Samurai At Last!

With the exception of a big-battle Hordes of the Things game in October 2003 and of a subset of the collection forming one of my HOTT armies for Berkeley a decade ago, my 15mm Samurai have seen virtually no use. In fact I believe they've been rebased more often that they've been used in anger. So when Andy, Mark, Phil and Ron came over on Saturday afternoon and we played a Samurai version of The Pikeman's Lament it was something of a relief to feel that they were at last earning their place in the collection.

The situation was roughly based on the siege of Hachigata in 1568. This to fit with the fact that the majority of my models bear the mon of either the Hōjō or Takeda clan. I allocated the players randomly and gave them made-up names of Samurai commanders, Mark and Andy being Takeda Mochinaga and Honda Gozemon respectively while Phil and Ron opposed them as Hōjō Tsededetsu and Ii Masamune. The latter was an error on my part as the figures Ron was using bore the Date clan mon. 

Our game used a four-player adaptation of the River Crossing scenario from the rule book. 

Phil and Ron led a sortie from the Hōjō-held castle and attempted to cross the river to demonstrate their superiority over Andy and Mark's Takeda besiegers.

I gave Phil and Ron an extra turn at the beginning of the game to simulate their surprise attack and to compensate for the fact that there were more cavalry in the Takeda force. In addition, the Hōjō sortie was somewhat slowed down by the need to exit from a single gateway.

The simple rules allowed the game to flow quickly and smoothly - more so than when we played the related Lion Rampant via Skype during the recent unpleasantness. 

We greatly enjoyed the table of bonuses and penalties for rolling boxcars or snake-eyes when activating units. In fact it seemed like the dice were determined to give us a taste of all of the options in that table. Twos and twelves seemed to come up more often than they should and the subsequent dice to select a particular random event were all over the place. In fact I think we saw three of the possible negative effects and all six of the positive.

A highlight was Andy's Honda samurai who repeatedly failed to activate when advancing through the woods and then suddenly withdrew from them altogether as a result of rolling a double-one. We decided that had been struck by the sublime beauty of the trees and had withdrawn to contemplate them a distance.

The action developed, as expected, into a confused melee along the river.

Lion Rampant has the concept of Boasts. These are chosen by the players before the game and if the player achieves the feat boasted of, they additional Honour (aka victory points). The Pikeman's Lament replaces these with Special Orders but "boasts" had such an appropriate ring to it for Samurai games that I decided to adapt the TPL list back into the boasts format, tweaking the language in places to make it more oriental-sounding.

Andy chose "the katana not the bow", undertaking to cause more casualties in melee than he did by shooting. This he achieved handsomely.

Ron selected "All out attack!" - a mistake as it required him to instigate close combat with all of his units; something his two groups of skirmishers weren't best suited to.

Finally (Phil, perhaps wisely, kept his own counsel before the fight) Mark chose to "Charge!" - undertaking to declare the game's first Attack. Unfortunately he was beaten to it when Ron's sole mounted samurai unit wildly charged into combat.

The game ended when the Hōjō forces were driven back across the river. It had looked good for them at one point. They had nearly all of their forces on the Takeda side when Ron rolled a double six activating a unit. This saw senior commanders sending out another unit to reinforce the sortie. The battle, rather then ending immediately, continued as now there were still Hōjō forces on their own side of the river!

In then end, despite heroic efforts by the Hōjō commanders, the Takeda were able to force a victory. The game was deemed a great success and there was some talk of playing further games to follow the emerging careers of our young samurai leaders.

Honda Gozemon emerged from the battle with most renown having achieved his boast on the winning side for a total of 7 points of Honour.  Takeda Mochinaga finished with, I think, four points - five for being on the winning side, -1 for failing in his Boast, another -1 for acting without panache during the advance to the river, and +1 for killing the loud-mouthed agitator who emerged from the ranks of the Ii skirmishers.

The two Hōjō leaders scored one point of Honour each as a result of dashing actions in the fighting but unfortunately Ron's leader was cut down during a cavalry melee. 

The Pikeman's Lament has an Officer Casualties table on which we need to roll to determine if he survived. I've just rolled on it and got double six revealing that Ii Masamune "escapes the enemy with mere scratches and ranges to get back to the castle thorough a daring and honourable adventure"! He gains +3 Honour and is available for the next game.

I am declaring (to fix my earlier error) that Masamune is, as a result of his exploits, formally adopted by a powerful clan and will henceforth be known as Date Masamune.