A "Test of Honour" Tester
/Always nice to get an invitation to a game, so it was with great pleasure that I joined fellow Lardy Derek Hodge and friends at the South East Scotland Wargames Club last night for a game of Test of Honour.
For those of you not familiar with the game, ToH is a game of samurai skirmish warfare. Each side gets one major league samurai and a number of followers, one figure = one man, and fights it out for a set objective using a simple dice based combat system.
The forces at my command last night
The game comes with a variety of different scenario suggestions included: here we were tasked with taking a number of objectives within an enemy village.
The game began with both sides exchanging some long range missile fire, with my ashigaru bowmen getting a slight advantage over Derek’s musketeers.
The enemy musketeer-wielding ashigaru
Meanwhile, my lead samurai and some ashigaru pikemen were sneaking around the bottom of the village, aiming to take the objective indicated by the counter in the nearest building in the picture above.
I say sneaking, but my lead samurai just ran at the village at top speed, hidden from enemy missilemen by the various buildings. Very quickly, he had clambered into the hut and taken the objective: one down, two to go.
Time was against us (we only had five turns of play to get the matter done) so I decided not to waste any more time and, as the three enemy musketeers were currently unloaded, to charge out of the hut and show them how a real man fights!
Despite being slightly impeded by the terrain, I smashed into the three ashigaru and, with a couple of stabs of my yari or long spear, killed one musketeer and sent the other two reeling backwards in a panic.
At this point the enemy no.2 samurai charged forward and took a mighty swing at me with his sword, but missed as I had gained a characteristic card allowing me a nifty dodge. I stabbed back, and managed a critical hit impale, technically killing him and knocking him to the ground.
I say technically as samurai characters have a dog’s chance like extra life…meaning my enemy was still drawing breath.
Not for long, however, as the initiative came my way again, and I polished him off with another critical hit. The dice were definitely on my side today!
With half their missilemen and one leader down, and two objectives out of three already in my hands, the opposition gave up: withdrawing to cede me total control of the village.
A glorious victory achieved almost solely with one major league samurai character. Excellent stuff and just like the movies!
They sent an army against him. He threw it back in pieces!
A great fun game with a great fun system that I shall definitely play again when I can. My thanks to Derek and friends for a great fun evening. Now back to the Fringe…
