Katai Empire coming to Kickstarter (Patreon)

Hey guys, sorry for the lack of update for the past few weeks. Life, or more precisely my job, is giving me one hell of a difficult time -  it's hard living as a wage slave. 

Anyway.

It's old news now, but recently Zenit Miniatures launched the Katai Empire range for their Kensei/Torii tabletop wargame on Kickstarter. As of the time of writing, the project has gathered more than 150 backers and is successfully funded, so it seems to be doing quite well, which is nice.

I've been following the news of the Katai Empire closely, and commented on various revealed lore, sculpts and images (previous articles about the Katai Empire can be found here and here). Even though I sometimes criticise various design decisions, aesthetics and accuracy of the upcoming range, I must say that following and reviewing these updates, by itself, is actually quite an enjoyable experience for me. Now that the project and presumably the full range (or at least the non-mythological part) has been up on Kickstarter, I think I can now  review the entire project as a whole. 

Lore update

This is your typical cliched "Chinese Emperor does as he wishes" backstory. I guess this is fine from a game design perspective, since there's no point in delving deep into the lore of a newcomer, non-spotlight faction. In other words, don't think too hard about it.

If I am to be pedantic (and I certainly will), I can probably point out bits and pieces of the lore that make little sense from this essay alone. For example, the Hymukai (not!Japan in the setting) seems to follow its real-life counterpart fairly closely, which implies that there must be frequent cultural exchange between Katai (not!China in the setting) and Hymukai in the past. Thus it makes no sense for the great Katai fleet to set sail to annex an "unknown" land. I also find it odd that this General Fei refers to his own country as "the greatest empire of all time and lands", which seems to imply that he acknowledges the existence of OTHER empires and OTHER lands. This directly runs counter to the ancient Chinese Tianxia worldview: there is only one Heaven, and thus there can be only ONE realm (called Tianxia or all-under-heaven), and only ONE ruler with the Mandate of Heaven to rule over it. Thus, to recognise the existence of another empire (à la anotherTianxia) was literally unthinkable (note that “barbarians" and foreign nations not ruled by Chinese emperors were considered to be living at the fringe of the same Tianxia, instead of a separate realm).

Overall impression of the Katai Empire Roster

The Katai Army is essentially a generic RTS-esque army - it has the spearman, swordsman, archer, cavalry, chariot and siege weapon typical of most generic medieval/fantasy armies, but nothing too fancy (compared to, say, Ishitsubute Ashigaru of the original factions). While this kind of "can't go wrong" roster is suitable for an empire as vast and diverse as China, I can't help but feel that it is somewhat bland and kind of a missed opportunity. The elements that make a Chinese army distinct from its Japanese counterpart—artillery, rocketry, cavalry, distinct horse archery tradition, wagon fort, siege tactics to name but a few—simply cannot be represented with such generic range.

Also, I am pretty certain that this hairstyle is unhistorical, and no one ever looks good in it.