Hola, amigos!
Soon after receiving the rulebook and preparing miniatures we had our first game of Ronin.

Virago and I visited Constable (as well as his lovely family, his wine cellar and his  beer and barbecue stuffs reserves) for a weekend of jolly good times with toy soldiers. 

On Friday we had a 2on1 game of Ronin. Virago held a village which Constable and I had to storm. It was the first game of Ronin any of us had, but we rather quickly settled into the rules. We didn’t bother much with points values and set up what looked somewhat plausibly fun to play.

The table:

Highly pretty, isn’t it? It’s a group effort too. I supplied the large house as well as the bamboo, Virago supplied the cherry trees, the rest of course is Constable’s.

This is the village which was to be defended:

He went for un-armoured Samurai as an experiment. To make up for this his leader in light blue is a tip top skilled Samurai.

Virago’s troops take position:

And finally my own warband, who were going to attack from the hills:

The game starts, Constable’s guys advance under the fire from the well-fortified archers in the village. His guys shoot back, but due to distance and cover, bows, arrows and arquebuses prove to be mostly ineffective until the village defenders manage to get a few lucky hits in via concentrated fire on Constable’s poor Teppo Guy.

In the meantime I advance down the slope.

And quite the combat ensues. After a first round in which I, as I have to admit, roll really, really well and prolonged combat thereafter, The Good Guys (=my guys) prevail:

In the meantime Constable’s unarmoured Samurai, supported by two slightly wounded Ashigaru, launch an attack against the other part of Nemesis’ warband which happens to include his leader. 

The un-armoured Samurai doesn’t fare too well but hold their own for a while. The leader, deadly wounded, still manages to gravely wound a hapless Ashigaru with his last move (that’s a cute little Ability, I think it’s called Tough. After a model is killed he/she may carry out one more full attack. Very Samurai.). By this time my warband has broken through and rushes through the village to help their comrades but it’s too late. One Ashigaru still keeps up the fight but the Samurai has fallen.

After a salvo at close range from my guys’ teppo and two archers my Samurai and Ashigaru (some wounded) charge the enemy and manage to cut them down quickly. The game is over and the village is conquered.

Hugely entertaining game. Everyone involved enjoyed it and the terrain and table of course played a large part in the pleasantness of the whole affair. We all were rather impressed with the Ronin rules. Very quick and rather fun with that little poker element of allocating tokens and such.

I hope you enjoyed this battle report. If you have any questions or comments, put them up here in the comments section!