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Mine arrived yesterday too. First impressions are: "wow that's a big box!", the box is twice as deep as some of my Fantasy Flight boxes (took me a while to get it open actually). I certainly like the big box. The understatedness and spot gloss printing is more tasteful than the commercial box IMO. It has a kind of a "special edition" vibe to it. It's also fething fantastic to be able to fit all the stuff in a single box for once! However, all the $10 extras just came loose in a bag, as did the clans, and the extra clan I picked up. I'm not sure how I feel about the omission of the other packaging, I usually like to keep that stuff in case I ever decide to sell bits. Part of me knows that it's just useless crap that would clutter up my house, and not affect the resale value at all (so I'm happy not to have to worry about it), but then part of me also feels like maybe I paid for it, and didn't get it. *grumble grumble*

I was impressed by the quality of the rulebook. It has a proper spine rather than just being a pamphlet, which makes it feel a bit nicer. The cards are flimsy crap again, no doubt to maintain consistency with SDE; I'm happy that they are all one size though, which should make organising and sleeving them easier (no stupid mini ones). The clan sheets are especially flimsy, but I should probably try and laminate those anyway. OTOH the folding player area mats are the same cardstock as the boards, so those are exceptionally good quality. So altogether I think I'm really happy with what I got. I'm definitely a fan of the bigger box. Ultimately, it's probably a more effective use of space (I wish I could fit all my Zombicide crap in one box). My only gripe is that there is no printing on the side, I'm still ruminating over whether I should stick something on there to identify it better.

Also, the trophy guy is huge and awesome! Though getting two has completely destroyed any notion I might have had that plastic has any value at all, or that bigger miniatures should be more expensive.

You think two's bad? Try four, especially because getting "an extra one to use for terrain" was part of my reasoning for getting two box sets!

I now have two options - paint 1 each of gold, silver, copper and stone to use as awards ("everyone gets a trophy!"), paint all 4 stone to use as awesome yet distracting and obstructive corner terrain.

The quality looks universally high in all of the components, I just hope the resultant game is worth all of this polish. 4-player Bloodbowl (which I understand that Kaosball was very much not!) would be amazing.

I think I will spray one gold, and mount him on a plinth for use as a trophy; the other one I might paint properly as a massive ninja, and either use him as an ornament or as a special scenario piece. If I had a third one, then I'd probably go with the statue/terrain idea, and use it as a centrepiece. I dunno what I'd do with a fourth one. Maybe paint him properly again in an opposing team colour to the other painted one (like one blue and one red), or just keep him as a spare/sell him.

Having four stone statues might look cool on the table, but as you say, they would probably be annoying to play around, and you would also miss out on the fun of having a trophy, and getting to paint a massive ninja!

I think a giant ninja is almost as important as a trophy

can the enemies combine to bring him down before it's too lake for Kagajema

One thing's for sure: if, for some reason, anyone is:

1) Not a backer of this Kickstarter.
2) Likes chibi ninjas.
3) Likes miniatures.
4) But wishes miniatures were closer to the size of a large glass tumbler.

...they can probably pick up one of those trophies quite cheaply on eBay! I'd say that there have been about 3500 more of them delivered than were ordered, and a subset of the backers are going to have the bright idea of selling theirs.

In case people missed this from the update, the (80-page!) rulebook has been officially provided by Sodapop in full PDF form:

http://goo.gl/1IuQs4

It's really quite lush, and possibly worth a flick through even if you're undecided on the game itself.

 Bioptic wrote:
I just hope the resultant game is worth all of this polish.

Unfortunately, I'm a little worried that this might be another poorly tested "build your own game" kit, from Soda Pop. It looks like they've changed the combat system since the demo videos, probably because people on the SPM boards noticed that rolling more defence dice actually made you more likely to die (see 30 page discussion that got locked). So now you can only choose results from your own dice, and all the cards and abilities seemed to be geared towards cancellations being important. Except, cancellations aren't important, because cancellations are always 1:1, so a person rolling two additional dice will always (ALWAYS) win the combat by at least 2 dice, and be able to choose the outcome. For all the difference it makes, you might as well skip the cancellations and just have that person roll two dice and choose the outcome.

I don't know if that in itself makes it a bad game, as there is still a positional element, but it certainly makes the dice mechanic a bit pointless (or at least a lot of effort for very little effect). I think it also makes heroes that roll a lot of defence dice a little overpowered, because attacking a DEF 5 hero with an ATK 4 hero isn't just a slight disadvantage, it's suicide.

I think I might house rule it so the attacker always chooses (unless all his dice are cancelled). That way attacks can still backfire if you are mismatched, but it isn't guaranteed.

I'd need to test this out to be certain, but while it's true that a model rolling more dice is always going to 'win' the combat (since the other model can only cancel as many dice as they roll), by no means 100% of the results on the remaining dice are going to be desirable.

In a scenario where a Chunin with ATK3 is attacking a Kunoichi with DEF2, for example, the Chunin might win the combat and have one of their dice cancelled. Assuming that the Chunin wants the Kunoichi just to be out of the way so that they can move towards an objective, of the 6 possible dice results:

- 3 of them are desirable (Void, Air, Earth).
- 1 is not very desirable (Water - would enable them to move closer to the objective, but also fails to remove the opponent and puts them close to the objective as well).
- 2 are very undesirable (Spirit, Fire).

There are good odds of the attacker not getting any of the 3 they want on 2 dice. And imagine if the defender had cancelled two dice instead, and the attacker was forced to pick one of the 2 undesirable ones.

Whether the level of tactical thinking actually warrants all this dice rolling is another matter, of course!

In that scenario the attacker has more dice though, so it makes sense. The scenario that bothers me is when a Chunin with ATK3 is attacking another Chunin with DEF4. The attacker rolls 3 Voids, and the defender rolls 3 Voids and and a Water. Then for some reason the result is Water and the defender survives, even though none of the Voids were cancelled. Yet if you flip it around and have the Defender roll 3 Spirits, the attacker would need to cancel all of them to survive. That seems ass-backwards to me.

Ya'll should check out the dice tower review. Sounds like great components, questionable game.

The NAS dice analysis was covered pretty well on the SPM forums, also BGG, I believe. You might do better to look at the analyses there. Suffice to say that the mechanics as revised and printed are much more consistent with designer intent and player expectation.

 cincydooley wrote:
Ya'll should check out the dice tower review. Sounds like great components, questionable game.

I am not familiar with the Dice Tower, but it seems their reviews are highly questionable in and of themselves. At least, I've seen many comments to this effect.

 Maniac_nmt wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:
Ya'll should check out the dice tower review. Sounds like great components, questionable game.

I am not familiar with the Dice Tower, but it seems their reviews are highly questionable in and of themselves. At least, I've seen many comments to this effect.

He is one of the more prolific reviewers on the net, and has a reputation for being fair, experienced and articulating his problems.

He also has been known to be able to make the distinction between 'this game isn't for me, but is ok' and 'the mechanics are flawed'.

You can see many of his bad reviews on this BGG list and they are pretty spot on.
http://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/150574/tom-vasels-negative-game-reviews/page/2?

I was pretty hot on this game when it was annouced, but that cooled rapidly once I started digging into the game mechanics. Tom touches on all of the relevant points pretty cleanly in his review. I did not back the KS, and do not intend to buy the game. This just isn't the tactical magical ninja skirmish game that I want to play. I might just buy the Clan-specific minis in the indeterminate future, because they are gorgeous. No regrets at this time.

I'd love to hear from some of y'all once you get a chance to play. I don't always agree with vassel, but he seems pretty adamant about the problems with this one.

Hope there's another side.

 cincydooley wrote:
I'd love to hear from some of y'all once you get a chance to play. I don't always agree with vassel, but he seems pretty adamant about the problems with this one.

Hope there's another side.

Yeah, what he said was 100% how I felt about the game when I played it. The combat system is terrible. I'm glad he drew a parallel with Arcadia Quest, because I love that game, and the combat system there is incredibly fun. He hits the nail on the head by saying that the attacker needs to have more dice than the defender, or there is just no point attacking.

You can influence the outcomes with The Moon Deck, which could theoretically allow you to turn a combat in your favour (if you were lucky). But you need to have exactly the right cards, and there are only two "reroll a spirit" cards in the whole deck, so it's not even remotely the kind of thing you can depend on, especially when the defender can also play Moon Cards. In fact, giving the player with more dice an extra chance to get the result they want, is probably what Moon Cards will be best for.

If there is another side, it might be that the pointless combat system means more emphasis positional play. I can't say I've played enough games to be able to fully appreciate the positional aspect of the game, but my initial thoughts are that the ninja are too fast for position to me meaningful, and there aren't enough obstacles. Some of them can run 16 spaces which gives them ~250 possible spaces they could move to in one turn. I think it's going to be a bit pointless trying to "checkmate" something (or avoid it) positionally, when it can zip anywhere on the board in one turn. Another problem is that you can only move one ninja at a time, which makes it a bit awkward to set up positional combos, as the other player could just try to move away or attack you first. Unless, you're leading with a more powerful ninja, but then you don't need to combo, you can just attack and win. I think "assists" will probably be more opportunistic after an attack fails, so you can swoop in for an assisted backstab. Otherwise there is just no reason to hang out next to a weak enemy and let them assist attacks against you.

There is also stealth, and some combat-results that reposition ninja, so there might be a strategy game there yet, but I don't have very high hopes, if there is it's well hidden. At the moment it feels more like a game where combat doesn't matter, cards don't matter, position doesn't really matter, you just run your guys out and go "pew pew", and then the biggest guy wins... /game.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I was pretty hot on this game when it was annouced, but that cooled rapidly once I started digging into the game mechanics. Tom touches on all of the relevant points pretty cleanly in his review. I did not back the KS, and do not intend to buy the game. This just isn't the tactical magical ninja skirmish game that I want to play. I might just buy the Clan-specific minis in the indeterminate future, because they are gorgeous. No regrets at this time.

Try Ronin from Osprey. It is a fantastic Samurai game. It is meant to be more realistic, but there are rules for monsters and the like if you so desire.

Thanks for the pointer, assuming I get the models. Or maybe I'll get the models if I like the rules?

 Maniac_nmt wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I was pretty hot on this game when it was annouced, but that cooled rapidly once I started digging into the game mechanics. Tom touches on all of the relevant points pretty cleanly in his review. I did not back the KS, and do not intend to buy the game. This just isn't the tactical magical ninja skirmish game that I want to play. I might just buy the Clan-specific minis in the indeterminate future, because they are gorgeous. No regrets at this time.

Try Ronin from Osprey. It is a fantastic Samurai game. It is meant to be more realistic, but there are rules for monsters and the like if you so desire.

Are the rules for monsters and such included in the RONIN book?

 Alpharius wrote:

 Maniac_nmt wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I was pretty hot on this game when it was annouced, but that cooled rapidly once I started digging into the game mechanics. Tom touches on all of the relevant points pretty cleanly in his review. I did not back the KS, and do not intend to buy the game. This just isn't the tactical magical ninja skirmish game that I want to play. I might just buy the Clan-specific minis in the indeterminate future, because they are gorgeous. No regrets at this time.

Try Ronin from Osprey. It is a fantastic Samurai game. It is meant to be more realistic, but there are rules for monsters and the like if you so desire.

Are the rules for monsters and such included in the RONIN book?

No, but you can download them here (for free) as well as points calculators to help you create what you want.

https://ospreypublishing.com/gaming-resources/#OWG4

The book has the rules and various buntai/army lists: Samurai/Bushi (elite army/classical Samurai), Bandit (horde army of sorts), Ikko-Ikki (fanatical horde army), Monk (fearless, and generally armed with a Naginata, but weaker armor than the top Bushi), Schools (katana, naginata, other) who are awesome in combat but have no armor, Ming Chinese, Korean. It also has swords for hire: Ninja (there is also a ninja attack scenario in the book which is fun), Wandering Monks, ronin (of course), wandering sword saints, etc.

Each model has an initiative stat, fighting skill, armor, and combat pool. You pool the combat pools of involved models, roll off for initiate in combat, and then duke it out. The combat pool is different as you can use it to try and gain initiative by rolling extra dice, you must use one to attack, you can enhance an attack, or enhance defense. As the choices are all made at the start and revealed at the same time, it can really vary the fighting. It also means a couple of ashigaru can gang up on a Samurai and win or have a Samurai carve through them depending on tactical choices and how the dice roll.

I haven't tried it yet, but En Garde! is the successor to Ronin, set in Europe from the 16th to 18th centuries. It has a few new concepts in it that may further flesh out aspects you want to capture.

You can see some game images and read up on some of our games playing it here:

http://www.wfhgs.com/samurai.html

Try warning order #38 and #41 for short bat reps.

Also, while I haven't tried it, Daisho is supposed to be a more mystical version of Ronin.

https://daishogame.wordpress.com/

Oh, and Ronin is only 5-14 models a side, roughly, depending on your Buntai. It would easily play with anything you already have or with a clan/shrine from NAS.

I've tried NAS 3x by now and it's okay as a game. I had some fun with it although you're right that more dice generally = much better. I'm not sure if that's intentional or not since I imagine the reasoning behind it is that both parties would strike together so it stands to reason that the defender can injured the attacker.

Usually so far, my games have started with every single character going into stealth and then manuevering to try and maximise attack dice. This doesn't always work though as sometimes you end up rolling the symbol that just injures your own character and all other symbols are cancelled (a lot more common if you only have 1 dice more than the opponent)

The only real dumb thing in the rules imo is the fact that if attk dice and defense dice are equal, the attacker gets to choose from BOTH pools. Like wth. That just makes it way too good to be an attacker.

That is not correct - the rules state, in bolded text, "The player may only choose a due from the dice they rolled". When both players have an equal number of dice left, the attacker chooses the result from THEIR dice.

I was aware of the typical Soda Pop rules issues during the KS, why the hell did I back this?! Even odds for caught up in unlocking excitement / forgot to cancel :(

Thanks for the suggestion on Ronin, reading your br now. Think I'll buy a copy of the rules and pretend it was my intention all along.

Even if the rules are bad (and I think Tom Vassal has read things wrong in some cases, and is plain missing things in others) the minis are great

I spent some time yesterday discussing this with people on the SPM board, and decided to give it another shot. A lot of people who like it seem to be people who enjoyed Blood Bowl, and I guess I can see that it is very heavily inspired by Blood Bowl. Obviously, Blood Bowl without a ball is going to be a bit of a weird game, and they've made the combat rules more contrived than Blood Bowl's (blocking). In Blood Bowl unless you are twice as strong, you only roll 2 dice and the stronger player picks the result (only one dice if you're equal). In NAS you both roll dice, and then the dice cancel each other out, and then the stronger player picks from what is left of their dice. I think the problem with the NAS system is that it doesn't scale evenly because the dice only have a 1/6 chance of cancelling. If two ninjas are both strength 4, then the attacker has a huge advantage because it is fantastically unlikely that 3 dice will be cancelled. So having 1 defence or 5 defence makes little difference if the attacker is stronger (or as strong). That might not be such a bad thing though as it means stronger attacks are more consistent.

I think the game is growing on me. It's pretty lousy as a skirmish game, but when you add in the medals (The NAS equivalent of the Blood Bowl ball), and the Shrines, and accept that combat is more akin to manipulating a random results table than rolling attack dice. I think there is enough of a game for it to be kinda fun.

The issue with the comparisons with blood bowl is that blood bowl has a lot more tactics with movement and turnovers which an IgoUgo every figure instead of TeamGoTeamGo does.

You can have your players move sequentially to set up those assists against that black orc blocker. You can choose to have your ball handler go last to minimize risk of a turn over. The dice mechanics really lend itself to explicitly knowing odds before you roll and choosing to do actions from 'best chance' to 'worst chance'.

So much of that tactical play is lost due to the dice mechanics, extreme movement and the way you can't set much up due to the back and forth. Makes it hard to consciously set up that assist with 3 of your guys when it slowly unfolds and can be simply 'walked away' from.

If they want to be blood bowl, just be blood bowl. Compare stats, make one roll with the number of dice based upon differences and accept the results.

Attacker Double: 3 Dice, attacker pick
Attacker +1: 2 Dice, attacker pick
Equal: 1 dice
Attacker -1: 2 dice, defender pick
Attacker half: 3 Dice, defender pick

Bam, now you are blood bowl, and stuff is quicker. Maybe then assists and tactical movement might have purpose.

The real problem is... whenever something 'tries' to be like another game, and fails at it and brings nothing unique or redeeming, the response always is: lets just go play other game?

Except to have an excuse to push pretty Ninjas around a board, why play this and not simply play Blood bowl instead? Hell, We could even play Blood bowl WITH these figures with minimal work.

Kaiken=Linemen
Chunin=Blitzers
Yajiri=Throwers
Kunochis=Catchers
Oni = Ogre big guys

It is a shame to see such cool minis pretty much be part of a game which is going to be a non-starter due to universally bad reviews and SPMs bad reputation for rules.

Universally bad reviews is bit of a misnomer. Ive seen quite a few people that like it and have said so. One Forum is not the whole internet and one dice tower review is not the end all be all of reviews. Also...almost no one in the states has actually received thiers yet do to it being locked in customs. Lets let it simmer a bit before declaring it a total loss or success.

 rayphoton wrote:
Universally bad reviews is bit of a misnomer. Ive seen quite a few people that like it and have said so. One Forum is not the whole internet and one dice tower review is not the end all be all of reviews. Also...almost no one in the states has actually received thiers yet do to it being locked in customs. Lets let it simmer a bit before declaring it a total loss or success.

Then I am glad it is not just one forum and one review. It is about 8-9 forumns, including SPMs forum itself, and at least 6 youtube reviews.

Even the ones that 'like' it admit there are flaws in the mechanics and the game is unclear and confusing but they accept it because 'beer and pretzels'.

40k is a fundamentally flawed game which is fun to play and gives you an excuse to push awesome models around a board. It is seen universially as flawed but people still 'like' it.

So 'game is flawed but I like it' is still 'game is flawed' and for people who want good rules, that is a bad review.

Can I get those youtube links?

thanks

nkelsch wrote:
an IgoUgo every figure instead of TeamGoTeamGo does ... extreme movement and the way you can't set much up due to the back and forth. Makes it hard to consciously set up that assist with 3 of your guys when it slowly unfolds and can be simply 'walked away' from.

After playing around with it a bit more, I've noticed that the order you move is quite important. If you focus on ninja who have already activated, then they can't respond. You can use air and water results to throw them back into your own team where you can gang up on them, and their buddies are too far away to help.

Glad to see that the games growing on you smacks...I look forward to giving it a shot here soon