As a fan of Japanese culture and the samurai it was inevitable that at some point I’d pick up a feudal Japan game and since I like to paint miniatures why not make it a wargame? I decided on Test of Honour.
There are a lot of reasons to like this game:
- It is fairly inexpensive. Only a rulebook, tokens, dice and cards.
- It uses custom D6 that are easy to understand. Swords, X’s, and blank.
- You can use whatever you like as the miniatures and terrain, the system does not care. Though 28mm – 32mm is preferable.
- It is very easy to learn.
- Scalability. Play a small skirmish or a large battle.
- Group multiple units together on multibases.
- A campaign mode in the rulebook that introduces more complex rules as you advance as well as many one-off scenarios.
So how does it work?
Pick a scenario, setup the battlefield, put together your forces, place appropriate tokens in a bag and clang some swords.
The game system uses alternating unit actions. Players share a bag of tokens allowing them to assign actions to a unit they control matching that type (commoner or samurai). This system forces you to get creative:
Maybe you have two samurai locked in combat and you really want to pull a samurai token but instead you get a commoner. Do you use it to fire some arrows or muskets at the opponents samurai instead? Do you charge in with a lesser swordsman and throw a monkey wrench into the frey? Or cause a disruption somewhere else on the board for your opponent to deal with? Often the challenge is making to most out of the situation you’ve been given.
Combat and actions use dice that require tests to pass. Generally a roll result of 3 swords is a success, 5 swords a critical success and 3 or more X’s than successes being a fumble.
Movement is used in inches and varies from standard/charge 6″, cautious move 3″ mounted move 12″ (calvery).
Fact or Fiction? …Cinematic.
Want to play thes the Seven Samurai, a bunch of bandits/ronin, ninjas or monks? How about a hyper accurate build of a specific historial samurai clan? Test of Honour allows you to do whatever you like.
I didn’t even get to making tests of honour, drawing dishonor cards, fate tokens, quests, skill cards and all the other fun things that occur in the course of a game. The intention here is to show that Test of Honour 2.0 is a really nice middle ground system for skirmish and wargame, cinematic and historic.