The wars between different Samurai fractions were common, and so pitching 2 later period Samurai armies against each other created a very credible historical scenario. This was only made possible because Dane Stephens kindly gifted his very large 350 point Samurai army to Tony. I matched this with my Samurai army to an equal points value although the composition of this army was notably different. The key differences being that Dane’s army had 4 artillery units, but a third less cavalry – 6 to our 9, and their missile troops were equipped with pavisses. And so, Tony and Chris had command of Dane’s Samurai and Tim and myself the opposition. The terrain pieces were selected and placed by Joe who was set to play another club game. The resulting layout featured a ‘hilly centre’ consisting of 2 four hex hills interlocking each other, with 2 sizeable areas of woodland positioned either side of these halfway between the centre of the table and the table edge.
The dice dictated that Tony and Chris deployed first and they carefully positioned their 4 units of artillery to cover the ground between the central hill and the left hand and larger of the 2 woodland areas. In response, Tim and I deployed our infantry in our front line with cavalry behind. With 9 units of cavalry we enjoyed a significant advantage over our opponents in terms of mobility and so we deployed these centrally so as to keep our opponents pondering as to where a mass cavalry attack might be aimed.
First moves saw both armies advance towards the central hills and flanking woods. Because of the position of the artillery Tim and I decided to launch our main attack on the left to capture the largest area of woodland. This would give excellent cover from the artillery and force Tony and Chris to switch reinforcements across the front of their own artillery preventing them from shooting, and hopefully open the way for a frontal cavalry attack.
Chris gave ground in the woodland and my foot Samurai and Ikko ikki fanatics formed a battle line in the woodland, with my Ashigaru handgunners positioned in the open ground between the woodland and table edge. Behind these I positioned 2 Yari armed cavalry units each accompanied by a general. Meanwhile, Tim positioned his missile troops ready to engage in a shooting match with Tony’s archers and handgunners. He considered a flanking attack around the right-hand woodland with his bow armed cavalry but the room for manoeuvre was very tight with the opposing infantry already ensconced in the wood.
A brutal hand-to-hand contest erupted as Chris charged my infantry defending the wood. If my shooting from the Ashigaru handgunners had been better the attack could have been broken up. Unfortunately, the shooting was poor and the resulting hand-to-hand combats went in favour of the Chris pushing my now disrupted units back through the wood. My cavalry and generals did achieve success but as a result were already becoming isolated on the other side of the wood from the rest of the army.
Tim and Tony continued to shoot at each other as they wrestled for control of the 2 central 4 hex hills. Tim would charge units in only to have them recoil and flee through some excellent shooting from Tony’s missile troops. There was a distinct pattern emerging – we were consistently shooting badly, and Tony and Chris were shooting increasing well. Even the artillery started to score success even though they had limited targets because of the transit of friendly units across their frontage. These cavalry units were heading across towards my units engaged in the extreme left flanking attack. Despite dispatching a good number of enemy units to the casualty tray these cavalry and the 2 remaining units of accompanying hangunners were now looking very isolated from any possible support.
A unit of orange foot Samurai was inflicting considerable misery on my units retreating back through the wood and causing major command and control headaches. Tim shifted the bulk of our remaining Samurai cavalry across the centre in support but was blasted by ridiculously accurate shooting from the enemy large field guns. This sent a general and the remaining half of his accompanying unit fleeing towards our table edge. In a last-ditch gamble Tim launched the rest of the cavalry towards Tony’s infantry defending the central hills. This was make or break time for Tim and I and it was time to throw caution to the wind! Again, the shooting from Tony’s infantry was excellent and the attack was halted. The comparative dice rolls between the 2 sides were now beyond embarrassing for us. Tony rolled 7 hits from 8 shooting dice and Tim in response rolls 2 hits from 12 dice. Says it all really!
My now isolated cavalry units and their generals were finally cornered and with the help of some very brutal hand-to-hand dice rolls from Chris – a double 6 comes to mind – were finally dispatched. The defence of the central hills stood firm against all our attempts to dislodge the very stubborn eagle-eyed shooters behind their pavisses. Tim and I took an overview of the battle, and it didn’t take long for us to come to the conclusion that we had run out of options. We gave the win to Tony and Chris and went away to lick our wounded pride!
Game Analysis
In a nutshell the story of this game was all about the failure of our attacks against the very well-coordinated and well positioned defence of Tony and Chris’s less mobile army. We were thoroughly out-shot throughout the game, lost too many key ‘must win’ hand-to-hand combats, which in turn rendered our more mobile force ‘flat-footed’ and vulnerable to some very effective counterattacks.
Written by Paul K.
