With the Mori Clan finally finished I wanted to try out the rules that I had being reading for more than a year but have never actually played. However to play I needed to apply the final wash and base enough of the Oda clan to be able to play. As I was only going to play the first scenario solo I needed just 6 figures including a Samurai, a base of 3 spearmen and two archers.

Next I needed to name my Samurai but, given my lack of imagination, I cheated by using a Samurai name generator. And, so it was, that the leaders of my initial two war bands are Hiruma Yoshimatsu, and Yabuta Taro.

The scenario begins ” Two young Samurai from rival clans have met by chance on the road. Each intended to stop for shelter and to pray at a small roadside shrine, but having arrived at the same time neither is willing to back down and make way for the other.

Heated words are exchanged, families insulted, and soon swords are unsheathed.

The only honourable course is to strike down the upstart who has disparaged your good name.”

Victory conditions are therefore be to first to strike down your opponent.

First you select the cards which correspond to your units. in this case four each, 1 samurai card, 1 Group of Loyal Spearmen and 2 bowman cards.

The cards have all of the stats for each unit, left to right aim, agility, strength, wits, honour and actions (bottom of the card), and the points for each top right. They are also used to track how many times a unit has activated that turn.

The action tokens are then paced in a bag/cup/stubby holder etc. The samurai has three and the commoners have one each. The group only has one even though there are three figures on the base. this gives a total of 3 Samurai and 3 commoners for each side. To the bag three fate tokens are added. Once the third fate token has been chosen the turn ends even if not all figures have had a chance to move.

The Oda clan won the dice to set up a figure first. Figures a set up one at a time players alternating. Again a base counts as 1.

The Oda clan set up their whole contingent together on the road.

The Mori clan set the archers up near the shrine and the Samurai and Spearmen on the other side of the road.

With this complete it was time for the Mori clan to choose a token first (won dice roll).

The Mori drew a Samurai token and moved Hiruma Yoshimatsu down the road to attack Yabuta Taro.

The token was then placed upon his card to designate that he had used one of his three actions.

It was now Yabuta Taro’s turn to choose a token. He also chose a Samurai token and moved himself towards Hiruma Yoshimatsu and again place the token on his card.

Hiruma Yoshimatsu then chose a fate card meaning he was unable to move anything this phase.

Next a commoner token was chosen, and Yabuta Taro ordered his archer to shoot at the approaching samurai to try and hinder him in close combat.

Needing three swords with his aim dice the archer succeeded. Hiruma Yoshimatsu could now choose whether he would make an agility test to avoid the arrow or take the hit. He decided to dodge the arrow. Also needing three successes this time from his 5 agility dice Hiruma rolled…….

With four successes (two on one die) and only one failure he just succeeded. For this out of sequence action Hiruma Yoshimatsu needed to take a Samurai token out of the bag and place on his card. If you do not have any actions left then you cannot choose to dodge the attack.

Hiruma Yoshimatsu now has only one action left.

Although he had used an action to evade it was still Hiruma Yoshimatsu’s turn to draw from the bag. An archer was ordered to shoot at the Oda archer who had not fired hoping to prevent him from shooting at his master, but rolled only one hit on his aim dice instead of the required three.

His master was now vulnerable with an archer still to shoot and the opposing samurai with two activations left to one.

Hiruma Yoshimatsu was in luck as the Oda clan received another fate token, however he needed luck with the next token……..

The situation at the end of the first turn:

Hiruma Yoshimatsu had drawn the last fate token so he chose first for turn 2.

You just cannot trust to fate can you!! There are three fate tokens to 12 others and yet three have been drawn in a row!!

Yabuta Taro drew a samurai token and moved towards Hiruma Yoshimatsu.

Has Yabuta Taro’s agression placed him in danger? Hiruma Yoshimatsu drew a samurai token and promptly charged.

He succeeded in his attack with his aim dice roll, but Yabuta Taro easily parried with his agility test, but used up another action in so doing. It was now his turn to reek revenge……

Just not at this moment as another fate token was drawn. With the third fate token drawn the second turn ended.

The Oda clan chose first as they drew the last fate token.

Yabuta Taro ordered the spearmen to join him in close combat with the Mori samurai but their attack failed miserably.

Hiruma Yoshimatsu again attacked rolling more than twice as many swords as required, however Yabuta Taro was no novice swordman and easily parried the attacks.

The Oda clan now drew from the action bag…….

Another fate token!!!!

Hiruma Yoshimatsu launched another furious attack but Yabuta Taro was unable to parry this time with only 2 swords. This meant we had to see how serious the wound was.

Rolling the number of strength dice on his card (5) Hiruma Yoshimatsu succeeded in cutting his opponent down, inflicting a heavy wound.

The Oda retainers of Yabuta Taro carried their wounded samurai to safety leaving Hiruma Yoshimatsu to prey at the shrine unmolested.

Note that being cut down in a game does not mean the figure is dead. Yabuta Taro needed to draw an injury card to see what the long term effect would be drawing an arm injury leaving him with one less aim dice in future.

Hiruma Yoshimatsu gained experience from the skirmish. Samurai draw one experience card per enemy unit taken down and get to keep only one. Unfortunately Hiruma Yoshimatsu could only draw one which meant that if it was a “dud” card that was chosen he would be stuck with it. It seems that being shot at with an arrow, and successfully dodging, was a good omen as he drew a “deflect arrow card”. Samurai can hold up to three experience cards.

The game also allowed me to use one of the Japanese buildings that I have been finishing over the last year. AND NO the Samurai house has not been done yet.

Wayside shrine

I liked the game very much although it was a small simple skirmish. I hope to play more against a “real” opponent as the guy I played today didn’t say much.