Test of Honour (Unboxing Article)

Hey Game Fans, we’re back with an article on one of our new favorites, Test of Honour from Warlord Games.  It’s a skirmish game set in feudal Japan, and covers a variety of potential scenarios and army building choices.  Today we’re going to unbox the Test of Honour starter set (we picked our copy up at Recruits 26, this last weekend in Lee’s Summit) in pictures to try out a new format.  We’ve done unboxing videos in the past, but we’re going to try a photo gallery with words.  Let’s dig into Test of Honour and look at what’s in the box.

Overview

 

The Test of Honour Starter Set come with the components to make 35 plastic miniatures ( 20 Ashigaru spearmen, 10 Ashigaru bowmen/musketmen, and 5 Samurai).  It also has 10 specialty dice, 10 special plastic multibases, 21 Red Faction Recruitment Cards, 21 Blue Faction Recruitment Cards, 6 Injury Cards, 10 Dishonour Cards, 23 Skill Cards, a host of Tokens, and 2 Dimensional Terrain pieces.  

Let’s break down each of those things and take a closer look at the components to see just exactly what we’re talking about.  

The Miniatures

Now this box contains 35 miniatures (as described above).  They come unpainted and unassembled, as i would expect in a tabletop miniature war game.  The components for this game come in 5 primary components.   There are 4 sprues of 10 bases, for a total of 40 individual bases for your models.

 

There are also 10 multibases for creating units of Ashigaru troops.  You can mount Spearmen, Archers, or Musketmen on these bases and they have additional benefits beyond the basic individual trooper version.  

Samurai

The Samurai come on their own specific sprue, with the components to build 5 of these heroes.  You can arm them with several choices of weapons, and they have the widest range of options for decorative elements.  

 

Ashigaru Spearmen

There are enough sprues to build 20 Ashigaru spearmen.  Equipped with the Yari (long spear) and light armor, these are the stock infantry models of the game and you can take a lot of them.  Not as heavily decorated as their Samurai lords, the Ashigaru still have a lot of details for the size of the models and the scale they are made for.  There are also parts to build a Musician and Sergeant for the Ashigaru, as well as a Standard Bearer.

 

Ashigaru Archers/Musketmen

The final models you can build out of the components of this box are Ashigaru missile troops.  You can either construct Archers equipped with bows or Musketmen equipped with Arquebuses.  Bows are quicker to fire but lose some hitting power at longer ranges.  Arquebuses don’t lose strength over distance, but they cost an action to reload, meaning your Ashigaru is likely only going to shoot once every two turns.  

 

 

The Cards

There are five types of cards that come with the game.  2 of them are absolutely essential to play the game, while the other 3 represent increased levels of complexity and “fiddlyness.”  There are Wound Cards, Dishonour Cards, Skill Cards, and finally, Red and Blue Recruitment Cards.  

Wound Cards

Wound cards represent serious injuries that befall units in this game.  They are lingering effects that are more serious than regular Blood tokens, and reduce a specific attribute or ability for the rest of the game.

Dishonour Cards

Dishonour cards represent the use of nefarious or underhanded tactics to gain an advantage on the opponent.  Gaining a Dishonour card reduces the Honour attribute that a unit rolls the next time they have to take a Test of Honour.  

Skill Cards

Skill cards represent a combination of extraordinary ability, resources or training above and beyond what normal units possess.  Some of them are once per battle, some are once per turn, and others represent ongoing effects.  

Blue/Red Recruitment Cards

These are absolutely critical to playing the game because they are both the statistic cards that represent units in the game, and are also the army building tools for buying your forces to set up the game.  

 

Tokens and Terrain

There is an assortment of tokens representing activations, caution, reloading and blood drops that are used for a host of things in the game.  We’ll do a full on feature on these in the next couple of weeks, but they are essential for playing the game.  By the same token (pun purely unintentional) the box also comes with a host of double sided terrain features representing some scenic walls and a few buildings to spice up your battlefield.  These are wonderfully thick cardboard pieces that don’t show a lot of wear and tear.

Tokens

Terrain (Both Sides)

 

All the Rest

The boxed set also contains instruction guides for assembling the models from the various sprues (I personally would like a little more step by step directions, but I’ve been trained that way by GW over the years).  A complete set of instructions for assembling all the variants you can field as models is included and I can’t wait to take a swing at putting these together.  

The Box also has the Main Rules, which covers the entirety of how to play the game in 16 pages.  I am very fond of rules sets that are easy to learn and easy to play.  It also contains a Battle Guide that features scenarios and special cases.  Between these two books you can have days and days of fun playing Test of Honour without needing to expand to other units.  

Books

 

Assembly

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusions and thoughts going Forward

For a retail price of $49.99 this is a fantastic entry in the miniature gaming market.  A starter set like this contains everything you need (except for a measuring tool) to play the game.  You can play this as soon as you’ve got your models assembled, (and realistically, you can just mark the bases if you really want to get started early).  It’s a wonderful box and chock full of value.  If you’re looking to expand out, you can also add some additional units in the form of additional boxes, (We’ll dig into those as we pick them up, we’ve added a Samurai Warband to our forces to fill in some extra spaces).  We hope this gives you an idea of the assets you pick up in the starter set.  You can order Test of Honor from Warlord Games Directly here, or you can see if your local hobby gaming store carries it.    

We like this game a lot, and it’s rare for me to find a game that gets my partner’s attention to the point where he wants to play another game immediately after finishing one.  When we were demoing this game at Recruits, that’s exactly what happened.  That’s the best compliment that i think i can give a game.  We hope this gives you a look at the game’s starter set, and we’ll have our First Looks article up tomorrow morning.  Game On, Game Fans.