Test of Honour (First Looks)

Test of Honour is a fast paced skirmish game from Warlord Games.   Set in Medieval Japan, it features clashes and confrontations between warring clans of Samurai and their peasant retainers.  Honour is a driving force in this era, and the game is fast paced, dynamic, and filled with excitement and the dice themselves can swing a glorious last stand into a rout of the enemy forces, or turn a sure victory into an ignominious defeat. Let’s take a closer look at Test of Honour and see what convinced me to buy a starter set this weekend at Recruits

 

Test of Honour is a wonderfully fast paced game.  The Wook and i played a demo game of it at Recruits and we learned the rules and played the game in less than a half an hour.  Even more impressively to me, I wanted to play another game, just like the Wook did.  It’s a dynamic game of alternating activations, simple actions with major consequences, and skirmish level fun.  It’s a game that realistically caps out at around 20 models on a side and you can have a lot of fun playing games with as few as 5 or 6.  Played on a 3 foot by 3 foot board, it sets up quick, plays fast, and is appealing enough to me on a personal level that i could play several rounds at a time without the fatigue that usually runs with wargaming.  

The Basics

The Basic level of the game works as follows.  

Every unit in the game has a stat card with a number of symbols printed on and a numeric value for each symbol.  Each one of those symbols represents a relevant stat that the unit will use throughout the course of the game to do a variety of things.  Whether it’s hitting people with melee or ranged weapons, avoiding attacks, cutting units down, or holding their morale when an ally is killed, the units all use the printed number of dice for that test.  

The game does use special dice, which feature three important symbols.  A single blade is a partial success.  A double blade is also a partial success.  An X symbol causes some problems, and there are blank faces on the die as well.  These interact in the following ways.  

When a model (or unit) takes a test, they roll the indicated number of dice for that test and are hoping to show at least three blade symbols.  (single blades and double blades are important for this).  If the dice show 3 blade symbols, their check has succeeded.  If the dice show 5 blade symbols, then it’s a critical success.  If the dice show more X symbols than blade symbols, then it’s a critical failure.  

Anything that modifies the dice will either increase or decrease the number of dice rolled.  For Example, if a model is hit by an attack but isn’t cut down, the model gets a blood drop token which means the next attack that hits it rolls an additional die for damage, making it more likely that the model will end up getting injured as the battle progresses.  Alternatively, if you’re character is hit by an archery attack from more than 12 inches away, the damage roll is reduced by 1 die to reflect the reduced strength of a shot that’s travelled further away.  The game’s simplicity comes down to either adding or subtracting dice to the action you’re performing and rolling to see what happens.  

Actions

There are 7 actions you can take during the game, and they are fairly straightforward.  Units (when they are activated, which we’ll get to in a second) can do one of the following:

• Move 6”
• Move 3” and make a ranged attack
• Charge up to 6” and make a melee attack
• Avoid an attack
• Cautious Move up to 3”
• Get to your Feet and Move up to 3”
• Reload (if you’re armed with a musket)

And that’s 99% of the game in 7 simple actions.  There are some interesting interactions that we’ll go over in the next one of these articles, but the game itself is fast paced, dynamic, and the play passes back and forth with potentially alternating activations.  

Activations

Setting up the turn sequence for this game is a lot of fun and easy to do.  Figure out how many units of each type are on both player’s sides.  Figure out how many activations their units have, (Most peasant units have 1, while most samurai units have 2 or 3).  Add that many tokens of the appropriate type to the bag or cup you’re using and add 3 fate tokens.  Starting with the first player, each player pulls one of the tokens out of the bag and activates the unit the token matches.  So if the Wook and I are playing and he pulls out a Peasant token, he activates one of his archers or his spearmen unit.  

After that unit is activated, the other player pulls out a token and repeats the process.  If a player pulls out a token for a unit he or she can’t activate, they pass the token to the other player who then gets to activate one of their units of the right type.  If the player pulls a Fate token out of the bag, then they pass the bag to their opponent who then gets to take a turn.  When the third Fate token is pulled, the turn immediately ends and all spent tokens are put back in the back and the next turn starts again.  

If a unit is cut down, a number of tokens of their type (peasant for peasants, Samurai for Samurai) are removed equal to their total number of activations.  This means that a player doesn’t have dead activations where they pull a token but can’t play it because they’ve suffered casualties.  

Play continues until the scenario’s win conditions are met, and that in a nutshell is the basic game of Test of Honour.  It’s fast, it’s fun, and it’s extremely easy to pick up.  The starter set comes with 42 models (which is a lot more than most people will need for a while) at the stupidly reasonable price of $49.99.  I can’t think of another two player starter for a miniature wargame near that price.  The models come unassembled and unpainted, so you’re going to have to pick up a little bit of gear, but it’s still a very reasonable starter set for a game that comes in a box.  We’ll be looking at this one a lot, because it’s such a departure from most of the other war games we play.  It’s easy to pick up, but it has a lot of room for customization and options, and we’ll talk about those as we dig further into the game.  

 

Where to Find

You might find this at your local hobby shop (we found one in our area that had some of the kits available) but you can certainly find it on the internet at Warlord Games Website Here.  There are several expansions for it that add new unit types, additional dice, new cards and a host of other elements that we promise we’ll dig into for you in the future.  That’s our first look at Test of Honour, and we hope you’re going to have at least half as much fun as we did with it.  Game On, Game Fans.