Bushidan: My impressions from reading through, and has anyone played them?

[EnclavedMicrostate]

At Salute last weekend, I picked up Helion's new set, Bushidan by Pauli Kidd, and I did what I normally do with a new set of rules which is try to write it out again to see if it all makes sense. With Bushidan I was initially expecting a sort of Lion Rampant-sized game (i.e. 60-ish models a side) – still way ahead of my current collection but something I could build towards. From what I'm now working out, that might be a little optimistic, but I'll withhold judgement until I've worked out what a relatively 'standard' late-period 250-point force might look like. The book's first scenario calls for a whopping 52 bases per side (208 figures!!! per side!!!) but those are 300-ish point forces made up of lighter troops, so I suspect an ordinary setup will be in a more reasonable range, but still on the decidedly bigger side.

It looks to all be reasonably straightforward in terms of the standard 'four Ms' – movement, musketry, melée, morale – but the 'elemental' activation system is pretty intriguing. Basically, your army (or if you prefer, your eponymous Bushidan) has a 'Ryu' comprising, in a standard 250-point game, 12 points spread across six 'elements' (Fire, Wood, Earth, Wind, Water, and Metal), with a maximum of 5 points in any given category. Each turn, you get one order chit for each of these points, which can be used either to issue a normal standard fire or move activation, or a special variant, e.g. Wind lets you fire with more effect at the cost of making your unit Disordered, or lets you get extra movement allowance. The exception is Metal, which increases your force morale and your ability to rally at the end of a turn, but cannot be used as order chits. As activation systems go this seems pretty creative and I'm intrigued to see how well it all balances out. The one thing that gives me slight pause is that the five 'active' elements have a bit of a counter system going, where there is a melée bonus applied if if two units make contact and one has the advantage (e.g. a unit with an active Fire chit attacking one with a Wood chit will get advantage; if it attacks a unit that turns out to have a Water chit then the defender gets the bonus). The issue I have is that the advantage is 2D6 per base, when the base roll is already 2D6 per base, which seems like a *lot* of weight to place on what is already a decently powerful 'gimmick' mechanic. I don't dislike it conceptually, but depending on how my first games go, I might be tempted to halve it to 1D6 instead.

The bigger issue I've run into is that there are some ambiguities in the rules, particularly around that activation system, where I think I've worked out what is supposed to happen, but I'm sure my inference may well be wrong: basically, you can assign any number of chits to a unit, but they will only use one of them to activate, and that will count as its 'active' chit for the element advantage in melée. I assume that if a unit that has not yet activated is attacked, and has multiple different chits on it, that it can decide which one it uses for its element, which is possibly a bit gamey, but this would also apply to an attacker going after an already-activated unit, if assumption 1 is true.

I did also note a couple of other oddities, and I'm sure an eagle-eyed reader will spot more:

• In one instance units were described as potentially being 'disrupted' which I presume just means 'disordered'.
• Command chits can apparently be used for rallying, but this is placed in the section on chits that are placed with units, rather than chits held in reserve, and the only place where using chits for rallying is specified is in the section on reserved chits. I assume there may have been some older version where Command chits could be used for rallying during the activation phase rather than the morale phase, which never got excised in the final print?
• Apparently you cannot have interpenetration through units in a 'defensive circle', but this term seems to appear nowhere else.

Oh and also there's a bit where apparently troops moving through woods are limited to 3 distance units (6") unless they are infantry who are Skirmishing, except 3 D.U. is a standard infantry move already and Skirmishing infantry have no move bonus, so that qualifier seems to make zero sense...

These kinds of issues I have previously found to be an issue with the other Helion set I've played a bit of (Three Ages of Rome by Philip Garton), where some things have just not been explained clearly, and I do wonder if they could benefit from having a couple of people on the editorial team doing exactly what I've just done – writing the rules out again to check for any contradictions, unspecified items, and inconsistent terms.

Anyway, that's been me rambling about some rules I've only read but not tried yet, and on balance I think that the game itself likely has some potential despite the effort it may take to unearth said game from the rules; the important question is, has anyone actually had a go, and how have you found it?