Heyhey, just a quick one today, but worth having a look. We’re going back to Ronin, a game I played and reviewed back in 2014 (the article was put up here early in Tabletop Stories’ life) and have not played since. Does it still SLAP, over 10 years on?

Few weeks ago on a drive back from a lovely demo game of GW’s Adeptus Titanicus (the new one. Cracking game and components) at Virago’s, Cpt.Shandy and I realized he never played Ronin. So we decided to rectify that fact. And of course it’s a great occasion to get the terrain out I made for that game over the past bunch of years. So a few weeks later I had set up a gaming table and Ieven had a solo round played to get back into the rules. For me, I can read rules all I like; I never really learn them before I get them on the table. Wouldn’t review rules either without having played them, unless I get a VERY strong opinion on them from only reading them. And in those cases I usually don’t bother writing reviews anyway. I actually read my own review of the rules to get into the rules again. Cringed due to how I wrote it, but it helped me remember things.

A very swift introduction to the rules: Ronin, by Craig Woodfield, were among the very first of the 200,000 Osprey ‘blue book’ wargames rules series. Still a somewhat unique concept, in which Osprey gave wargames authors 64 pages to present their rules on, publishing as well as extremely wide distribution at low-low prices as well as access to their archives of lovely artworks. Further ‘suppport’ (*eyeroll*) and marketing the rules was up to the authors themselves.

This series of rules bore some beloved rules sets (Ronin, Lion Rampant, Gaslands, Black Ops, …), and less beloved ones. Quality of these rules is a bit all over the place, but the number and variety of rules is staggering, so there ought to be better and more particular ones among them. And let’s be frank – many of these rules are slightly hampered by having to be squeezed onto just 64 pages.

Anway, lots of good rules found their way onto our tables that way, Ronin (and subsequently En Garde!, which Ronin spawned) being one favourite among them – mostly for its combat system. I also really enjoy the setting, which I know incredibly little about. And it’s about the only period in which I’m as much into the terrain and everyday life as I’m into the combat/combatants, if not more so.

Anyway, I set up a table, with a nice little dojo in the middle with some buildings around it, a bunch of civilians, etc.
First I planned to do the “Defend the village” scenario from the rulebook, but then we decided that none of was was into killing civilians, so in the end we opted for the regular first scenario from the rulebook. Btw, there’s three more scenarios for Ronin, published by North Star Magazine (yes, Northstar got a magazine. No, I didn’t know about it either.), posted by Mr.White on the lovely LAF forums.

 

The table was roughly 80×100 cm. Not easily visible in the pictures either, but there’s actually four (sublty) different height levels in that table too. And loads of civilians from the Perrys range. Lovely figures.

I wrote up two 150pts rosters for two buntai, both from the Bushi list from the Ronin rule book, based on my collection. Buntai 1 is based on the regular Ashigaru-Samurai layout, Buntai 2 uses the Samurai-only layout.

***Disclaimer: I was made aware that a little error happened in Buntai#1 list. Apparently Ashigaru Hirooki got a bit in over his head and grabbed a teppo, even though the buntai lists only allow for no more than 25% of models per buntai to carry them, so only his colleague Tetsuya would have been allowed to do so, but the two constantly but heads abot who’s the better shot and to those two everything is a competition and Hirooki would have played hell if he wouldn’t have gotten to carry a teppo into the field as well. Thanks to Orkwin Grummel of the Tabletopwelt.de forums for pointing that out.

On the day itself Virago had brought his own lovely samurai figures with him, from which he supplied the one side (Buntai 1), Cpt.Shandy took on the samurai-only Bushi Buntai. I did umpriring and looking-up of rules.

At this point I will have to disappoint you – there’s no detailled battle report because we hajust general chatter. Here is one photo of the game, supplied by Cpt.Shandy:

 

General observations as to the rules:

GOOD – The combat system is the stand-out factor here. The fact remains, that Ronin is a great go-to set of rules for anything that involves even slightly artful (or cinematic) close combat. These rules will work for knights, for Star Wars, for swashbuckling of any sort (again, do look into En Garde!), and I think that it might work in conjuncture with Gundams too.

POSSIBLY LESS GOOD – Two things stuck out which the players weren’t too convinced of: The ‘stunned’ result isn’t of too great consequence most of the time, to a point at which the whole concept was called into question. There are the option rules for Fatigue in the back of the rules, which seems like a good idea (working fatigue into any skirmish wargame is always interesting), but looks like it might add some playtime to the game. Has anyone of you tried them in your own games?

The other thing was that buntai morale didn’t feel punchy enough. I think that this might be by design, because many people don’t love their models running away rather than fighting to the death.

THE OTHER – Having no armour on is not good. People without armour fold very swiftly. It’s known, and even mentioned in the rules I think, that certain buntai don’t match up well with others due to differing power levels.

Anyway, Ronin holds up perfectly well. It’s a great rules set for skirmish combat. Not much else to say. The period flavour comes with the buntai lists, how they acquire victory points, and the various special abilities.

Either way, it made me want to learn more about the period again. Just returned from Austrian Salute, and I’m very glad that SOMEBODY bought all the Wargames Atlantic 10mm Samurai and Ashigaru there, otherwise I’d have taken the plunge. I have to admit though that I placed an order with Bac Ninh miniatures right after the game for some more unarmoured samurai.

So yeah, we all got a bunch of these blue Osprey rule books on our shelves, if you’re anything like me many of them haven’t been played even once. I plan to fix that this year. Next on the list: Rogue Stars. Because these things are worth playing. Just like everything else you have on your shelf. New stuff is nice, but if you look through your bookshelf, you’ll always find some rulebook that you should play again.

Hope you enjoyed the article!