Siege of Hachigata part two

We recently played the second game of our Siege of Hachigata campaign with The Pikeman's Lament. 

The scenario was based on Dan Mersey's scenario The Relic from Lion Rampant. The general background was as follows:

The Takeda clan, under the famous warlord Takeda Shingen, are besieging the Hōjō clan’s castle at Hachigata in Musashi province.

The Hōjō generals have discovered that the Takeda have brought with their army a suit of armour that belonged to a famous clan ancestor. Takeda Shingen plans to wear it when his troops capture the castle. 

A plan was hatched to steal the armour, in its carrying chest, and take it into the castle. Ninja were hired to sneak into the village where the armour is kept. They would obtain the armour and carry it out of the village where they would meet up with a small party of Date Masamune’s men who would escort the relic back to the castle.

Last night Masamune led his men out of the castle and they stealthily made their way to a position on the road outside the village. There, they waited for the Ninja to return. Something seems to have gone wrong though. Dawn is breaking when the Ninja finally show up with a pack horse carrying the armour chest. The Date Samurai will have to fight their way back to the castle through the besieging Takeda army. 

Hōjō Tsebedetsu, seeing what is about to happen, leads his men on a rescue mission.

The table set up was identical to that used in the previous game. We began with a unit of Ninja (I used the stats of A Forlorn Hope unit but applied the "Thrown Weapons" rule to reduce their shooting range to 6" and their cost by one point to five) positioned on the road just outside the village.

The remainder of Masamune's men were deployed along the road by which the Ninja would leave the village.

Unfortunately, Phil (aka Hōjō Tsebedetsu) was unable to be with us having been taken poorly on the way over. I was forced to stand in. Sorry Phil, both for your feeling poorly and for my dreadful performance as Tsebedetsu.

Andy (Honda Gozemon) and Mark (Takeda Mochinaga) were coming on from opposite sides of the table with the objective of stopping the enemy getting away with Uncle Shingen's armour. 

Advancing from the castle gate I sent forward a unit of dismounted Hōjō samurai into the marshy area to the left of the road. This was ideally positioned to lure Mochinaga's cavalry into a wild charge that would have seen them floundering in the mire and cut down by their ferocious opponents.

Stupidly, though, I sent forward a second unit that remained in the good going. This game Mark the choice of which unit to Wild Charge against! In the picture above you can see the result. My second Samurai unit (red sashimono, top right) has been reduced to two figures, one of whom is Hōjō Tsebedetsu!

That the Hōjō Ashigaru have gained a morale-boosting agitator (marked by the green token) was small compensation.

Nearer the village, Ron was working hard to try to get away with the packhorse carrying the armour box. The ninja were wiped out early and a samurai unit was escorting the relic. Threatened by a nearly intact mounted Samurai unit and some Ashigaru arquebusiers, it wouldn't be long before they were caught.

At this time Honda Gozemon decided to challenge Date Masamune to single combat (thus achieving one of his pre-game Boasts).

The result was a draw and both samurai returned to their units. 

As it happens, we'd discussed single combats prior to the game and came up with a house rule for this particular campaign. 

Normally in The Pikeman's Lament any officer's death results in a post-game roll on the Officer Casualties table with results ranging from dishonourable death to heroic escape. We weren't sure, though, that this fitted well with Samurai duels, which would often have ended with the losing fighter being beheaded! It would be fine, from an historical flavour point of view, to say that duels that end in a victory to either side are fatal to the loser but that would be less fun from the campaign point of view. In the end we decided that, in the case of duels only, we would roll twice on the Officer Casualties table and apply the worse result. This makes death a more likely outcome whilst still leaving open the possibility of escape.

Shortly after this, with my/Hōjō Tsebedetsu's forces too far away to assist, the last member of Date Masamune's samurai infantry unit was cut down. This took Ron's leader out and meant that the Takeda were able to safely retrieve the box of armour for the win.

This left us needing to roll for both Tsebedetsu and Masamune to see if they survived the battle. 

Hōjō Tsebedetsu, it emerged, had been captured whilst fighting honourably in combat. He was ransomed back by defenders at the cost of three points of Honour. He had also failed to achieve his boast that all of his units would succeed in making at least one attack during the game.

Date Masamune was also captured but only after he had been caught hiding in bushes alongside the river. Ransoming him back cost him 5 points of Honour. He had made no pre-game boast.

Meanwhile, Takeda Mochinaga had won the action and although he had acted without panache at one point and failed to achieve his boast (that he would kill or rout at least half of his enemy's units) he gained a net three points of Honour.

Honda Gozemon was the hero of the day, however. Also on the winning side, he achieved two boasts (The katana not the bow! - killing more enemy models in close combat than by missile fire; and Hear my lineage! - challenging an opposing leader to a duel). Acting without panache at one point was the only negative and he finished with an additional seven points of Honour!

After two Takeda wins, the campaign scores are now very spread out:

Honda Gozemon has 27 points 

Takeda Mochinaga has 17 points

Date Masamune has 14 points

Hōjō Tsebedetsu has 7 points.   

In addition, Honda Gozemon now has the Banzai! trait. This is my Japanese-appropriate replacement for the rules' Gå På allowing a unit within 12" of him to automatically pass a Move activation once per turn.

Given that the Takeda have now won two consecutive actions, I wonder if the next one should be an attempt to storm the castle (or at least to seize an isolated bastion)?   

Plan for the year

I know we're well into February but I'm just now beginning to get a picture of what I want to get done over the coming, let's say, ten months.

First up, I plan to host at least one game a month across the year. The emerging Samurai campaign using The Pikeman's Lament will go some way to making that a reality.

I've got quite a lot of ACW figures still to finish. I'll certainly get them done and plan to organise a Sharp Practice mini-campaign based on the operations of the Mississippi Marine Brigade but that'll probably be towards the end of the year.

Before that, Richard P and I have a plan to do some Sharp Practice set in Latvia in 1812 and we're also down to run the Riga game at Sherwood Outlard in April.

I've decided that a major modelling project will be to concentrate on upgrading my existing stuff rather than buying loads of new terrain and armies. This afternoon I've been upgrading some 20mm Fallschirmjäger and painting a second Humber Scout Car (the original one, furthest from the camera, was done a year or more ago). 

I've also upgraded this ruined building from Commission Figurines, adding more rubble, internal floors and roof as well as adding more painted detail to the exterior.

I'm tempted to have a go at adding some broken glass to the windows but that may be a step too far.

I'd like to get my 20mm Second World War collection to the kind of standard that I'd be happy using it to present a game of Chain of Command at a Lardy Day. That's a high standard to aspire to though. Not sure my existing plastic figures will cut the mustard, even with improved paint jobs.

Quick terrain

This is by way of a recommendation. If you're at a show where Richard Phillips is selling the Scotia Grendel resin terrain, it's well worth having a look at what's available. 

They come in blister packs and, once undercoated in black, they paint up really easily. These two dungeon terrain bits took me about a hour to paint this morning (I'd undercoated them a few days ago).

I'm not sure how much longer Richard will have them in stock so it's worth making a purchase while they're available if you think this sort of thing will improve the look of your fantasy games.

Union Forces Progress Report

Regulars here will know that, over the last year or so, I've been busy painting ACW figures for Sharp Practice. I thought I'd take stock and provide a picture of progress to date on the Union side. I'll follow up with the Confederates shortly.

Starting at the front and going from left to right we have a group of six Mississippi Marine Brigade skirmishers with a sergeant in charge and then two mounted cavalry leaders; a lieutenant and a corporal.

Second row sees two groups of Mississippi Marine Brigade infantry in line led by an officer who is accompanied by a drummer. Then we have two groups of dismounted cavalry with officers and one of mounted cavalry.

The third row has three groups of generic line infantry (an Illinois regiment was attached to the MMB) and then at the back there are a few engineers (I didn't include the half figures who are up to their waists in water), an MMB artillery crew, and finally my field hospital.

The field hospital was completed recently so here's a first view of all of the components together:

The figures are a real mixture of Perry plastics and metals, Artizan Plains Infantry, and assorted secondhand figures.

Looking back at my painting diary I see that I've produced these (and their Confederate opponents) since late November 2021. I'm quite pleased with that productivity.

Zebra Tribe!

I'm busy building American Civil War figures for Sharp Practice at the moment but I recently decided to take a bit of a break and do some figures for Gloranthan Song of Blades and Heroes. 

A couple of white metal zebras of unknown origin were given riders in the form of Foundry Miniatures plains Indians. In addition, because SOBH is more likely to get played than Hordes of the Things at the moment, I decided to rebase my old Zebra Rider unit too. The result is these guys:

They should be useful in future scenarios around Pavis and in the Praxian Wastes.

Another ACW Officer

The box of figures I bought from Richard P recently contained rather more Union officers than I really need for Sharp Practice games. And they are probably Union officers as they have the rectangular shoulder tabs as rank badges rather than the knots of cuff lace more typically worn by Rebel officers.

Looking through Phillip Katcher's The American Soldier (which is basically a collation of colour plates from Osprey Men At Arms books) it occurred to me that I could use an officer model to represent an army surgeon. 

This webpage would also have been useful if I'd found it before I finished painting the figure!

One of the available figures looked suitable but for the fact that he was brandishing a sword in a most unmedical way! I replaced the sword-holding hand with one from the spares box and added a sword hilt to the scabbard from the same source.

He wears a green sword sash and has green shoulder rank badges. The latter, I understand, makes him more likely to be a US Army surgeon rather than a surgeon attached to a state volunteer regiment.

The sword isn't the right pattern (and I'm prepared to live with that) but the all-metal scabbard is certainly appropriate.

The hand I added was slightly too small so I built up the cuff and the hand with Green Stuff. If you look closely you'll see that I didn't bother resculpting all of the fingers. As a result this medic will be noted in scenarios as being Major Jakob "Six-fingered Jake" Schultz - the most feared (by his own side) man in the Mississippi Marine Brigade.

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.