Objectives

hi all

The game of Bushido, like most wargames, is best played with specific scenarios in mind, that said you can always make these scenarios up yourself for that individual special game you've always wanted to play. Fancy a midnight raid on your enemies castle - no problem you can do that, assassinate the faction leader - yep got that covered, escort the prisoners to the nearest gaol - job done.

What do all the scenarios need though to make them fun? Objectives!

In the scenarios (download them from the website, they are free! Just like the rules - yippee!) for Bushido, all of them have specific objectives that award scenario points (SP) and ultimately victory points (VP), score 3 VPs and you win the game. There are a few different objectives and I think I've got them all covered now, but let's start with the ones I've already blogged about.

Firstly you need 6 x small objectives, now the rules don't state how small they've got to be, so I just assumed they would be in a normal 25mm round base and so I bought my 6 little pre-painted Buddha statues which cost me £5 from Amazon, I was planning on painting them but when I saw them in the flesh as it were I was happy enough just to mount them on a base.

Next we have 2 x large objectives, again the rules don't state how big these are, whether they block line of sight or what, so I used 40mm bases and just made it up! The first objective was my roadside Shinto Temple, made out of coffee stirrers and a scrap of foamboard, this objective cost me £0, yep nothing at all, I had everything already. The other objective was my koi pond,  you can find the how I built this here and here Again the build was using materials I already had so £0 was spent!

the resin has now dried perfectly clear and looks amazing imho

After that I needed to make some "zones", these are areas that factions need to control in order to score SPs, quite simply the player controls a zone if he outnumbers his opponent in the zone AND has a combined higher rice (points) total than his opponent. The first set of zones you need are 3 x 4" diameter zones. No problem, firstly I locate my favourite terrain making material - funky foam sheets from the Range, I have loads of it.  Then using a template, mark a 4" circle into it and glue them onto a cardboard base, I then scored a few different tile patterns onto them and painted them up to resemble the tiles from my temple board and this is what they turned out like.

Now onto the bigger  and a bit more complex 8" diameters, now i could have copped out and copied the above just in a larger way, but i'm a glutton for punishment and did something different.  the first one started out like the above smaller zones but in the middle I decided to do a centre piece and scribed a design into it.  This is what I come up with.

not too bad in the design phase so I went ahead and painted it and it came out like...

The next and last of the bigger zones needed to be a little bit more special i thought, so I went back to the drawing board and looked at what materials I had lying about.  So I started with a cardboard base as per the above but this time I used a polystyrene ceiling tile from my Temple board and cut it to fit, a semi circle of tile was then used to raise up a platformed area.

i then used the awesome coffee stirrers to define a pathway leading to the platform. After that it was about time I broke out the "funky foam" sheeting and created some tiling for the platform also a tiled edging for the whole piece.

I then coated the polystyrene in PVA glue and gave it a spray of black undercoat, obviously I missed loads of spots as it melted the tile in places, but that didn't matter really as these areas would be covered over soon.

for the top of the platform, i wanted to do a "Torii Gate" which feature heavily in Japanese architecture due to it's symbolism in Shinto. So I found a couple of dowels and used some hexagonal bases I had ordered from Minibits to make columns ages ago. Using coffee stirrers and a bit of foamboard for the crossbeams.  this is a very simple Torii gate and doesn't feature some of the additional supports and uprights but I didn't want to over-clutter the platform as this is meant to be fought across by factions wishing to dominate the area. And finally yes for the astute of you the bottom crosspiece is a little slanted but I find it endearing (plus I couldn't for the life of me get it straight!! grrr!).

and here we have the finished piece, with the addition of some grass matting i have left over from a previous table and some plants I have left over from my Buddha Shrine, I think it comes out really nicely.  Total cost £0

hope you have found this interesting, for all of the above terrain/objectives the total new cost to me (ie what I didn't already have left over from other projects) = £5! bargain......

hope you enjoy
dGG