Looking for an actual play example of how a duel plays out. An instructional video, an online game where a duel took place, a blog post that gets a lil more descriptive than the rulebook, etc.

Is there anything like that floating around?

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Whew, quite a read! Thanks for the link.

If this is typical, it seems iaijutsu duels are going to be incredibly rare while kenjutsu duels will be much more common. 🤔

14 minutes ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

Whew, quite a read! Thanks for the link.

If this is typical, it seems iaijutsu duels are going to be incredibly rare while kenjutsu duels will be much more common. 🤔

If you consider "Iaijutsu Duels" the "duels" in the conflict section, all I can say is; be careful. Least your players will become infirm before you know it. Finishing Blows are ridiculously deadly (a bit too much probably).
So, unless it is a duel to the death, most samurai should do like they do in the movies; stop their blow at the last second and not outright kill their opponent. Which is a classic in many samurai movies.
This should be enough to be considered a Win (even if the rules don't say so). After being granted such courtesy/compassion by not getting killed/maimed by a finishing blow (because the attacker decided to not keep enough successes to succeed on it), the samurai on the receiving end should admit defeat. If he does not, it should be a hefty honor loss...

So yeah, honor duels "as per the rule" (Iaijutsu to first blood) will most of the time end up with a chopped arm. Which can be quite demoralising for the players. Make sure to advise your players about Compassion, Courtesy, and that abdicting is OK (unless it is a duel to the death, which should be rare anyway).

just my 2 cents.

I just meant the Kakita-style of "cutting down your foe in one perfect strike" seems... unlikely. There's probably going to be a lot of back-and-fourth in almost all combat, duels included (exceptions for first strike, of course).

Kakita is a meme in this edition. He is an average duelist at best, if not below most other bushi. Even more so now that Taoist Blade and Seppun Guard are a thing.

Though... a high rank Kakita can still one shot kill a lot of people with Heartpiercing Strike, which he doesn't have early access to (they instead gave him Thunerclap strike ) That is the one technique that redeems Kakita a bit.

regarding duels, yeah, its more about an exchange of strikes rather than a one shot kill. Unless you roll random fire checks to strife the opponent but that feels very gamey despite being a totally valid tactic (and the only valid tactic if you want to kill the opponent with an Iai kata)