Redvers and Son Get Into Bushido

Game 8 – Kinshi Temple vs Cult of Yurei

At Salute, both my son and I picked up some more shiny Bushido stuff. I was quite reserved, and got the new Animated Warriors blister while my son went for a whole new faction, The Kinshi Temple. We were both keen to get these to the table to see how they played. 

For my son, the Kinshi Temple are a small faction, with most of the models available coming in the starter set. They are tricky to play but can pull off a lot of powerful moves. Much of the game play of this faction centres around the Void Communal card which any model in the faction can draw from. As events or acts take place in the game, counters are added to this card unlocking increasingly more powerful options, so that in the end game, the models become very difficult to handle. This is somewhat countered by the fact that many of the models are fairly weak to start and some of the easiest ways of gaining counters is by taking wounds or losing models. 

My new models were some skeleton warriors. These tie in well with my Christmas present which was the Yuta of Yurei boxed set. Once of the Yuta (witch) works very well with the skeletons, giving them health regeneration. The Animated Warriors are a very cheap option but come with the weakness that if an opponent makes a damage roll (made on 2d6) any double kills them outright. On the plus side, as with all skeletons in the game, they have the special Durable trait meaning that no matter how many wounds the opponent causes in any attack, it is never more than 1. So they take some beating to remove, especially with health regeneration!

We played this game about 6 weeks ago. It’s taken this long to get round to writing it up, so I’ll keep things short.

For this game, we went for a scenario with 6 objectives, arranged in a ‘hex’ pattern in the middle of the board. The two closest to each player were ‘friendly’ to them while the ones in the middle were neutral. Scenario points were scored at the end of round 2, 4 and 6 based upon how many friendly objectives you had. Additionally, models can take an activation to pray at an objective in BtB. This can be done 5 times in the game with 1 scenario point for praying at a friendly objective, 2 for a neutral and 3 for any enemy objective. 

We deployed as in the pictures below. The empty bases are Void Rifts that the Kinshi Temple can use. They’re effectively dimension doors for them as well as points to gain LoS and measure range. It gives them a lot of flexibility.

Turn 1

We both pushed up the table hard, trying to get to the two neutral objectives. I was largely successful, securing the right hand objective with my choking fog Kami. On the left, we both got close. One of my Yuta also has a Ki feat to summon another skeleton, which I did. This is a once per game ability but gives me a free model. Happy days. 

Photos below.

1. End of turn one
2. My right flank with the swarming skeletons around the objective
3. My left flank
4. My son’s half of the table

Turn 2

A real scrap developed on the right, as my son launched a ‘scorched earth’ Ki feat, which dishes out fire damage to all models in the AoE. Fortunately, my skeletons can regenerate their damage so, while annoying, not debilitating. My son also summoned a void rift and had one of his monks appear through it behind my lines on the right. So I had to deal with this with my Animated Warriors. On the left, Eiko, a skeleton, managed to frighten a Kinshi monk and batter him with his axe. 

Photos below

1. End of turn two
2. Eiko (metal model closest to the saki racks) violates a Kinshi monk
3. Skeletons mobbing up on a monk
4. A scorched earth AoE

Turn 3

It was at this point that things really started to unravel for my son. In a previous round, he had sacrificed one of his models to get some Void counters on to his communal card and now, with a model short, he was struggling to hold off the skeleton hoard. To his credit, he did manage to kill one of my Yuta who was loitering around in my back line (the Yuta aren’t very tough and really need to keep out of trouble and his smart use of void rifts allowed him to target my Yuta). 

On my right, my skeletons overwhelmed his models. With each attack, both the attacking model and the defending model uses up an Activation. Once out of activations, you start to lose melee dice and with the extra models that I have, that really hurts. Couple to that all the skeletons being Durable, and only taking one wound per damage roll, I can choose not to roll any defence dice and put them all into attack, knowing that my skeleton can’t die. This gives a very tough choice for my son. Despite some sterling defence, outnumbered and exhausted, the Kinshi monks perished. 

On my left the story was fairly similar although it was Eiko who dealt the damage. Armed with an axe giving him the brutal special rule, he made short work of his opponent. And with one model left, my son conceded the game.

Wash up.

It wasn’t my intention to batter my son as it can be quite disheartening but we had a good chat after the game about what went well and what could have gone better. He admitted being too gung ho with the models and leaving them unsupported. And also being too keen to gain void counters to unlock the more powerful aspects of the communal card to the detriment of his overall game. But he’s keen to try again at some point!