Test game: Osprey's "Ronin"

 I had some free time this afternoon so I decided to squeeze in another game before the weekend ended. I've painted a fair few samurai and other Feudal Japanese miniatures this year, and I've been itching to get them on the table for a proper samurai game. I had a pair of 100-point "Buntai" lists drawn up for Osprey's "Ronin," and decided today was the day.

 A pretty simple meeting engagement to get a feel for the mechanics of the game - a Takeda Clan samurai and his ashigaru bodyguards are waylaid at a river crossing by a gang of bandits. 

 The Takeda won priority, and one of the spear-armed ashigaru moved forward; the bandit archer snapped off a shot, stunning him. Both buntai moved forward, the bandit and ashigaru musketmen exchanging ineffectual shots. During the action phase, the bandit archer fired a second shot, putting a light wound on the ashigaru he'd previously stunned. 

 The bandit second-in-command charged forward, and the two ashigaru spearmen moved forward to meet him. The melee was on!

 Here's where I got a taste of the "combat pool" mechanic - each figure has a combat pool, and when melee begins draws any combination of Attack and Defense tokens up to that number. They then use these to attack, enhance their attacks or improve their defense. Normally, you'd be playing against someone and you'd keep what you were drawing for your pool a secret, resulting in there being a bit of a gamble to each combat - you have to wager on what your opponent has in mind and how aggressive or conservative you want to be. Some of that's missing trying to play it solo, unfortunately, but them's the breaks.

Unfortunately for the bandit second in command, he gambled poorly.

 At that point, both buntai were fully committed; the spearmen moved on to engage other low-ranking bandits, while the Takeda samurai faced off with the bandit leader.

 The more heavily armored samurai buntai made pretty short work of the bandits, with the ashigaru archer and musketmen finishing off their counterparts and the spearmen carving their way through the other bandits with ease, receiving only light wounds in return. 

 With a final sweep of his sword, the samurai cut the bandit leader down, and was free to continue on his way.

 

It was a pretty quick game, only about an hour, maybe an hour and twenty minutes, and that's with double-checking the rulebook every few minutes. I feel like I got the hang of the mechanics pretty quickly, especially melee combat and the system of enhancing rolls, which are potentially not the most intuitive since it's not the same across initiative, attack and defense.

I did realize right at the end that I'd forgotten that musketfire largely ignores armor, which may or may not have made that big of a difference in this game, but will be something to keep in mind next time. 

I should get some terrain rolling for the next time I want to play Ronin as well. I do have an MDF temple from Things From The Basement to work on one of these days... Possibly in September, since I really should spend Augut focused on getting things ready for Zombie RV at Wargames Among the Warplanes next month.

A Less-Than-Frosty Frostgrave

 I went out and met up with Set (the host of our fizzled Dracula's America campaign, with an absolutely awe-inspiring terrain collection) for a game of Frostgrave today - or rather, a game of houseruled Frostgrave, incorporating some aspects of "Ghost Archipelago" and in a homebrew setting. As you can see, there's not much frost on the table!

 I brought a wargame comprised of some of my recent samurai figures, whose snow-covered bases wouldn't have been out of place in the game's original setting. We had a multi-faceted mission - hobgoblins had been raiding caravans and taking captives, and the merchants were paying for dead hobgoblins, rescued captives and retrieved artifacts. Rather than "treasure tokens," there were investigative tokens strewn across the table  - once we interacted with these, they might yield treasure, a monster, or nothing at all. 

Early on in the game, one of Set's warband members interacted with one that yielded a monster, and a roll on the table yielded a pterodactyl that over the course of the game ended up taking out a third of his warband, including his wizard.

 Meanwhile, my crew accidentally brought a pair of armored skeletons and an ogre on to the table.

 I won't get into a direct play by play here, since a lot of the particulars of what happened when seeped out of my brain on the half hour drive home. But the overall gist is that we originally focused on our objectives - taking down hobgoblins and collecting treasure. One of my Thieves unlocked the cage the captives were in, and with the help of one of my Thugs, began ushering the two captives to freedom. 

And then we started trying to kill each other. I inflicted very little harm on Set's warband, only managing to kill his warhound, while he killed outright or at least finished off most of my warband (at least, those that the ogre didn't splatter!). 

 At the end of the game, I'd killed two hobgoblins, retrieved two parcels of treasure (one containing one of the artifacts we'd been hired to go after), and rescued one captive, while Set killed two hobgoblins, retrieved two parcels of treasure (both artifacts) and managed to make it off the table with zero captives. 

 

In the post-game, my treasure resolved itself into a grimoire containing the spell "Miraculous Cure," a magic dagger that gives the wielder +1 Fighting, and 250 gold coins when combined with the rewards for the artifact and captive.  Of those in my warband who'd fallen, everyone made a full recovery except for my Archer and my two Thieves, who will need to be replaced before next game, whenever that may be. My Witch gained two levels, which I used to improve her Fighting stat and made it easier for her to cast "Curse" in future games.

All in all it was a great game and I had a lot of fun. Hopefully this turns into a more regular thing - in part because I visit Set's house so infrequently that I keep making a wrong turn on the way home that adds an extra three miles to my commute and I'd like to get accustomed enough to the route to stop making that wrong turn! 

Ashigaru - Takeda Clan

 I've continued to make progress, slowly but steadily, on some Feudal Japan figures, rotating back and forth between different groups of figures as needed while paint or washes dry. And I'm very please to report that I've finished the first batch.

 These are the ashigaru (peasant light infantry) from North Star's "Bushi Buntai" box set, one of several that were released in support of Osprey's "Ronin" skirmish ruleset. The three samurai that were also in the box may be the next figures I finish, sometime in the next few days. The sashimono back banners were completed with decals from Battle Flag, marking these men as serving the Takeda Clan. Both Perry Miniatures and Grey For Now Games offer miniatures of Takeda Shingen, lord of the clan during the height of the Sengoku Period, and I think eventually I'll have a small Takeda army. 

 Beneath the red armor, they're a little motley - shirts are either a dark blue-gray (basecoat Reaper "Midnight Blue," washed with AP Soft Tone, then highlighted with Reaper "Twilight Blue") or a desaturated green (basecoat Reaper "Jungle Moss," washed with AP Soft Tone, highlighted with "Highland Moss"), while pants are base-coated with either Reaper "Uniform Brown," "Shield Brown" or "Cloudy Gray," washed with AP Soft Tone, then highlighted back with the base color. 

I'm still really pleased with the winter bases. I'm looking forward to incorporating that look into some terrain pieces. 

Yesterday morning, my wife handed me her credit card and told me to buy myself some terrain to go with my samurai as a birthday present, and I ordered a few pieces from Things From The Basement that will be combined into a 12" by 12" board with some trees and scatter that can be placed on a larger tabletop.  

So let's update that tracker:

 

Miniatures Acquired: 135

Miniatures Painted: 96

Terrain Acquired: 4

Terrain Painted: 5

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 4

 

Ninja Attack!

 I'm pleased to report that I seem to have refound my painting groove and have a project going that I feel good about, I'm motivated, I'm enjoying the process. 

Back in 2024, I bought a handful of Feudal Japanese miniatures with an idea towards making that my big project for 2025, which ended up not happening beyond a few test figures. Having grabbed a few vintage figures for AEG's "Clan Wars" miniature game, I felt my interest in samurai gaming rekindle. As an added bonus, my home convention (Running GAGG in SUNY Geneseo) has announced the theme for the 2027 show as "Pirates Vs. Ninjas" and now I feel like I have a defined goal to work towards - put on a game with some ninjas in it! And it just so happens I already owned a couple of ninjas that were primed and ready to paint!

These are the "Shinobi Sisters" from Bad Squiddo Games. I've got a few more of their Feudal Japan figures waiting in the wings, and am looking forward to buying more because they're great characterful sculpts.

Rather than just going with black clothing with maybe a gray dry brush, I went with some darker colors that would actually blend into the shadows better - a very dark, drab brown (Reaper "Woodstain Brown," washed with Agrax Earthshade, then drybrushed with Reaper "Powderburn Brown") and a dark blue (Reaper "Coal Black," which is actually an extremely dark teal, drybrushed with "Midnight Blue"). One of them I'd glued to a Renedra Cobblestone-patterned base; you'll see more of these as I continue through the collection of primed figures I've got for this project. I'm using them a lot for figures who are on tabs instead of puddle bases. I'm continuing the winter basing theme I started with the ghost samurai last week. 

What's next? Well, I've got some Northstar figures, designed to accompany the Osprey game "Ronin," half-painted that I'm hoping to finish by early next week. And I've started work on an Ogre Mage (inspired by the Japanese "Oni" demon) from Reaper Miniatures that I've wanted to paint for...a very long time. I think I must have seen it on their site when I first discovered Reaper 20 years ago and at the time I always passed on it in favor of getting multiple human-sized figures instead. Over the years I always had something else taking priority, but I finally bought him in 2024. Now I'm not just painting him, but giving him the absolute best damn paint job I can. Here's a WIP shot:

The fur vest he's got on is going to be painted as a tiger skin.

I was a little bad, though, and bought more figures today at Harlequin Hobby. I knew they had some Warlord Games samurai stuff on the little historical shelf they've got (which is mostly Bolt Action and a little bit of Victrix Dark Age plastics) and I decided to take a look. Along with boxes of plastic samurai and ashigaru (which, if I was a plastic figure kind of guy, I'd probably order Fireforge's sets instead), they had three boxes of metal figures, all branded for Warlord's "Warlords of Erewhon" fantasy game that I think has largely flopped. Two of the boxes were plain olive drab with the Warlord Games logo, with only a sticker describing what was inside. The third box was "Bandits & Brigands," with a characterful assortment of ten figures. This last one came home with me today.

Having opened it, it looks like the figures fit well size-wise alongside the figures I've already got. There's some bent swords that I'm hoping I can straighten without breaking, and some of the figures have separate arms to glue on. I'm looking forward to mixing them with the Grey For Now Games "Rogues & Ruffians" I have primed and awaiting my attention. 

Miniatures Acquired: 135

Miniatures Painted: 90

Terrain Acquired: 3

Terrain Painted: 5

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 4

A Fistful of Kung Fu: Poliziotteschi Style

 My friend Chris recently suggested I give Osprey Games' "A Fistful of Kung Fu" a look; I'd seen the figure range on North Star plenty of times over the years (the game originally released in 2014), but I'd never bothered to check it out; well, now it seems the rulebook is out of print and only sold in e-formats, because I had to go to eBay to get a physical copy. It does not seem like the game made a big splash; I was actually kind of shocked at the scarcity of play reports on the web. I suspect this comes down to it being a game with a modern setting, instead of fantasy or scifi, and one that calls for a terrain-dense table. There's a level of physical investment that's likely more than most people would want to expend on just trying a game.

Fortunately, I've already made that investment with my terrain collection, and while I don't have any modern East Asian figures, I do have a lot of Mafia types, so I figured out a scenario using them in place of Yakuza. Consider this an Italian knockoff of a Hong Kong action film! 

A SWAT team, led by Lt. Lords, had to protect Angela Dellamorte, daughter of the head of the Dellamorte Crime Family, as she prepares to turn over evidence relating to her father's crimes - and his recent involvement in the occult. Papa Dellamorte, it seems, has acquired a copy of the Necronomicon ex Mortiis, and has made a pact with the Powers of Darkness to expand his own influence. 

Opposing them was one of Dellamorte's capos, Joey "The Viper" Marciano, accompanied by his right-hand man, Fat Paulie, and a number of lesser soldiers and a minor summoned demon. He'd been tasked with capturing Angela and bringing her home to her family in as close to one piece as possible for punishment. 

With the SWAT forces stopped at an impromptu barricade, a shot rang out; Mr. Fibbs, a low-level soldier in the Dellamorte Crime Family, had decided that he wasn't on board with trafficking with demons, and had offed the nearest gangster.

Marciano advanced and opened fire, gunning down Officer Rosina and sending Angela barreling into the Smoke Shop to avoid getting hit. 

Lords coolly returned fire, sending Marciano ducking for cover and killing Fat Paulie.

Officer Williams, an ordinary beat cop caught up in the action, took out one of the gang's hitmen as he darted amidst trash piled up next to the pawn shop.

Sgt. Baker spotted the Viper as he circled around the gas station, and ran forward with a shout - and got shot for his troubles, getting knocked down, knocked back and disarmed in the process. Before he could stand up, another hitman on the ramen shop roof sprayed lead downwards, killing him and Officer Taff.

Lt. Lords closed in on Joey the Viper, delivering a shot that knocked him down, stunned him and wounded him. He was quick to get back on his feet and scurry for cover behind a dumpster.

Meanwhile, Officer Beck retreated into the Smoke Shop to guard Angela.

Joey the Viper dashed around the building and shot at Lt. Lords, disarming her. "Well, well, well, little lady," he chuckled. "Looks like I've got you beat."

The hitman atop the Ramen Shop fired at Mr. Fibbs, stunning him; the Dellamorte family would want him alive for more appropriate punishment - letting him just die wasn't anywhere near sufficient.

The demon, finally accomplishing something, swooped through the air and launched itself through the front window of the Smoke Shop to try and seize Angela - only to get immediately blown away by Officer Beck. With a screech, the demon collapsed into ash, banished back to Hell.

Lt. Lords ducked for cover behind a cinderblock wall, and then rolled behind the car parked behind the pawn shop. "Enough of this," she growled, and charge at Marciano, delivering a double-fisted punch to the jaw that knocked him out cold. Officer Williams raced around to cuff the gangster.

Angela Dellamorte was safe and ready to testify, and once he was patched up, Mr. Fibbs would be too. And Joey "The Viper" Marciano was in custody. It was a damned good day for the forces of law and order!

***

So that played out very fast - I think only about 40ish minutes start to finish. I had fun with it though, and I think I got a decent handle on the rules; I didn't do much of anything with interactive terrain (though I did have brick piles on two buildings to throw bricks at each other, plus vehicles that could be hot-wired), and Joey might have gotten shot one more time then he really should have been based on his traits. The activation and reaction mechanism, designed to recreate the frenetic back and forth of a martial arts movie, I feel like I got that down really quick. 

It's definitely a game that focuses on the Protagonists - in this case Lords and Marciano - and everyone else (the Extras) are mooks who are mostly there to get in the way, or fail their activation rolls so that the turn passes to the next player. Here, they accomplished a few things against each other but a lot of them mostly just stood around or only had enough actions available to move once and end their turn. 

Overall, I'm glad I picked it up and looking forward to playing more of it.

Return to Dracula's America

 It's been a long time since my posse, "The Speakers for the Land," got on the table - injuring my knee and bad weather, coupled with the various holidays, kept me from taking part in Dracula's America for a few months. Fortunately, the campaign hasn't progressed much in my absence, so I wasn't hindered beyond needing a few extra reminders of some of the rules.

I played a quick game against Phil, a member of the campaign I hadn't faced off against before, pitting my Skinwalker Tribes posse against his Twilight Order posse - members of a secret society of monster hunters, armed with silver bullets, medieval armor and the possibility of summoning a sixgun-toting angel to the battlefield. 

We rolled "Escalation" for our mission - each of us would start with half our posse, rounding down, deploying on the table and in subsequent rounds could use our activations to bring the remainder on to the battlefield. For side agendas, I rolled that one of my posse members would be carrying an important letter and would receipt 1 bonus victory point if I still held it at the end of the game, while Phil had a VIP/hostage with his posse that he needed to maintain possession of to score 2 bonus victory points. 

With half-sized posses, the first few turns went quickly, with both of us leaving our corner deployment zones and starting to fan out towards the center of the table. Beyond the agendas, our only goal was to either kill or force a withdrawal of the opposing posse. 

Phil drew first blood, injuring Growing Thunder, a Crow tribe woman armed with a rifle and loosely considered second in command of my posse; one of my new recruits, Zeke Freeman, managed to immediately shoot the varmint what done it in the back.

Midgame, we both played the same card when testing for turn order, triggering an event - the occupants of a randomly determined building would shoot at everyone within 6". And wouldn't you know it, the dice came up that the green building - a dentist's office - that almost my entire posse was clustered around was the one that started shooting!

Six out of eight figures I had on the table were within 6". It was brutal. 

My two lycanthropes transformed, the chief into a bear and the other into a wolf. The bear unfortunately got gunned down almost immediately (he's a big and tempting target), but the wolf chewed through two members of Phil's posse.

The game ended with me still in possession of my letter and Phil's hostage secure (she, and the figure guarding her, never left Phil's deployment zone), so it came down to who scored the most victory points off of casualties. And when all was said and done, Phil beat me by a single victory point. 

Going into the post-game advancement, Growing Thunder sadly succumbed to her wounds and died; Chief Kicking Bird developed a second lasting injury (he'd previously lost an eye, and now has a lingering ache) but everyone else fared pretty well. Zeke's older brother Josiah gained the skill "Lead-Belly," which means his abilities don't deteriorate when he's Shaken, and White Hawk, one of my pistoleers, advanced from Novice to Veteran status, improving his combat abilities. 

All in all, a good game, and Chris gifted me a couple of Native American figures that had been in his leadpile.

Miniatures Acquired: 4

Miniatures Painted: 6

Terrain Acquired: 0

Terrain Painted: 0

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 0

Beginning a Dracula's America campaign

 Tonight, I had the absolute pleasure of meeting up with a couple of local-ish guys to start a fresh campaign of Dracula's America - a supernatural western skirmish from Osprey, which really deserves the same level of releases and support as Frost/Stargrave, if you ask me! 

Premise of the game is that it's 1875, and Count Dracula used the chaos of the American Civil War to assassinate Lincoln and his entire cabinet, ensorcelling Congress into declaring him president for life. Various supernatural evils have crept in in Dracula's wake, and other forces have arisen to combat the powers of darkness. The rules themselves are perfectly servicable for a solid, non-supernatural western game as well. 

The table we played on was absolutely lavish - the game technically calls for a 3' x 3', but we played on a 4' x 4', densely packed with the the town of Shady Pines, Nebraska. I brought my posse, a group of Native Americans with a pair of lycanthropes in their midst (one turning into a bear, and the other a wolf), while Chris, my first opponent, had a warband of voodoo zombies. Our mission was to collect as many loot tokens (out of four available) as possible within the 8-turn limit of the game, with an amusingly interlinked pair of side missions - Chris got extra victory points if my posse leader was killed, and I got extra victory points if his posse leader was alive at the end of the game.

Elva Growing-Thunder darts across the street, past a drunken mountain man.

We also had civilians on the board that could get in the way, become human shields, etc. Late in the game, a complication arose - the locals were sick of us shooting it out, and began unloading their own guns at everyone around! 

Ultimately, the game concluded in a draw, though my one shapeshifter did manage to grab a loot token, transform into a wolf, and hightail it away from where all the shooting was taking place.

loot tokens portrayed by fortune cookie-shaped beads!

The second game was between myself and Set, who was also the one hosting the game. We rolled up a mission that saw our respective posse bosses squaring off in the center of town with a pair of underlings close by, and the remainder of our warbands deploying in a corner of the table. He was playing the Dark Confederacy, a group of Confederates who had stolen the secrets of reanimating the dead for their own profit. 

My boss immediately transformed into a bear, but didn't have the available movement to charge the mint-julep-slurping necromancer standing across the street. The necromancer summoned a minor eldritch entity (portrayed by a Confederate zombie holding a flag) between himself and the bear.

Unimpressed, the bear mauled the unnatural thing and sent it back to whatever hell it had been whistled up from. 

Unfortunately, the second game was all downhill from there for me, with the bear being shot down and the rest of my posse being whittled away one after another - though thankfully, most of them bled out the turn after being shot, which denied Set the victory points for either killing them outright or finishing them off. The win went to my opponent, but it was fairly close, with him ending the game with 4 VP to my 3. 

With these being campaign games, there's rolls to make after each game to determine who survived, if there are long-term injuries, and how much money your posse collects between games. Chief Kicking Bird, my posse leader, lost an eye to the Dark Confederacy, and unfortunately one of his followers, Charlie Iron-Knife (the blue-shirted figure in the staredown picture above), died of his injuries and a replacement will need to be recruited. 

All in all, I had a great time, and I'm really glad I connected with these guys and was able to meet up with them for a few games. I'm looking forward to continuing this campaign!