Test of Honour Sengoku is a forthcoming expansion book for Test of Honour that focuses on the battles, alliances and betrayals of the different samurai clans of the Sengoku period. Grey for Now Games lead writer Graham Davey breaks down some of the details for the Sengoku supplement.

Test of Honour Sengoku // Grey For Now Games

Is this a large scale battle system?

Nope. A few people asked this question on Facebook and the answer is no, this is not a different game system. It's the same game with an extra level of detail to give the various clans unique rules.

Do I need a new force?

No. However, in Sengoku battles, part of your force is denoted as allies from a different clan. These could just be some of your existing models, although you might like to recruit some new warriors as your allies, maybe with a different colour scheme to show the difference.

Which Clans are included?

Hojo, Mori, Takeda, Uesugi, Saito, Yagyu, Oda, Honda, Toyotomi, Shimazu, Date and Tokugawa. As well as rules, there is a historical account of each clan and if you read them in sequence, they tell the story of the Sengoku period.

Do you have to have ashigaru?

Not at all. The freedom to include whatever warriors you want stays the same. For example, you could have a force of Ronin hired by Takeda, Sohei siding with Mori, Ninjas working for Oda or even bandits doing the dirty work of the Saito clan (or a mix of all of them). Onna Bugeisha naturally fit with any clan.

You can also have an independent force of Ikko-ikki, Ronin, Bandits or Ninjas if you don't want to pledge allegiance to one clan.

This sounds fascinating especially for such an influential period in Japan, 150 years of collapse and civil warfare into the middle of which arrived the Europeans and with them a new style of warfare and weaponry. Speaking of which here is one of the latest test sculpts an ashigaru armed with ozutsu - a type of heavy musket that verged on being a handheld cannon. As this is one of the new weapons covered in the Sengoku expansion.

Ashigaru with Ozutsu // Test of Honour

I think it's safe to say that no matter how good you may be with a blade a row of Ashigaru with these hand cannons will give even a master pause for thought. Apart from things yet to come there are bonus cards for the Sohei Temple Guard, Fanatics and Musketmen sets, giving you more options including a Sergeant of Archery and the choice to use the Creed Bearer as a normal banner bearer. So if you grabbed the Temple Guards and fancy changing things up a bit you can download them for free now along with the most current errata here.

Sohei Bonus Cards

Test of Honour is testing my willpower with each new release and the new Sengoku supplement sounds fantastic. As Grey for Now expands the game in new directions I feel the pull harder to resist and the sculpts to go with them look fantastic.

Will you become the new shogun in the Sengoku period?