/tg/ - Traditional Games

Samurai are fun. There are a bunch of different ways to interpret a set of rules. Do they apply to everyone or just you? How do you feel about those that don't follow the rules? Why do you follow the rules? Must they be followed all the time? etc.

>>26455721
Ever hear of the Seven Samurai?

>>26455721
Welcome to the reason why Shogun 2 was the worst Total War game

Just because you follow the same code does not mean you are cookie-cutter copies. You each have your own personality, flaws, goals, ect.

>>26455777
Meanwhile Shogun 1 was a fucking awesome game.

>>26455721
Watch some Kurosawa films and come back

>>26455764

This

>"Yeah I guess we can all strive towards the same goals set out by Bushido."

You can have different personalities despite following the same general code.

>"Cool, what weapon do you use? No way I use a katana too."

Have a character that's a skilled archer and another that's a spearman. The katana wasn't the only weapon a samurai ever used.

Watch 7 Samurai

You should get your hands on Legend of the Five Rings. All the PCs are samurai but they belong to different clans that have different views in life, war, duty and everything else. Of course, you can also play as "wizards" (called Shugenja), courtiers and monks but you got my point.

OP, stop being a faggot and go watch Yojimbo and Seven Samurai. Revel in your wrongness, let it pass through you, until only Akira Kurosawa remains.

Playing a medieval/feudal Japanese setting was a blast for me for one reason alone

Our party consisted of a Ninja, a Temple Priestess, a Monk and of course, a Samurai

The diversity between those 4 characters still fit perfectly into the setting and, though cliche, worked out quite well.

I can't see 4 players playing samurai though. Samurai in most RPG's are set out as having a distinct set of rules to follow and a specific mantra to live by.

I guess in your situation it boils down to how well your players can roleplay multiple samurai, though I would recommend more classes/character types

If it's REALISTIC 1800s Japan and not romanticized, what you potentially have here is Game of Thrones with katanas, bro. Bushido doesn't even really exist except as a book some doddering old man wrote a couple hundred years ago. What matters is the sanctity of your clan, and perhaps also service to the Shogunate, or the Emperor. Those two things are gonna be coming in conflict soon, after all.

>>26455777
>not Napoleon

>>26455821
The downside to this is that L5R completely and utterly fails to be a good example of anything to do with historical samurai.

>>26455721

Yes it can work. The bushido is not only a rigid set of rules, but also a way of life, different for each practitioner.

Consider for insatance a Samurai and a Ronin. Both live by the same rules, but while the former still has a master to serve, the latter must find a way to give his life purpose.

Or the conundrum of the samurai who serves a just and good master, or one who serves an evil and depraved master. How can one serve a man who does not requires you, or a man one hates?

>>26455778
This guy here.
Even if they try to be perfect, it doesn't mean they all are, each can have his set of flaws, his interpretation of certain parts of the code.
Just because you are supposed to follow rules doesn't mean you always do.
From the inexperienced but willing to do good to the skilled, smug and decadent, you can have a wide array of personnalities.

>>26455721
This is the reason Deathwatch didn't work for our group.

>>26455777
>Welcome to the reason why Shogun 2 was the worst Total War game

Wat.

>>26455877
Even I'll admit Shogun 2's vanilla game got pretty damn samey, even though I enjoyed it immensely overall. It is not a bad game, you just have to steel yourself for hearing YARI ASHIGARU DE GOZAIMASU eight billion times over however many playthroughs you make of it.

What kind of braindead morons you and your buddies are?

Even if me and all my friends were practical clones of eachother, it'd still be an awesome game I'm sure.

You don't always need obvious variation, in fact quite the opposite: putting you in such situation will boost up your skills of roleplaying. Thankfully, contrary to your beliefs there are more than nine types of people in the world.

OP here, cheers for the input guys, GM has just said that only two other people will be able to make it, and even at that one of them is a bit iffy. That means a party of two or three samurai max.
I'm thinking of going for the good cop bad cop routine for every situation.

>>26455877
What part of that sentence didn't make sense?

It's a disgrace compared to S1, Rome and the Medieval games.

Not mentioning Empire and Napoleon because while they can be amazing, I can't deal with line infantry battles

>>26455842
Service to one of the two only comes if they can earn it. Most clans would only obey one or the other because their loyalty was bought or coerced.

>>26455933
It's not even, though.

>>26455948
Yeah it kinda is

>>26455853
It's high-fantasy asia, the same way high-fantasy europe RPGs miss the point of historical europe.

But anyway, the example works regardless, the characters share the same occupation but they can be wildly different even inside their own clan.

Also, make sure you don't use D&D for this. Use GURPS, Riddle of Steel/Song of Swords, or something that makes melee fighting actually interesting.

>>26455964
How so?
Anyone can just say that something is horrible, but without some kind of justification for your opinion, it' nothing but hot air.

>>26455926
Samurai also had a fair bit of weapon diversity. In your party of three you could have a steady and perceptive archer, a big and touch wall with a huge weapon like a nagamaki or tetsubo, and a quick little guy who dual-wields.

>>26456019
The main complaint is just that almost every faction in vanilla is largely just a palette swap. Which is, mostly, true. It didn't make the game any less fun for me than Medieval 2.

>>26456019
Basically, all you have are

>Guys with sticks
>Guys with bows
>Guys with swords
>Armored versions of the above
>Cavalry versions of the above
>Armored cavalry versions of the above
>Guys with guns

And that's about it

>b-but medieval also has that

Yeah I'm sure the moors and the spanish have the exact same unit selection

Also, S2 takes rock paper scissors to a disgusting new level to cater to the multiplayer crowd

>>26456021
Yeah, the vast majority of Samurai used other weapons as their primary. Katanas are for when you're not prepared for battle, having a duel, or your main weapon is broken/useless.
Naginata (similar function to a halberd), yari (Spear), yumi (Longbow), tetsubo (Bigass club), and a variety of other polearm were the main weapons of samurai and ashigaru.

>>26455985
>the same way some high-fantasy europe RPGs
I corrected myself, to avoid shitstorm.

>>26456081

>>26456072
Actually the rock-paper-scissors element has been in every Total War game to more or less the same level.

The DLC helps the variety issues a bit, and Fall of the Samurai REALLY helps.

>>26456081
>or your main weapon is broken/useless
Well to be fair I imagine it isn't uncommon for a spear or glaive to break in a melee after getting smacked with something.

Kurosawa movies. Watch a million fucking Kurosawa movies.

>>26455853
It also very strongly enforces "katanas only, unless you're an archer and sometimes if shugenja but really he should be using that fire katana spell" as well.

The Katana has better bonuses than other weapons, the daisho is allowed far more easily and in far more places than other weapon types, and the sword and heavy weapon categories give by far the best skill mastery bonuses. The system doesn't actually have any reach mechanics, at most a "uh, a large weapon is six feet long" that can be used anyways.

At least the kakita duelist isn't the greatest thing on fucking earth in this edition...

>>26456117
They also came in mace-sized versions.

That said, MOST other weapons, during the 1800s, were uncommon. Since there weren't many wars on, you didn't see as many spearmen around, for example. Archery was still pretty big, though. Staves were popular too; get a guy who uses something like a jo (short staff).

>>26456149
> rock-paper-scissors element has been in every Total War game

Well, obviously, spearmen beat cavalry unless it's M2, in that case cavalry walks all over everything and stuff like that, but Shogun 2 grabs the concept and cranks it to 12.

>>26456017
I can second GURPS + Martial Arts as being a pretty interesting source for melee combat, even if you elect to end up using a different game.

Read about this guy, and read his books if you have the patience. They are really fucking good and you will learn everything there is to know about samurais. He even talks about how to use your blade, and a bit about dual wielding.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyamoto_Musashi

The Book of Five Rings is great. Coupled with Hagakure, it is the definite source on the samurai way of life. There is one more book which is really good too, but i forgot the name. The samurai way of life is really diverse, as is their art of war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dokk%C5%8Dd%C5%8D

>>26456174
Same with a katana, really, but a spear's pretty inexpensive compared to that.

Just as good though, just as good.

>>26456211
Not really. It's the same as pretty much every other TW game.

Hell, Shogun 1 STARTED it, it has almost the exact same unit types as Shogun 2. Though IIRC it didn't have Katana Samurai.

>>26456229
Any weapon can break, it's true. That said, I really hope this isn't another seed of the "you can't parry with a katana" myth.

>>26456214
Lemme tell you something about the Hagakure: Nobody gave a shit about it until the 1890s. The Hagakure is just an old man whining about the "good old days" he was never actually a part of, and bitching about how he THOUGHT things should be in samurai society.

>OP thinks characters are defined by their class and equipment.

>>26455842
This is an AWESOME point. Take a setting like Game of Thrones: you might as well say "they're all knights, how boring". But they're not. They're just people in armour with a sword and a code of "honour". How they use that sword and interpret that code depends on who they are, and thus you get some fascinating stories.

>>26456272

I know, which is why it is good when coupled with the works of Musashi.

Book of 5 rings is just Musashi whining about how he could never hold down a job.

Fact.

>>26456332
Just as long as you don't expect samurai to actually regularly ACT like how Tsunetomo lays out in the Hagakure, outside of a highly romanticized setting.

>>26456377
At least he gives some good swording advice with it. He even goes into a spiel about how a common newbie mistake with a katana is to cut their opponent too shallow, for no serious wounding effect.

>>26456257
Nah, you can parry with anything, katana or not.

How long it lasts on the job is always gonna be in question, and the katana certainly wasn't built to survive it in the long term, but it can keep you alive long enough to deal with the other guy.

>>26455721
>>26455871

Even characters of the exact same class and alignment can have very different personalities, worldviews, loyalties, methods, specialities, preferences, etc - basically all the things that actually make up the 'character' part of Player Character. The stats are just a framework. It doesn't define everything the character is.

Also FYI OP, the katana and wakizashi were not the main battle weapons of a samurai. Normally they'd use a polearm (most often a long spear called a yari), sometimes a bow (change bow to matchlock musket in the 1800s). The two swords were worn as backup and, most importantly, a symbol of samurai status.

>>26456377

A lot of books are like that. Most fechtbuchen are the author gloating about how awesome his swordsmanship is and how much he knows, so you have to hunt him down and learn. And Silver is a long rant about those crazy kids and their rapiers these days.

>>26456430

He gives completely vague and unusable advice about swordsmanship he doesn't explain.

This is one of the reasons he could never hold down a job teaching swordsmanship...

>>26456431
Eh, even that's kind of underrepresenting it. There's a lot of otherwise-completely-intact-and-functional antique katana with no few notches on the spine and scratches on the flats. Heavy use doesn't really destroy a katana faster than other swords.

>>26456507
He tried, he tried. At least he DID eventually get a school off the ground, or others like him did.

>>26456507

That's the point. If you can learn how to use a sword from a book, why do you need him? It's the same way with European books on swordsmanship.

>>26455926
>good cop bad cop
Jesus dude, you didn't listen to our input at all, why do you have to boil shit down to dumb cliches to be able to role-play two mechanically similar characters.

>>26456547
And yet HEMA is based on using ONLY the books to somehow reconstruct the entire art...

>>26456516
Depends on the sword.

A katana loses usefulness faster than, say, a claymore or a falchion does, purely because a katana is more based around being really sharp as opposed to really heavy and a little sharp.

>>26456211
M2 cav walks over everything? We must not be playing the same version, because my knights always get killed when they charge unsupported peasant militias. Rome 1, on the other hand, I was able to use cataphracts to charge head-long into phalanxes and win 90% of the time.

>>26455721
Then fight with a spear. Be a ronin. Have a different Lord to other players or be a Lord or son-of so you don't have to do all that shit code shit as strictly.

If real-life samurai were as you say then they wouldn't have fought each other so much over the years.

>>26456572

We have a lot more books on WMA than katanas, if I remember correctly. With a larger pool to draw from, we can get things down a bit more easily. A good portion is still based on what seems to make sense, though.

>>26456430
>He even goes into a spiel about how a common newbie mistake with a katana is to cut their opponent too shallow, for no serious wounding effect.

It's not a common newbie mistake. He was criticising the way contemporary schools had started teaching fencing styles based on light sparring rather than military and self defence aka point scoring rather than mortal blows.

Which is interesting from a man with no real military experience to speak of, and who largely killed people after getting into stupid arguments with them. Should probably have picked a more relaxed hobby.

>>26455871

What, was everyone from the same chapter, had the same personality traits?

I ran a Deathwatch game with 10 people (never doing that again), and even with 2-3 people from the same chapter they weren't cookie cutters.

Next you'll be thinking all vikings are the same, or all crusaders, or something else equally as stupid after a moment's thought.

>>26456587

Charge, and retreat. While the Knights are retreating, send in another group to charge. Repeat as needed.

>>26456583
Eh, a big Highland claymore only weighs like 2 to 3 pounds more than a katana. They average around 5.5 pounds.

That said, a claymore WOULD have a lot more edge you could beat the hell out of before you had too much edge damage to properly cut with it.

>>26455721
You ever play and of Koei's Samurai games?
The characters are all mostly samurais and ninjas but have radically different personalities.

>>26456624
He supposedly served in the Tokugawa shogunal army for a time when they were finishing up the liquidation of the Toyotomi. ...As a construction supervisor.

Still, even without much real fighting service he still knew plenty about what it took to kill a man.

>>26455933
I fucking love Empire, but holy fuck I need to stay out of the water. I tried 1 turn as the Dutch and had two ships explode in the first 5 minutes.

Then I picked Russia, burned Dagesten to the ground more times than I care to count and steam rolled everyone with an unending tide of green coats. Glorious 18x120 veteran line infantry bayonet charging everything from militia to canister cannons and city walls, crushing everything beneath their boots. Even with these tactics, more people died from riots in Moscow than on the frontlines.

>>26456607
Just don't do it in L5R or you'll have compounded all of the worst choices you could make.

>>26456642
They're much heavier, relatively. Over twice as heavy, in fact.

>>26456695

The more peasants die, the better you're playing Russia.

>>26456727
True, 6 pounds is twice as much as 3. Still not a colossal weight increase in an absolute sense. Especially since that six pounds is distributed over a larger area.

>>26455853

But who wants to play a historical samurai over a movie samurai, anyway?

>>26456695
I actually liked Empire too, even with the stupid artillery.

>>26456788
Because L5R also fails completely and utterly at depicting MOVIE samurai.

There's an old joke: "L5R is a samurai game designed by a guy who has only seen one actual samurai movie, and only remembered about half of it."

>>26456815

And yet, it was still before Wick became the unsufferable asshole he is today.

>>26456841
Wasn't he ALWAYS an insufferable asshole?

>>26456775
In theory, yes, but in practise only a small portion of any blade is going to be hitting the enemy, regardless of whether your weapon is 2 feet long or 6 feet long.

In a scenario that is suited for each respective weapon, a claymore that hasn't seen maintenance is still going to be more effective than a katana that hasn't seen maintenance, because a claymore can still functions as an oddly shaped club, whereas the katana becomes an unwieldy length of useless metal.

Not only that, but because the katana relies more on sharpness as opposed to brute force, it's going to require more maintenance and lose effectiveness more quickly.

>>26456635
Well actually the biggest problem was the missions. You really didn't have a say on things when everything came from someone higher. It didn't really make sense to have a character with different believes and world views when everybody was a constructed, brainwashed killing machine, created to obey the Emperors will. And even if your character was, let's say, against the killing of some guardsmen said to be heretics, what were you gonna do? Disobey the orders and get charged with mutiny and heresy? I'm not even sure if joking a bit is something spess mehreens do, they all seem so serious.

That said Only War fixed many Deathwatche's problems.

>>26456850

He wasn't as bad as he is now.

And as bad as L5R is for accurate Samurai shit, it's a game decently put together and internally consistent. John Wick still allowed himself to be edited back then.

>>26456887
That looks more like a case of somewhat bad DM and group, the potential for roleplay is there

>>26456860
Even a katana can be used as an oddly shaped club, honestly. It won't hit as hard as the claymore will, but it'll still hurt like hell.

Also, I wouldn't really say brute force is absent from kenjutsu. Not when Jigen-ryu is a thing, anyway. Good god fucking Jigen-ryu.

>>26456891
Aside from weapon stats, anyway.

>>26456887

In the Deathwatch, the only higher authority are your superiors within the Deathwatch. Even the Inquisitors are not so much superiors as variably trusted advisors and sources of information.

You may be brainwashed to an extent, yes, but that is to your CHAPTER'S code. Not to blindly follow Inquisitors or Lord Generals. The Ordo Xenos will call the Deathwatch to war, and the Deathwatch usually answers that, but it is a joint operation with the Inquisition, no more subject to it than any other chapters.

If you feel the situation on the ground is other than you were told, as a member of the Deathwatch, a veteran with a number of campaigns under your belt even as a new character, you are well within your rights to change the mission parameters. Within reason.

>>26456917
Well we have played successfully for years (even before mentioned vikings). Deathwatch just didn't work. It became boring and samey.

>>26456930

Weapon stats a shit in every game. The last game I played with close to accurate weapon stats was Aftermath, and that shit came out in the 80s, so at the very least its guns are a bit out of date.

>>26455721
Its the 1800s dude. Maybe one Samurai thinks that guns are a pretty good idea, and "bends" the Code to allow it. Maybe another is focused on the longbow, and another uses the katana.

Maybe one is all ultrasmurf and thinks that all stealth and subterfuge is bad, and another thinks "Victory at all costs".

Maybe one of the samurai views his code as higher then his lord, and thinks his code is really the best way to live, and is therefore Lawful Good.

Maybe another is just obeying it because its tradition, and is willing to kill for that tradition [Lawful Evil].

There is literally TONS of interpretations and roleplay directions you can take thi.s

>>26456959
What was boring and samey? Missions? Combat? Roleplay?

>>26457033
ain't nothing in the code that disallows guns

japs fucking loved guns

it's just after the doors slammed shut, only the clans that were butt-buddies with the shogun were allowed to have guns

If it's the 1800s, you could all be Shinsengumi police keeping shit secure in the cities. Or ishin-shishi agitators revering the emperor and expelling barbarians.

>>26457081
That was in sengoku though, in 1800 not everyone was fond of guns

>>26457033
>>26457081
Bushido is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules.

>>26457112
I was thinking fantasy Samurai.

Isn't the idea of "real" Bushido a myth?

>>26457111

Nah, the Japanese fucking loved guns. They just still used designs that were 300 years out of date in the 19th century. Also the shogun controlled their manufacture and distribution.

>>26457147
Didn't the shogunate troops lose because they were too slow in modernizing?

>>26457049
Mostly combat, I played a devastator with a heavy boltter my combat was stoic stance and full auto burst, spend next 10 minutes rolling dice and calculating armor and toughness for every bullet and horde magnitude and all sorts of shit. Then came the non existent roleplay, it was basically which building do we search first. Then the missions were drop to planet, search a person/eliminate horde/destroy building/retrieve mcguffin, escape. One time was good when our landing failed and we lost contact to the fleet and had to find our way back on out own. Keep in mind that none of us was a huge 40k buff, we all were familiar with it but weren't enthusiastic. I hadn't even heard of the Deathwatch before. I got the impression they were space marines sent behind enemy lines to do high priority stuff.

>>26457146
No, just the idea that it was widespread in samurai times and THE code all samurai in Japan lived by. Bushido comes from the Hagakure, written in the early 1700s. The idea that it was widespread is 1890s Imperial Japanese propaganda.

>>26457159
Maybe, though nowhere near to the degree in, say, The Last Samurai. By and large the wars in the late 1800s were fought by very modern-looking armies on both sides.

>>26457166
>we all were familiar with it but weren't enthusiastic
Well that's the problem I suppose, no helping it

If you found yourselves more suited to Only War, good for you

>>26457146
There was some actual "Standarts to Live By" kind of thing, but they were mostly ignored. Samurai were not even a bit more honorable than knights.

And fantasy samurai should be the same.

This thread makes me want to play in a samurai game now and I never will.

Fuck you OP. ;_;

>>26457203
Eh, I don't mind a bit of romanticism if it's specifically called out as a romantic interpretation. Just as long as people know that it is, indeed, just a romantic interpretation.

>>26457227
I guess I just like A Song of Ice and Fire too much.

>>26457225

>>26457146

Basically, it has always been a tool of government propaganda and the version most of us are familiar dates to the Meiji Restoration and is intentionally distanced from earlier interpretations.

mfw the gm decides to have the pcs get involved with court life, political intrigue, and diplomacy, rather than an endless series of battle

>>26457333
in other words, the GM makes everybody play Blood and Honor, which is what happens when you take your John Wick completely fucking unfiltered

Don't forget the guns. Japan LOVED guns. Their homemade muskets were actually really, really good. They were probably the most advanced muskets in the world, tbh. Not that it helped them when the rest of the world got rifles, but at one point, the best musket you could get was Japanese, bar none.

>>26457355
If I hadn't looked those up just now, I'd have no fucking clue what you were talking about. There's probably more than one way of implementing something.

>>26457333
Shit, I'd dig that. Nothing beats backstabbing the right people so you can act as a true hero even though you threw a man into his death like an asshole.

>>26457429
Probably, but Blood and Honor is a particularly infamous attempt at it.

>>26457391
They were good, but they were arquebuses, not muskets.

Japan made its own improvements to firearms, after all they began using foresights before Europe.

>>26455777
>Welcome to the reason why Shogun 2 was the worst Total War game

You're a fucking fool.

>>26457468
Play Medieval 2 and see if you still think that. I liked Shogun 2, it is not a bad game in the damn slightest, it is worth playing, but it does NOT hold a candle to M2 or Rome.

>>26455721

The thing of it is OP, there are a shit ton of ways to follow Bushido. The sword is the most common, but first and foremost Samurai were archers. Or you could use a spear, war club, whatever really. There's nothing that says "Samurai = Katana".

As well, aside from weapons you can go further. As a Samurai you're trying to attain some form of perfection, whether that be through combat, literature and art, spirituality, or beauty. You can totally just be a poet or artist Samurai.

And setting all that aside you don't even have to be Samurai in that kind of setting. Policemen can fill similar roles and don't have to follow the cut of Samurai.

>>26457496
Not that guy, but I played all of them since the first shogun, and every game holds on its own, even if Empire struggles a bit, but Shogun 2 has a relatively flawless gameplay

Smaller scale and fast battles are the only things that I'd agree with as far as complaining goes, the rest is subjective

>>26455721

When in the 1800s?

Because if it's later, then you start reaching into the restoration, which is a very interesting time because it's basically an iron age civilization being forced into the modern world scene almost overnight.

>>26457536
That's actually one of the few upsides to the low unit variety in vanilla Shogun 2--since every faction has mostly the same units, there's not too much in the way of faction imbalance..

If I remember rightly, the only time you are -required- to use your katana is if you are dueling other samurai. Otherwise, whatever weapon floats your boat. ...but you're gonna own one and you're gonna own a wakizashi.

>>26457571

Also the gameplay is much more strategy and tactics-based, since your capabilities are roughly the same. You have to out-think your opponent, rather than use units he can't get.

>>26455721
Samurai utilize many weapons beyond the katana. mastery of horse and bow are prized skills. yari (spear) and firearms, as well as niten (2 sword technique) can all be used to differentiate different characters fighting styles. kanabo (studded maces) and naginata are often used by sects of warrior monks, who are NOT samurai, and follow a completely different code of conduct further differentiate. Ona-hei (warrior-wifes, often using naginata) can also be used, as well as ronin, ashigaru (peasant fighters), or glory-houding duelists (who often use bizarre weapons and styles, such as kusari-gama or whatever), etc, etc, etc. also, not every samurai followed bushido. most didnt. they just played lip service. even those who do follow it strictly there are different interpretations which can come into play.

>>26455834
What system did you play this in?

>>26457451
The later ones were muskets, iirc.

>>26455721
>1800s

Be members of a Kiheitai militia from Choshu. You can still be samurai if you want, but you get to look like Victorianized high school delinquents with swords and modern rifles.

>>26455721
The samurai was proficient with all sorts of weapons, The mainstay of their arsenal was actually the japanese longbow not the Katana. (a long bow where the grip is 1/3 of the way up the bow so that the bow is easier to use while mounted, but still has power while on foot)

Samurai were also proficient in the Yari (a spear)

The Naginata ( similar to a glaive)

and the Katana.

not to mention Guns when they had to.

i mean any medieval weapon you can think of there was a japanese equivalent that you could justify,

and in the 1800's you know there's going to be a rise in gun usage as well (if its late 1800's then guns will definitely become more popular so start thinking about rifles too)

and any human has human motivations. be imaginative.

>>26458078
Except shields.

Japanese are too barbaric to understand the concept of shields.

Samurai armor from that period was mostly European plate armor which had been dressed up with Samurai trappings, rather than "authentic" laminar armor.

>>26458096
fuck, i meant to say that in my post, yeah no shields, shields are for pussies.

>>26458107
European armor wasn't THAT common outside the hands of very high-ranking samurai.

>>26455777

I don't know, it has it's moments.

>>26458037
>you just stepped into the wrong teahouse, gaijin scum.jpg

>>26458151
This guy killed 11 Yari samurai before dying.

>>26458163
>Japan today

ohayo gozaimasu foreigner-sama!!!! :3 Am I kawaii uguu~

>>26458188
>Masterwork Bastard Balls
>Folded over a thousand times

>>26458188
Samurai Retainers are comically badass. I think only Hero units and some DLC shit like Seigen's Swordmasters are capable of trouncing them in straight combat.

>>26458211
...

>>26458230
I still remember the first time I learned that Samurai Retainers were NOT punks like Armed Citizenry in Napoleon TW.

>>26458211
>what
>not SUGOI SUGOI VERY KAWAII DESU

>>26458211
>ittaly holding a dildo

>>26458473
>France goes flying

>>26455808
>The katana wasn't the only weapon a samurai ever used.
It wasn't even the primary weapon. Archery skill was seen as more prestigious than skill with a sword.

Samurai is a title, not a character class. There were as many different kinds of samurai as you have different kinds of nobles (errand knight, mercenary, knight of the king, scholar, courtisan, templar, squire, poet...).

Bushido is a code of honor that was idealized during the Edo era as much as chivalry was idealized in Europe during the Renaissance. Most samurai just followed some principles.

The katana was the samurai's trademark as much as the sword was the knight's trademark. It's a symbol of rank. In battle the samurai would often use a polearm (yari & naginata) as primary weapon.

>>26455777
Shogun 2 had problems, but it was miles better than Empire or Napoleon.

>>26457203
That is kind of why I don't like Samurai, the myths surrounding them are a pain in the ass to have to listen to or put up with. Also I am still sick of the "walking tank" shit that comes with having armor.