Rising Sun PBF

And Fox cries all the way to the Briar Patch with the first Virtue off the board: Righteousness.

Good call on the usernames, Ex-SWoo.

bonsai
As expected, my first picks are already spoken for…oh the perils of Bonsai low honor.
Looking over what remains, I’ll spend my coin on the 2nd copy of Righteousness!

@Thraeg is up next

And the table successfully avoids letting anyone double up on Righteousness.

Wait…so who’s next?

That’s was Lotus’ mandate so I think you’re next.

Edit: sorry, looks like @Thraeg hasn’t trained yet.

Correct, waiting for @Thraeg.

No harm in me sending Turtle his Mandate choices now, though, to keep moving. He won’t announce until the Lotus Train Mandate is fully complete.

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Hmm - @ironwulf - do you have any strong preferences for which mandate I pick?

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I’ll buy the Jorugumo.

Koi invokes the woman spider Jorogumo, who will play merry hell with any battle she participates in.

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Board after Mandate 2.

@Ex-SWoo, It is Turtle’s Mandate selection. I leave it in your slow, powerful, armored hands to decide how much you want to wait for input from the others before making your selection.

bonsai

@Ex-SWoo, as your strongholds in effect give you an unkillable and movable Force, Marshal would be a good choice to allow summoning one. Won’t deny that me purchasing 1 for only a coin works out well for both of us. Probably the worst one you could pick now would be Harvest, as Dragonfly would clean up right now with 3 separate provinces right now where he has the most (only) force.

Slight rules clarification: when Harvest is selected, ALL players gain 1 coin. But only the selecting player, and ally if any, gain the chance to Harvest as well.

Yeah - I was thinking the same.

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I will Marshall - and as part of that will spend 3 coins to build a turtle fortress in Oshu.
edit: I will also move 1 Bushi to Oshu as well. (thanks @ironwulf for flagging)

@RothdaTheTruculent is up next

bonsai
@Ex-SWoo don’t forget you can also move your troops!

Slight rules clarification: when Harvest is selected, ALL players gain 1 coin. But only the selecting player, and ally if any, gain the chance to Harvest as well.

bonsai
Whoops, I can’t believe I overlooked that

…and I just also realized in tagging @Ex-SWoo that as the current player he also takes his actions last as the current player (for all mandates except Train)

I am a firm believer in the maxim that no board game is ever actually played correctly. One of the reasons why I enjoy this PBM format is that we can slow down and pick apart every nuance, and also catch rules issues as they arise.

One of the few RS games I was able to play in person we missed the part where you get to buy first if you select Train. Going last in Train wrecks the whole Mandate, thus wrecking most of the game.

First move is actually Dragonfly, @RothdaTheTruculent. Turtle gets to go last to maximize their information on the board.

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I might have misunderstood, but I think I actually have to make my decisions and move my troops before Turtle.

After evaluating the board, I have decided that all my moves so far have been perfect and could not have been done better. Therefore I leave every piece where it currently is.

You are correct (in the first statement, at least :) ).

@Mike_Cathcart, Fox is up next.

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I’ll also stay put.

@ironwulf is next.