Watching Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai gave all us moviegoers a taste of the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877. While the film had its inaccuracies, it told the story of the traditional warrior class who rebelled against the Japanese government and their modernizing ways. Without the film, this story would perhaps never have been heard of by most of us.
Truth is stranger than fiction, and this is particularly true here. The Last Samurai Rebellion book starts by explaining the real story, which is explored in some detail. Readers will get a good overview of the events, and this leads directly into the gaming section of the book. Next, there is a good guide to the uniforms of both sides and model availability.
Instead of adapting the units straight from The Men Who Would Be Kings (TMWWBK), the author uses these as a base for creating units specifically for the rebellion, often using an anglicized version of their Japanese names. As you'd expect, the imperial faction has primarily rifle musketarmed troops of varying quality (from the excellent Konoe Shidan Imperial Guard to the humble chindaihei conscript), while the rebels have a variety including volunteers, samurai, and onna-bugeisha (armed female samurai). Each unit has a number of upgrades that can be chosen to add flavour – the rebel ‘traditional’ forces can benefit from weapons such as the naginata and feudal armour.
Several characters from the rebellion (and their rulebook to play.
