First blood with Ronin!

Patrick, the Padre and Wierdy-Beardy came over last night so we could try Ronin finally.

Gamer megalomania struck and I've already broken the rules by having forces that are just too big. I seem to do that. :-\

But the Warrior Monks squared off against my troops for control of WB's resin aquarium bell tower that he picked up at the Cold Wars flea market. WB helped me run my bushi while Patrick and the Padre ran the monks.

Overview. Monastic archers behind fence were a complete pain

First blood! Teppogaru snipes a monk

Monks clear the flank

This isn't going to end well 

Monks are freaking nasty!

The Padre and I make the grass slick with blood, mostly mine. Red chits indicate wounds; 1 = light, 2 = grievous, 3 + critical/dead

Patrick and WB close slowly on each other

Here I was worried about outnumbering Mikey's monks but the massive qualitative advantage means I need even more troops to take them on. All his sohei are equal to my samurai and he can field all sohei if he wants to (most of his collection are sohei, very few initiates or level 1 temple attendants). His initiates are slightly better than my ashigaru even! Yikes!

Ronin is a very gritty set of rules. There is a lot of dice rolling. The combat pool and using tokens to enhance attack and defense rolls are interesting. Trying to attack with mounted samurai is confusing and I'm still trying to sort it out. I know samurai weren't shock cavalry like western knights but still I don't think my lvl 4 samurai had a chance against the single monk he tried to ride down. Plus the way the rules are written it seems to say you can't run into combat (i.e. charge).

I like the detail for the heroes but for the masses of spear carriers there seems too much detail. These rules are definitely for a handful of figures fighting in a tea house or something. For bigger games I will need to look at something like Sharp Practice or Lion Rampant.