Sharp Katanas

Finding the Kurosawa movie Ran on Prime last week prompted me to revisit my abandoned Samurai while I wait to buy more Quar.

This got me thinking about rules, and what I want from a Samurai themed game. Ronin is a fine game, with lots of tactical nuance in the hand to hand, but perhaps too gritty for forces larger than 6 to 8 figures.

Lion Rampant is maybe too big, without enough focus on heroic actions by mighty warriors.

I want a sweet spot in the middle somewhere. I also want variable sizes of groups of foot soldiers. Fixed unit sizes as in the Rampant games won't work for my collection.

I also want something reasonably simple, and solo friendly. I like card driven activation for solo play. So maybe try some tweaks on the hand to hand in Sharp Practice?

I'm also lazy and cheap. So buying the Too Fat Lardies rules Dux Britannarium, just so I can play the Samurai adaptation Seven Spears, is a non-starter.

Test of Honour with it's bespoke dice and tokens is also out for reasons of cheapness. As Cyndi Lauper said "Girls just wanna have fun. " I'm not looking to sell these, they just need to be solo playable, have heroic actions, bunches of troops so it feels more like a battle, and not be so complicated that it leaves Mikey and his monks befuddled. 

Shouldn't be too hard, right?