First look: Bushido & Expo 2011

Well its was that time of year again for the trip to expo and once more it was a good two day show, plenty of freaks, geeks and a few "norms" thrown into the mix, Expo is a bit of a jack of all trades show with board games, RPG's and table top games all being represented,

The warmachine nationals was also being ran this year with a whopping 120 players, but due to work fucking me about with if I'd got the time off I hadn't prepared any kind of list or done any real "hardcore" painting so by the time British Gas said yes, it was too late to get my shizzle sorted out.


So the trip was for a lads weekend with dice, beer and dancing! However I can down with some nurgle infested head cold that made me about responsive as a slug, and was in bed by 11:30 on the Saturday night!

but not all was lost, in the Spencer/Anton tradition we picked up yet another system! this time it was to be something that we've both been looking for setting wise for a while but not really found anything that caught our attention,

The system is called Bushido by GCT studios, I'd spotted a link on tabletop gaming news awhile back and planned to check it out,

Gameplay:

uses D6's which is fairly normal but you have a "combat" pool so you can split your pool into attack or defence, so rather than initiative that 40K uses both models fight at the same time and you decide is your going all out hack the shit outta the guy in front of you or defend completely or a mix of the both.

Highest dice wins and the difference between the defence dice and the attack dice tells you what to roll on and that's where you find out if you've cut them in half or chopped his ear off! you get trigger points if the difference between the scores are high enough then all sorts can happen, Like Spencer running around and lobing peoples heads off!

You can have two short actions with each model or one complex action, reminds me of infinity but it works really well and makes it quite tactical for actual moving of the models, the other thing that sets this apart from the other systems is that you get Ki at the begining of each turn and each model apart from the cult generates its own Ki that it can use to cast spells or use feats and other thing.


So gameplay I really like it quite quirky but not off the wall with mental rules!


Models:

Now this is the important bit, otherwise we wouldn't bother being tabletop gamers! the models are sweet! really nice, and they are adertised as 32 mm so 4 factions at the moment and talking to the chaps on the stall some more factions on the way with releases every couple of months,

I'll apologise for the dodgy pics the lighting was poor and I was using my phone, 

The Savage wave (demon type things)

The Prefecture of Ryu (samurai type dudes)

The Temple of Ro-Kan (sholin monks type fellas)

The Cult of Yurei (undead/necromancers)

next wave of releases, a woman that can turn into a fox, a girl that turns into a gorilla, and a big undead monster thing.

the other side of the same shelf, a sumo, a demon with a bell and hammer, Ninja and a random that I was told but didn't quite hear!

close up of the cult deamon thingy

one of the demo boards, hurst arts tiles galore!

the other demo board, handmade bamboo!!

Spencer about to hack his way through Will

So the savage wave box set contents 

Big dude with a big hammer!

Heads of the little demons

and the bodies


Lastability:

At the moment the quick start rules are available and these alone make a good game, there is only one scenerio at the moment but with a bit of jigging you could use the maulifaux, mordhiem, necromunda or cutless scenarios fairly easily. with only four factions to start with your going to see a fair bit of repeated gangs but hell that's how warmachine started out!

Would I play it again? Yes, defenitly something differant, a setting thats not really been covered Japanese mythologiy and the models are nice as well, now no doubt some people will question the price but I've enough models for my savage wave to keep me going for a while to say the least!

Link to the website..  www.bushido-thegame.com

and in the anton tradation I've already decided to get some scenery from oshiro model terrain as its only played on a 2x2 board I'll more than likely do a 4x4 so that the oriental style board can be used for other systems, carn't wait to get these painted as a reward once I've finished off the celts!

What do you think?