My Silvermoon trade syndicate tournament warband

Every two months I organize a tournament at my local game store, while I don't often join in being the organizer I do have a list ready to compete when I get the chance.

While it's always fun to fight against your opponent and win by being the best fighter (or the luckiest). I like toying around with my opponent while going for the objectives. To do this I got all the Roses, the Envoy and the Golden Sentinel.

Hanami 11
Tsubak 7
Saki 7
Yukio Koshimori 7
The Golden Sentinel 8
Event - Dark Secret 2

This brings up a total of 42 points. We play this often in my group as it offers enough choices and plays fast enough.


Strenghts:
This list excells in tricks, the Roses can cause a major problem to your opponents plans, with the ability to cause stupid(5), lure opponent models or to change their facing to setup a surprise attack. Added to this there are two models, Hanami and Yukio, plus the event that can create control tokens.

The plan is to take control of your opponents models at key moments, scenario turns or when he's setting up a charge, and disrupt or even kill your opponents models with his own models.

The safety in this list is that the Roses all have disguise making them impossible to target with ki 1 or lower models. and Yukio is protected by the Sentinel. The Roses are also very fast with all having a movement of 5 helping with taking up a good position or running away when a ki test fails.

Weaknesses:
The only model who can do a reasonable job of fighting is the Sentinel. While the Roses are still decent at it with 3 dice, their lower wounds and lack of offensive traits or feats means they'll have problems with anything better than an Ashigaru.

Wave 20 models revealed part 1

So far halve of the factions have been revealed for wave 20.

First up Master Akari's model is revealed. As with Master Ekusa you get a number of smaller animals decorating the model and base. Akari looks good and is an improvement on their humanoid models compared to the Kitsune. She isn't ugly but the face is off.

I expect this model to be popular for painters seeing the little details on the model and the small animals.















Next up we have Yugio, does anyone else remember a certain card game with this name? The model looks great I was a bit confused what the stuff in his backpack was until I saw the characters on it and realised they're gravemarkers, a nice touch and a visual reminder about what the model is all about.

A very good amount of detail and I won't be surprised if I pick Cult again as best model for the wave again.














Last up we have the Sukoshi Kani and Nomi. I'm mildly dissapointed with how they look. While the girl is fine with the bag of spikes, the boy is bland and won't be very interesting to paint in my mind.

Rise of the Kage funded!

So a few days ago Rise of the Kage got fully funded. What's more is they added all kinds of goodies when they reached their funding and added more stretch goals.

So what was added upon funding?

An extra ninja was added to the roster. This brings the total to 5 ninja's and at the rate the kickstarter is going we'll be seeing Bushido cards for all the ninja.








A royal hostage has arrived, so probably we will see a few missions having a search and rescue vibe.

She's also a kickstarter exclusive so you can only get if by pledging.







The last instant funding bonus is a new board. This is an interesting board with the wide avenue in the model making it hard to sneak around.









The first stretch goal is also unlocked bringing the 6th ninja. So people can play with 2 ninja teams or switch them around for a different game each time.

Rise of the Kage launch

Alright everyone tonight Rise of the Kage will be unleashed onto kickstarter. Now some of you might be curious what this means, for those familiar with you can skip to the next paragraph. Kickstarter is a crowdsourcing website where companies and individual people can post their concepts or products. Then people can fund these project ensuring the product comes on the market.

What does this mean for Rise of the Kage? We'll probably be able to get it at a lower price then when it comes out in the webstore, by pledging we can even get Bushido profile cards for the miniatures in Rise of the Kage. I for one will join this to get a nice boardgame out of it and some extra mini's for Bushido.

Here's a link to the demo on Gencon.  
https://www.youtube.com/watchv=ngvfVHSU8Ok

And the game's own website.
http://www.riseofthekage.com/

Concept art speculation

All the concept art has been released for wave 20 and there are some exciting models in there. The two I'm most interested in are Cult of Yurei and Ito Clan. Hopefully soon we can expect the cards to be shown on the site so I can see if my predictions are true and what possibilities they bring on the table.

I'm curious how Yugio wil interact his discription has him protecting the spirits and ancestors. While I think he'll most likely be a support model for the Karai, which they really need. Hopefully a model to make the Cult more reliable on the field.








Ito Mizuki will be a favorite of mine for this wave as she'll be the biggest model, probably the most rice heavy and hopefully the best sculpt.


From her discription we can take 3 things. 1. She's a Shugenja. 2. She'll give boons to allies and 3. A gaze that immobilizes.

She might turn out to be a Shisai which would be better synergy wise. And boons will be hard to guess. But her immobilize will mostly be a ranged attack or a line of sight based ki feat.

For the other factions Temple get another master, great but I think people would like to see more diversity in Temple except for more monks even if they're Tanuki.











Wave will finally get their Kaihei beast to support the Kaihei Alpha and Yusha. Hopefully this brings a new theme to the Savage Wave of savage beasts and monsters.

I expect these two, the Alpha, Yusha and the Giant Cave Bat to be an interesting list to play.

Prefecture of Ryu will be getting a priest in the form of Shuichi from the discription players can expect him giving allies armor or toughness and removing poison,fire and control markers.










And finally Silvermoon Trade Syndicate will get..... a bunch of kids. Don't expect these to hold up in a fight, you'll most likely use them for their abilities or as a point filler.