Skirmishes between Samurai and other Japanese-inspired characters in the empire of Pajan.
This medieval fantasy Japan combat game by Asmodee is played out on square tiles with lovely artwork on them, and the system is quite original. You roll a number of ‘inspiration dice’ each turn which have symbols on them that correspond to your different characteristics. By assigning these dice to your combatants, you can receive bonuses to your movement, attack, defense or willpower rolls; or can activate particular skills that make your characters unique. You can also place dice results in reserve on your characters, so they can activate powers or improve their defense abilities during your opponent’s turn.
I highly recommend the figures; they are top-notch quality and very detailed, though probably more suitable for experienced modellers and painters. Cardboard stand-ups are supplied in the box if you don’t want to buy the figures.
This summary includes the magic expansion rules from Era of the Karasu.
Great Rules Summary as usual. I like the way the both attacker or defender can be affected by the fighting. Some of the expansions included cards to add extra skills.
Pity the game was ruined by half-hearted English production & support. The French site had way more downloadable content than the English site; extra scenarios, campaigns and maps.
Oddly the round base that came with the one metal Oni figure I bought was too large to fit the game board squares properly. I would have expected a square one matching the grid size to be included.
A fantastic game that could do with a KickStarter to relaunch a plastic English miniatures version.
Plenty of scope for stretch goals with those smaller expansions.
Yes, I agree with you. While I haven’t played the game as much as I’d like, I bought and painted quite a few of the metal figures. They were an utter pain to assemble, and some of them were completely impractical for gaming (the bits sticking out of the sumo demons loincloth—which I’ve just found out are called sagari by the way—were particularly impossible to attach and I ended up chucking them). But once assembled and painted, they look spectacular. If they’d gone al in from the start with plastic figures, as you say, I think the game would have been much more successful. A new version with plastic figures would be great.
I do prefer round bases as a rule though, all my figures are on round bases these days.
While nicely detailed the Oni Bushi was surprisingly hard to assemble and even required a bit of green stuff rock formation to fit on the base properly. I wondered how the Oni Sumo and Oni Warau would fit on the board grids considering their larger size. Sagari … thanks for the new word.
Plastic figures would really make the game pop compared to the nicely printed cardboard cut-out.
Some of Malifaux’s new oriental figures show what can be achieved in plastic these day.
Yes, round bases are great they and also save a heap of time deciding what orientation to place the figure – diagonal verses straight on.
Pick it up now in the bargain bin for under $20.00 before it is gone forever. Can still get some metal figures too for under $10.00 a piece. While not earthshaking it is a fun fast game to fill the gap if you are a tabletop army player. Grab the graphic novel if you can find it too it is worth a look. The miniatures cross over well to other games and other models can proxy if you want that 3d model feel. Glad to see it is even mentioned here , pretty obscure game.
Agreed!
Have you seen this guy’s blog? The scenery he made for the game is insane! (in a good way)
http://unofficial-okkothegame.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html
I have seen those, yes. Beautiful stuff.