Hachigata - The Assault

Mark, Ron, Phil and Andy came over this weekend and we played out the culmination of our Siege of Hachigata, 1568 campaign using The Pikeman's Lament.

The campaign has covered four games with each of the players taking on the role of a samurai commander attempting to gain personal honour whilst fighting on behalf of their lord. The assumption is that there are large armies involved on both sides and that our player characters' contingents form but a small part of them. However, key events of the siege do seem to have followed our boys around!

For the defending Hōjō clan Phil took on the role of Hōjō Tsebedetsu while Ron played Date Masamune. The attacking Takeda were represented by Takeda Mochinaga (Mark) and Honda Gozaemon (Andy).

Left to right: Takeda Mochinaga, Date Masamune, Hōjō 
Tsebedetsu, and Honda Gozaemon

This final part of the campaign saw the Takeda assault on the castle. I hadn't originally planned it that way. The historical siege ended when the Takeda gave up and their army marched away. My idea was to follow history and play two or three games set during the siege and maybe a couple more with Hōjō forces harassing the withdrawing Takeda. In the event, however, the Takeda were victorious in every skirmish of our table-top campaign. It seemed they'd have to have a go at assaulting the castle!

I thought events of previous battles should influence this one.

The Hōjō side's failure to steal Takeda Shingen's heirloom armour would give the Takeda the chance to reroll a failed Morale test as the unit concerned caught sight of the daimyo, magnificent in it.

Their success in digging a channel to divert the castle's water supply would give the Takeda the chance to infiltrate men into the castle. More on this later.

The capture of an outlying bastion (or yagura) would give the Takeda an additional, albeit immobile, unit in the game in the form of arquiebusiers firing from the tower.

Finally, I wanted to give the defenders a little something to reflect the stratagems used by defenders in Japanese siege warfare. I allocated them some two-inch-long strips of bamboo skewer. These represented a pile of logs that they could send crashing down to sweep attackers from the glacis. In the event, this was never used as no Takeda forces were in the right location. If I had the time again I might allow them to be used in any location but with a high target number for activation.

The game began with the defenders deploying their units lining the castle walls. This determined the attackers deployment area - basically at least six inches from the walls, further in areas where defending missile troops' maximum range extended beyond that line.

I had given the Takeda players the ability to infiltrate from the woods to the wall (and potentially into the castle) using the channel so laboriously dug by their miners in a previous fight. Mark ended up commanding this sector of the field and he was given two options. He could try to infiltrate a unit of samurai or he could employ ninja for the task.

With 13 inches to cover to reach the wall from the woods, samurai would move 2D10 inches whereas ninja would move 4D8 inches. Ninja were a better bet for penetrating the defences but taking them would cost Mark two points of honour!

Mark decided that the honour of victory would expunge any stain from using the untouchable assassins and made his way over to the dice tower to roll his 4D8:

 The resulting six inches of movement had the Hōjō snorting in derision.

The battle, then, would be fought with the Takeda attackers having to get across the walls without the assistance of a friendly force within.

The Hōjō tactic was to mainly use ashigaru to line the walls and to keep samurai in reserve.

A group of townsfolk was available and these were employed to guard the area of rough going where the stream had previously run through the watergate. Rated as "Clubmen" in TPL terms, they actual fight better in rough going than they do elsewhere!

The Takeda advanced on a broad front...

The defenders had a contingent of warrior monks who had the Wild Charge special rule. I declared that this would apply if the monks were actually lining the walls but not if they were held in reserve within the castle. 

Eventually Phil decided to let them have their head and they charged out into combat. They didn't last long but they seriously dented the Takeda line before their survivors were routed.

A couple of Takeda units made it across the wall but on both occasions they were surrounded and cut down. In the end Andy and Mark decided that they no longer had the strength needed to penetrate the castle's defences. The campaign would conclude, somewhat historically, with Takeda Shingen withdrawing to besiege the less imposing Takiyama castle instead.

At the end of the game we examined the Honour scores of the samurai captains involved. With a string of previous victories behind them, the two Takeda captains came out of the campaign with their reputations significantly improved. 

Takeda Mochinaga (Mark) lost two points for his unsuccessful use of Ninjas, another for acting without panache and a fourth for failing his boast. Still he finished the campaign with a total of 22 points of Honour.

Honda Gozaemon (Andy) had made three boasts before the battle and succeeded with one. He did act without panache at one point and, overall, lost two points of Honour ending with 30. Having started with 13 points, his was a tale of success despite a strategic reverse.

The Hōjō leaders were less successful overall.

Hōjō Tsebedetsu (Phil) was successful in his boast and on the winning side. He added six points of Honour to end the campaign with 16, the highest level he had achieved to date.

Date Masamune (Ron) was the only leader to have acted with panache throughout the battle but a failed boast saw his score unchanged overall on 17. Given that he started the campaign (as a veteran of many battles) on 18 points he had clearly failed to progress his career during the Siege of Hachigata.

And so the campaign is over. The players all said that they enjoyed the rules and would be happy to play some more The Pikeman's Lament (or its stablemates Lion/Dragon/Xenos Rampant) but next I think we may go on to try some Gangs of Rome.