"Osprey's Daisho vs. Ronin- best ruleset?" Topic

Hi all.

I notice they're both labelled as skirmish rules. Daisho got high praise in Wargames Soldiers and Strategy last month, but it looks like Ronin is pretty much the same genre and the same company…so what am I missing here?

Thanks in advance.

Ronin is published by Osprey, Daisho by The Ministry of Gentlemanly Warfare, if I'm not incorrect.

I don't have Daisho, but giving the website a glance, it seems to have more of a fantasy tint with magic rules, monsters and such.

Don't know Daisho, but I was disappointed wiht Ronin. I was expecting something along the lines of Lion Rampant, which might be useful to you if you're looking for skirmish rules – there are a couple of player variants covering various periods of medieval Japan that are very good.

Daisho is written and published by Craig Cartmell and Charles Mullen, the authors of In Her Majesty's Name, and published under their own Ministery for Gentlemanly Warfare.

Daisho shares some of the core mechanics of IHMN so anyone familiar with those rules will find Daisho easy to pick up. They are however adapted to their Japanese setting and give a lot of flavour of the Samurai era.

The rules can be used for straight historic fights or with the use of Ki powers can reflect more of the Samurai movie style of game. You can also take your games a stage further to explore the myths and legends of Japan with rules for the inclusion of magic and mythological creatures like oni and Bakemono. You can decide how much or how little of this material you want to use.

Both Ronin and Daisho are excellent games, but I prefer Daisho and find it is very well suited to playing multi-player games. Our recent Club Christms game involved 9 players.

You can find more information at the Daisho blog at daishogame.wordpress.com or on the Daisho Facebook page.

Thanks for answering that Archdukek.

In our opinion, Craig Woodfield's Ronin is an excellent game limited only by its primary focus on the historical period.

Charles and I chose to write Daisho as the first game for our own independent imprint as we wanted to write something we would enjoy playing ourselves.

We are now working on Blood Eagle, a skirmish game using the same core rules but this time set in the 9th-10 centuries, the infamous Viking Age. Again we're doing this because we love the period.

Thanks. Sorry for not realizing it was two separate companies… Don't know how I missed that! Sounds like Daisho is what I'm looking for.

Hi AP,

There is a very active facebook group set up by Daisho players if you are interested?

link

I prefer Ronin, I prefer it's feel of the period. To each their own.