My 50% off Test of Honour package came in the mail on Tuesday, a few days early, actually. Even a postal strike cannot hold back the forces of Feudal Japan! I have wanted to play this game for about a year now, and so bought it as a birthday present for myself, fitting, as it arrived at just about the right time. I got about to assembling the base forces last night, and oh what a night.

Many people complain about the quality of the plastics. I actually think they're pretty good sculpts for the price, though they aren't overly detailed. There is no thatching on the straw hats for example. They work great for grunts. The samurai don't look epic enough though. For those of you who don't know, ashigaru are peasant troops and formed the base of most armies. Samurai (plural and singular, not samurais) were the noble class, they weren't all warriors, some were courtiers, but for the purposes of most miniature games samurai=knights. And yes, historically there were women samurai.

These guys are a pain in the butt to assemble. I kind of knew what I was getting into, having seen the sprue and bought Wargames Factory miniatures before. Warlord Games bought out WgF, but these are their sculpts. They are better than the WgF vikings, more dynamic and less fiddly for the most part. The ashigaru legs go together easily, so I built up these first. The torsos are either 2 piece or single, which also go together easily. I chose straw hats for my spearmen. The spears are of an obscene length, I don't know if they were this long in real life. We'll see how they travel. Choosing arms for the spearmen is a pain in the butt, as you want to have hands that will actually hold the spear and the hands are not numbered at all in the instructions or on the sprue. It took me 3 episodes of "Designated Survivor" to assemble with plastic cement these guys and stick them to their unremarkable but sufficient bases. I only had 6 to do. This morning I did the 4 archers, much quicker because I knew I wanted the squatting legs, which I already had and the bows and arms are identical. They got the naked heads, as I figured they didn't need to make in the way tests for the hats! Trying to get the torsos and heads to line up realistically is a challenge, but mine look okay. Finally, I did the samurai after lunch. They assemble a lot differently from the ashigaru. Their torsos are matched and go together as a set. They can have any random head, the same as the ashigaru. Their arms have the same problems as the ashigaru, but fit nicely on pegs into their chest so you can play around with arm sets easier. Their legs need to be glued on to the torso before they are glued together or the torso doesn't fit properly, as it has a peg. Plastic cemented together, these guys are quite indestructable, except for maybe a head or weapon. I also have the horsemen--cause horses!--but they will stay on the sprue for a while.

Lately I have been buying other games to try out. I like skirmish games with simple rules and this one seemed to fit the bill. Samurai are also something different to paint. I would like to see what rules I like and cross them with different games. ToH has no magic, LoTR does, squish! that kind of thing. Some of the best game designers in the world started out doing this with classic board games, like Risk.

I also love Legend of the Five Rings, and am waiting for the L5R mini crate to release this winter from Privateer Press. If I enjoy the game, I will paint up clans of ashigaru for my L5R samurai to lead, replete with clan mons (crests).

Banzai!

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"Diplomacy is the art of saying 'nice doggie' until you can find a rock." -Will Rogers

Yay. :3 Hope you like it

Well, I started painting up the figures and that's going quite well. They have a very basic guide on the back of the rulebook, which is nice to reference for what goes where, especially for those of us not familiar with samurai armour. I'm not going to go crazy painting these: base colour from the Citadel foundations range, wash and a highlight for pretty much everything. Basic sand bases and some clumps of foam that fell off the Woodland Scenics trees and they're going to be done.

The game is quite straightforward. What I really like is the tokens mechanic, just as it is different from everything I've played before. It can be a bit unfair, however, as not every character gets to activate every turn. Also, once you lose guys, it seems difficult to make a comeback. This game also seems very centered on samurai, which is fitting, but makes you wonder what the rest of the troops are doing on the board. So far, a fun introduction to war gaming with basic, easy to grasp rules, but not a game I would rush out and buy all the expansions for.

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"Diplomacy is the art of saying 'nice doggie' until you can find a rock." -Will Rogers

May I recommend the osprey series of books? Or "the samurai source-book", mostly by stephen turnbull, the English speaking world foremost (living) Japanese historian who isn't Japanese.

You might want to use gloss laqure paint for the wood Armour and weapons, this gives the inane effect of the lauqur to the armour (which was laqured)

don't ristirct yourself to warlord ether, perry minitures (who made the lotr sculpts, and steelfist miniatures have a nice range and theassaultgroup do early (7th-13th century samurai), there's also kensei''s 30mms and eurkeka minitures, women can be got from annie at bad squiddo games.

You are of course welcome to make your own samurai hero, indeed I think that's part of the fun.

Additional https://www.oshiromodelterrain.co.uk/catalogue28.html, and john jenkins designs have some nice samurai terrain, and mdfs are best from TRE models, and you can get a castle keep from http://www.battlefieldaccessories.com.a ... astle-28mm