!
After the movement phase of turn three, the combat only got thicker. My outnumbered monks tried to protect my leader, but even so, I was definitely on the back foot.
Despite killing the bandit leader, the rest of my band, including my leader, did not fare well...
I clung on for another turn, but in the end my last remaining Sohei threw down his naginata and surrendered. The Bandit leader lay dead, but the fearsome Ronin the band had hired looked set to take up the leadership and continue the bandit's reign of violence...
Here is how the field of carnage looked:
Like I said, Ronin is super fun, and I'm keen to expand my existing forces' options and add some more Buntai to the mix, as well as extra terrain.
Thanks for reading,
~Alex/Magos
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