Currently this is our rules set of choice for the Samurai period. Ronin is a simple, clean, skirmish system that is highly suitable for group play. Each player usually has anywhere from 5-10 figures and the game plays fast, but the unique combat system allows for multiple strategies in how to defeat your opponents. This involves allocating a number of colored stones for attack and defense, which we find to be a lot of fun and definitely not something we've seen before. We're hoping to work up to larger battles with this set of rules in the future and maybe a campaign.Samurai Warfare
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Skirmish and Army Level Combat
The Samurai era is one of our club's most interesting and frustrating periods that we game. The era certainly provides a wealth of scenarios, different armies, a colorful period, vast amounts of available research information, and more. So why don't we play it more? The club has a large collection of 28mm figures for this era, but the difficulty seems to be finding a set of rules that everyone likes! While we are currently playing Ronin for skirmish actions of this era, we have not gamed anything larger than that in close to a decade. While we enjoy Katana at times, there are some weird inconsistencies in the rules and there are no "official" army lists for many of the other popular sets of ancients rules. 
While waiting for a set of lists that we can all agree on some of us have accumulated a growing pile of unpainted figures for the period. The feeling is that once we've determined where we're going that the painted units will start increasing and we'll get back into this period quickly. So far, after almost a decade we haven't seen any movement here and a few of us have expressed interest in starting up some Warmaster Ancients/Medieval Samurai armies and trying some campaigns.
We have played several games with Katana, which is a 1:10 scale mass combat set of rules. There are some issues with the morale and shooting rules, so we're continuing to look at other systems to some day getting back into doing large battles. Hail Caesar, Warhammer Ancients 2, and others are potential candidates, but no one has ever come out with army lists for the Samurai period! This may at some point force us to possibly reduce our holdings of 28mm figs for this era and move into 10mm armies using the Warmaster series of rules.