Ronin skirmish game review

Combat Phase - Each melee is resolved. Players alternate choosing which battles to fight. Action Phase - Models are allowed to shoot again and take other miscellaneous actions like reloading, looting, and resting. End Phase - Models check to see if they recover from being stunned. Movement, morale, and shooting are similar to most games. Alternating one figure at a time instead of one player doing all of their moves and attacks before the other makes for good interaction.

Non-killing wounds are possible on the lowliest peasant, but even the mightiest samurai can be struck down by one lucky strike. Melee is a back and forth strike, parry, counterstrike between the engaged models. Models get between one and seven combat chits based on their skill level and special abilities. These can be used to increase the chance to strike first, make attacks, or parry. Deciding which chits to use is a neat twist.

When the combatants are both very low level it often boils down to each making a single attack like in other games, but skilled fighters can decide between playing it safe or attempting to make multiple attacks. Other Stuff. In addition to the rules and army lists, the book contains a selection of scenarios, basic campaign mechanics, and recommendations for tournament games.

The scenarios are pretty basic, but have good flavor. My favorite pits one force against a band of Ninja assasins whose sole aim is to kill their commander.

The campaign section isn't very robust, but is a decent starting place. I expect to see homebrew ideas springing up online. This is not a set of rules that would be worth picking up for background material or historical information. The book is very bare bones. The latter two are used to fight skirmishes set in the Imjin War Japanese invasion of Korea , while all the rest are good for fighting in Japan.

The default period is the Sengoku Jidai, but there are extensive notes on going earlier or later, including lists for a whole slew of new factions such as Mongols, Yakuza, Shinsengumi and troops for the Boshin War. You build your force using points, although some other restrictions exist which can get a bit complicated. For example you can build a Bushi composed entirely of samurai, but if you include any ashigaru then you have to include twice as many ashigaru as samurai, and there are restrictions within the ashigaru too.

A pt force will usually come in at about 10 miniatures, but if you go for really elite troops could be as small as 5. Troops have a rank Rank 5 is a legendary warrior, and will cut through low-ranked troops in true heroic fashion. Well-trained samurai are normally rank 3, ashigaru and other low-grade troops are usually rank 1.

Some rank 0 troops also exist, these are basically untrained peasant chaff. Generally speaking though the system is actually pretty flexible, within limits. Characters can be upgraded with skills, such as being made an expert with a particular weapon.

This makes them much more deadly, allowing rerolls. Also on the list are skills like deflecting arrows, being a master of tactics and the ability to tolerate more damage. These walk the line nicely between heroic and fantasy, making the game cinematic without being over the top. Overall top marks for the army composition system from me. It ticks all the right Kurosawa movie boxes, while still being solidly historical.

Some reviewers have pointed out that the author notes that some factions are best suited to fighting certain foes. Activation is alternate, within each phase players pick one figure and complete its actions, then the other side does the same. Who starts first is a roll off at the start of the turn, but you can buy a skill for your leader to influence that roll. The game can be played on an area as small as 2x2ft, but a decent sized force is about pts for which the book suggests 3x3ft.

Deployment is usually subject to the scenario rules, but often you dice to see who sets up first. Instead of just rolling a dice to see if you hit the enemy, hand-to-hand combat in Ronin involves a nice simple resource-management game.

Each attack token allows you to make one attack, each defence one can boost your defence roll against enemy attacks making you very hard to wound. Benkei fights Yoshitsune on Gojo Bridge. Legend has it that Benkei had defeated attackers. Should your samurai go on the offense or defence against this particular opponent, or go for a balanced fighting style? It also adds tactical depth.

Need to stop the enemy coming over a bridge? He should be a rock that multiple opponents will struggle to hurt. Damage is inflicted by opposed rolls, and you can spend additional counters to influence a roll certain skills also do this. Armour is very effective. Hmm, so there are some good points mentioned here.

Very nice review Mostly it seems like it is expected that reader of En Garde do not compare with Ronin, or do not know Ronin, but thats not likely In my point of view 1 In Ronin you can shoot twice in a round, in En Garde you can't. In Ronin its explicitly written in the rules, in En Garde it is not. You are combining pools of all models in combat, however you can not make more attack with each model than you CP value statistics is.

Also there is description who is fighting in this: "In this case, the models should be separated into a logical number of separate combats, depending on the sequence in which they joined the combat and which models are in base-to-base contact with which. Common sense needs to be applied in these situations, and the golden rule is that only ONE side will ever have multiple combatants in any given combat. It means that you determine the prioritized player by rolling D6.