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So I believe I am getting Ronin as Christmas present. This will allow me to use my Samurai Models in Ronin as well as Kings of War.

A few questions for you.

Those who have played it what are your thoughts?
Is it easy to play if you have very little wargaming experience?
How did you find it?
Do many people play it in your area?

If you frequence firestorm games would you fancy a game in the new year?

Please also share your Buntai, Northstar or otherwise.

Thanks

I have two Northstar Buntai - Bushi and Sohei plus I have a force of Ninjas

I really like the game, the tactical choice between allocating your tokens for attack and defence is a great mechanic. Shooting is a little underwhelming but you could houserule that.

I only actually played one game of Ronin in the Japanese setting and did enjoy it, however fairly quickly our group used the points calculator on the osprey website (http://www.ospreypublishing.com/articles/%5Bblog%5D/osprey_wargames_resources/) to adapt the system to a War of the Roses system that better represented the miniatures we have.

Been playing the rules for a few weeks now and i really enjoy them, i like the allocating tokens to boost your attacks or defense, trying to keep enough in reserve if out numbered or the like is an interesting mechanic. The combat pool idea also allows for less able troops to 'overwhelm' a much stronger model keeping things for the most part balanced. I also like that it is not to common for a model to be killed out right in one swoop, i like that you get wounds that actually affect the model rather then instant deaths or meaningless hit counters.

It certainly is easy to play, your read and get a grip of the rules quickly and in a few games all the adding and subtracting on rolls becomes natural.

Personally i like the shooting mechanics as well, shooting is not to dangerous but does have a chance of being truly deadly with good rolls, this has led to some nicely surprising situations in our games. Its certainly not to deadly in genral, but then i have seen many a skirmish game fail when missile weapons are to good.

What did you make your ninja force from?

I bought the Ninja figures for the game Kensei

I've got them for use in the Ninja scenario in the book

Cool. I have a few Ninja. Only 3 though.

Thanks a lot for the feedback guys, very useful!

I'm still humming/harring about what direction to take with this game, and what miniatures to settle on. No way on god's earth I'm going to create a mass-battle system for KoW or anything similar, but hearing that the Ronin rules play well has definitely got me more interested on the skirmish side of things.

Salad_Fingers; For WoTR, did you just adapt directly? So heavy armour samurai -> plate armour man at arms, Ashigaru -> Yeoman with pike etc.?

I have Kensai miniatures for my Buntai, and I have Perry miniatures Ikko Ikki and some unarmoured samurai for Kurya schools. I think Perry also do Koreans so I can have my hordes of peasants.

Only played one game of elite samurai vs samurai led ashigaru horde, and it was incredibly fun.

Who won?

My Buntai will probably be made from Perries mostly. With some Westwind and TAG as supplements from completely the wrong historical timeframe.

It was pretty close and we might have made a few mistakes, but all that was left was a heavily wounded hatamoto. His jutsu and other traits helped immensely.

Sorry I meant who won Ashigaru or Samurai? Just wondering how the throwing bodies at it approach of the Ashigaru worked.

If you want a peasant horde I would go for Old Glory mate. 30 peasants with weapons for £24

Sorry for not making it clear, the Samurai won that match up with only the hatamoto remaining. Old glory it may have to be then.

They seem decent. I am getting some of their Ashigaru archers for christmas.

Ronin was good....Sean Bean getting kicked out of the gang did not make me happy....good car chase though.

Sean Bean got kicked out as he was a fraud, and shouldn't have been there.. kind of like your post in this thread actually

He got ambushed by a coffee cup.

Got the book for christmas. Gonna paint up some Perry models as a Buntai.

Nice book isn't it? Although funnily enough think the article in Wargames Illustrated did a better job of providing a summary/example of how the rules work.

It s a nice book. Most of the non war gaming pictures are recycled from other osprey books though.

Haven't read the wargames illistrated article I don't

Gonna paint up a buntai each with the misses. Hopefully someone at firestorm wil be playing when I eventually feel up to heading there.m

Had a quick look on the WI website and sadly it's not one of the articles that has been uploaded.

It's in issue 312 if you wanted to pick up a back issue though (http://www.flamesofwar.com/wionline_store.aspx?CategoryID=13154)

And don't know if it's useful or not, but while looking for that came across this Samurai painting guide which seems rather nice

http://www.flamesofwar.com/Portals/0/all_images/WargamesIllustrated/ArticlePics/WI312%20Web%20Files/ArchiveArticles/WI278-WEBPaintingSamurai.pdf

I have that guide saved on the laptop it's really good.