Review: Bushido, The Descension Faction Starter Set

Tl;dr: this is one of the smartest and most complete starter sets I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, GCT did not pay me for this opinion.

I’ve not done a product review before but I was really impressed with this set when I opened it and starting cleaning the components and really felt like I should put one together as I feel like this is exactly how a starter set should be done.

 

The newly released (though it has been out for a short while now) starter for ‘The Descension’ (formerly ‘Tengu Descension’) for the latest edition of Bushido, the compact game of warband/squad level combat in a fantasy far east, gives us a strong theme from the off. The previous starter offered us a mix of human devotees and a mix of bird types including one of the larger ones mounted on a 40mm base. Here we have one focussing on the smaller, fast birds, clearly intended to showcase The Descension’s signature speed and manoeuvrability. This is made clear especially as every model’s rule card features the ability to boost speed and has a theme card that accentuates this, more on those later.

Look closely and you can see the names!

The sculpts really impressed me for more reasons than simply the quality and sharpness of the sculpts and casting. These are intelligently put together sculpts. For a start they are largely one piece sculpts, one is split at the waist, one requires its weapon and hand be attached to its wrist, and then there are the wings, but that is it. The waist join is big and has the belt moulded so that it can only sit the way it is meant to, the weapon is anchored across a groove in the back, and the wings are not only moulded as a single piece (I expect GCT got sick of the many emails I and others had to send asking for wings after we received two left or two right wings where they are separate on older models. In their favour, replacements were always despatched with alacrity) that can only fit the model they are intended for but also have the names of the characters they belong to cast onto the tab that glues onto the back.

Additionally, GCT casts have uncommonly thin parts, usually on the staff or blade of a weapon. This is excellent aesthetically, Bushido models have some of the best proportions I have seen on metal casts, however they are inevitably brittle. Rather than thicken the parts here they have opted to cleverly reinforce them. The bird standing on one leg, for example, has the staff anchored to the base tab (I like to make my life difficult so have trimmed that off as part of my basing plan) so as to avoid a free floating staff end that may be easily knocked. The separate weapon piece on the flightless bird is as mentioned above intended to be glued across the back giving it more strength, and the right hand dagger of the model that joins at the waist is moulded on to the end of a dramatically sweeping cloak so that it is impossible to break.

The Unbreakable Blade

Every point of potential weakness I have been able to find has been mitigated to at least some degree by the sculptor. I really appreciate the care here. You would have to try very hard to make an error in putting these models together and while breakages will always be possible, care has been taken to reinforce them against the usual level of knocks you can expect a model to take. There was a little flash to clear up but a few swipes with a scalpel and a brush with a file fixed this. These sorts of models for games from smaller companies can sometimes demand more than a beginner’s level of modeling ability but I can’t see anyone having trouble with these if they take a little care.

More than the sculpts is the rules that come with the models. Not only do you get the stat cards for the characters (every model in Bushido comes with a stat/record card tat details their abilities and allows you to track their health) but you get items, events, and a theme card too (items and events are largely self-explanatory I think but for clarity a theme card is a card that gives certain bonuses in return for building your list a certain way. In this case the requirement is that all models have the option for a speed boost on their stat card, as all the models in this box do). These are game elements that were previously only available as a separate purchase so that even with a starter you could not access the game at its entirety. Now even that has been remedied as you have cards for all aspects of the game right out of the starter box. The only thing you need that the box doesn’t supply is the rules, (not physical anyway, it has the address for the full free rules pdf: https://gctstudios.com/rules) something to play on, and an opponent. You don’t even need more models for a ‘proper’ sized game. As stated, Bushido is very compact and at least in the case of The Descension (which are rather elite) the starter has enough for a ‘full’ game, though Bushido also plays well with slightly bigger or slightly smaller warbands, it has quite good scalability.

So yes, this is a great starter set that a lot of companies, bigger ones included, could learn a lot from. Virtually everything about this has been incredibly well thought out all the way down to the sculpts and casts. I’m very impressed.