Animecon 2014 review

So last week I went to Animecon in The Hague to demo Bushido. I was helped by a fellow player from Rotterdam know as TheD on the Bushido forums. We did demo's from 17:00 till 22:00 and I finally had a chance to wear my retainer t-shirt.

This is only what was standing outside

 The moment I arrived at the venue, the World Forum in The Hague, it was packed. A lot of people with all kinds of costumes or accesories from anime's and manga's. One of the perks of being part of the event staff is skipping all the lines.

It was a bit of a hassle finding where I was holding the demo's with TheD, but after finding West Givner, our local store owner and got us acces to the con, we quickly found our little corner where set up.

All setup for demo's

Unfortunately it seemed that ouf of all the demo's West tried organising, we were the only ones that appeared. A lot of people cancelled on the last moment and instead of 6 games being demo'd over twelve tables there was 1 game being demo'd on one or two tables.

The hazards of cosplaying, messy hair

The first couple of hours we had almost no people walking by or even demoing, most people were scrambling about to get their goodies or enjoying various events. that's the problem if you sit in a corner as the only demo. But when the first people sat down people started noticing us and we had done around six demo's and at least twelve people joining or looking at the demo's.

Don't know who's in danger him or the girls

 A thank for TheD (the one in the middle) for helping out and doing demo's beside me and for continueing on Saturday when I couldn't make it.

And of course a thank you to the one who made sure we could even do the demo's West Givner ( on the right). Here he is challenging a Power Ranger to a battle of the best action pose.

I liked being at Animecon great costumes and nice people but a little caution is advised as some stuff isn't really appropriate for some. Would have been nice if the other people would have been there doing demo's so more people would have noticed us more.

For anyone who was their at Animecon and liked the game, West's store has a good stock of all things Bushido and their is regular play.

Bushido wave 18 review: part 4 ready to rumble

In this review i'll finally review the Silvermoon release Oda and Tautolu. First i'll review each seperate and then the combined model.

Oda:
The model looks keeps the great look from the concept art. In addition I love the idea of a tiny man (he's literally half the height of Tautolu) ordering around a bunch of buto.

Now statwise he's dangerously weak. 1 MS, movement of 3, only 4 wounds and no mellee. Now the strenght of this model is in his traits. He's fearless (who wouldn't be if you hang around giants), order (2/Buto/6) (amazing!), small (no surprise) and toughness (1) (a little surprising).

With these traits the important ones are order and Small. The small makes him easier to hide behind the buto's and order means more actions for your buto's. Tacticly speaking the order is very important since you will almost always be outnumbered unless fighting a full oni list.

Now his Ki feats are amazing, well okay one is. First up is "Rally" for 3 Ki remove frightened from all friendly models within 8 inch, this is a Ki feat you'll hardly use as the buto cause fear and Manu is fearless. It's nice to have but dn't expect to use it often.

Second is "Jumo Sensei" now this is why you'll be playing a buto list. for 2 Ki you can target a model within 6 inch and give him a instruction token. now the options from these tokens are very varied, you can get a lot of special attacks or defenses or immovable. But these aren't the most important, what is important is that the token can be used to decrease the cost of a special attack or defense by (1). Just imagine Manu throwing people around for free or Fituama doing combo attack for free.

Tautolu:
I'm not a fan of the model it looks deviates from the general buto look as shown in the concept art.

He's got great traits armour, brutal and toughness (1). Fear (3), large, steadfast and steady. This combined with his powerful attack and his regular +2 on damage means the potential to kill models in one go is very high.

His single Ki feat gives him bodyguard/friendly not amazing but could be used to save a model low on wounds. Not much else to say about him but big and strong a good model for the 10 rice.

Oda & Tautolu:
The combined model keeps the best stats from both models e.g the MS, movement and wounds from Tautolu and the Ki statistic from Tautolu and keeps all the traits from both models except for the small from Oda.It's interesting to see the size isn't increased to huge meaning you're still able to hide him behind terrain 2 inch or larger, despite the model being 3 inch high.

It's nice to be able to combine the models into one big monster, it's up to your own opinion but i'd rather keep them seperate for a total 15 rice for the extra activations.

With the options Silvermoon gets from these models expect to see a lot of buto warbands in the future Oda and all the buto's is only 33 points giving you 4 models, 3 of which have 10 wounds and with Oda you can let two of your buto activate an extra time in a turn. Problem with this list is that modifiers stack up really fast outnumbered and exhausted being the most prevalent ones, when you lose one buto things will go downhill fast.

Sojobo part 2: flesh & clothing

all paints mentioned are used from the vallejo range or as otherwise noted.

fleshing out the model.... 

first i started with a basecoat of "sunny skin tone". i wanted Sojobo to have a slightly darker skin tone as would be expected from someone flying around without a shirt.

skin tone needs a few layers, so i first applied a quick thin layer. don't worry if this layer looks horrible. the second layer will cover everything nicely.

his back is difficult to reach with the wings attached something i should have realised beforehand (oops!).

at least it's not as big or bad as traditional tengu

i decided to go for a traditional tengu nose. i added "red" into the "sunny skin tone" in a few degree's until i painted the tip of his nose pure "red". (sorry for the out of focus picture).

you don't need to do this for yourself put i find it an appropriate homage to the tengu origins.

the clothing has been done with a basecoat of "flat blue". then i chose what i think is his belt and scarf for a lighter blue to bring some more color with "deep sky blue".

Sojobo clothed

the bandages around the legs and the topknot bandana have been painted "german camo beige". this will make his legs and hair stand out more instead of dissapearing within the rest of his robes.

the last piece of clothing the animal pelt has been painted "german camo medium brown".

Sojobo part 1: modelling and base coat

for sojobo assemly was pretty easy except for the left arm and the wings. at first i had no idea where to place the arm but looking back at the studio picture i realised i had to place under the stub sticking out of his shoulder. the wings were a pain because they were heavy and only had a little socket to attack to. i used a very strong super glue but anyone who's handy with a drill i would advise pinning.

a little warning the staf is easily bendable be careful when moving it around.

all modeled and ready for the basecoat

after assembly i used a vallejo texture point, brown earth. after using this on my Flames of War models i've started using texture point for all my basing. it's easier to apply and you can even sculpt it a bit to make footsteps or tracks.

i basecoated sojobo with a cheap black acrylic matt spray from a discount store. the basecoat doesn't need to be fancy, it just needs to be a good base for the rest of your paint.

a little update and animecon 2014

it's been a bit busy because of life and didn't have the time to keep my own update schedule.but soon i'll be having some nice stuff for all you viewers.

first up i'll be doing painting/modeling tutorials for bushido the first one i'll be doing will be Sojobo expect the first part on friday. (sorry about the camera quality)

 then on friday i'll also be at animecon 2014 in the world forum in the Hague from 17:00 till 22:00 giving demo's. you can find me in the dealersroom at the gamers of the west stand.

follow the big arrow

Bushido wave 18 review: part 3 Emperor's watchmen

for this review i'll focus on a single model, the Golden Sentinel. since this is a multi faction model i'll look at his stats in general and what he gets per faction and the uses per faction.

first the looks, i love the armour reminiscent of a chinese Qing imperial guard. it has good detail in the armour and clothing and looking at the shoes he's someone that needs to travel often.

he's a reasonable fighter with MS 3 and martial prowess, he's also durable with an armour (3) and bravery ensuring he'll stand his ground. he's a 8 rice for all factions.

so far nothing special except for his trait bodyguard (2/teishin) and he'll also gain aware and first strike within 3 inch of a teishin. to get the full use out of his 8 points you would need to field Yukio as he's the only Teushin around now.

 then we have his ki feat battle hardened. this feat costs 3 ki and gives the Sentinel last stand and rise (4) till the end of the turn, this feat can only be used once per game.


now the faction specific things and tactica, first up prefecture. with prefecture you get a free pass token each turn. while not that impressive an bonus prefecture players could use this model to field an inexpensive samurai to bring up numbers.

for Ito the Sentinel gains poison (1/1). in my opinion the best one of the three as poison can help a lot in the long run in a game. especially with a Ito warband filled with Blood of Orochi models you can quickly rack up those poison markers and again a cheap samurai model.

for Silvermoon his additional ability is the coin flip for extra ki. i find this a bit dissapointing as the other faction get something that always helps, Silvermoon get a 50/50 chance for extra ki. considering this guy can only have 6 ki stacked, i imagine you would only use this ability when your in a bind and need to use his ki feat to get rise (4). for Silvermoon he's not that impressive a model as most models in Silvermoon already have 3 MS the only bonus he brings is armour.

overall a decent model but to maximize him i would advise fielding him beside Yukio to get the addition traits.

Bushido wave 18 review: part 2 the devout and the undead.

today i'll be reviewing the newest monk from the temple of Ro-Kan and the first undead samurai fron the Cult of Yurei.

first up Tetsuo the Kairai samurai. i was a bit afraid of how the blood from the concept art would work out but it looks amazing. the armour looks different from the other samurai clans and considering this is a Kairai version of a Mirumoto samurai, i think this gonna be the style we can expect to see from that clan.

now statwise he's solid 3 MS, very high armour of 3 and martial prowess besides the regular Kairai traits. what makes this model amazing is that for 1 ki he removes slow from himself. the Cult is still a slow faction and this model is no different with 3 movement.

i can see this model fit in almost any cult list, for 8 rice he's a good model. of course this model will fit best in a Kairai focused list with Kato and Gengo, only problem in my eyes for now is that the Kairai are too slow for the objective scenario's.

next up we have a the devout monk Seiji. the concept has been well represented in the sculpt and the fluid pose is always a nice one to see. otherwise a bit of a bland model with few ornaments or details as compared to Tetsuo 's armor, spray of blood and the expressive mask.

stats are solid for a 7 rice model. a MS of 3, move 4 and a Ki statistic of 4. he's also got a number of great traits as bravery, jump up and ranged defence (1). what sets him apart in my mind is that his ki boost are really cheap, he can boost his MS and move for 2 Ki each. this could mean that you make that vital melee action or boost this little guy the 5 dice pool max for only 4 Ki.

now his ki feats make this an even stronger model. for 1 ki he gets regeneration (2) making him a lot more likely to survive. his other Ki feat has a new effect called Held. as a simple action and for X+1 KI he activates a pulse of 3 inch and he can target X models to become held.
if i'm not mistaken this means the models affected need to make a size test.

now tactics wise this is an amazing model as he can quickly increase is melee dicepool and has a two usefull Ki feats. his weakness is his Ki statistic with a max Ki of 6 you need to keep channeling Ki into this model, as this model will run out of Ki quick. should this model run out of ki don't be surprised to lose him very fast.