The Way of the Warrior

Check out that painting of Mt. Fuji on the back of this Ronin's robe, isn't that insane?

It would be an understatement to say that it has been a long time since my last blog post. Unfortunately, the holiday season through to tax season tends to be my most chaotic and busy period, and the past few months have been exceptionally hectic. However, I hope to be back now, and much has happened, providing me with plenty to write about.

I'll start with a recap of this month's SBGC meeting, where Stephen Freedman impressed us all with his stunning Sengoku Jidai terrain.

 Stephen is a master when it comes to creating terrain. His previous games have featured equally stunning tables, and he crafts everything by hand with meticulous care and attention to detail. Every single building is adorned with intricately designed interiors, complete with furniture and artwork.

 

He has a couple of Vietnam War tables, and I hope to convince him to run a game with me someday so I can appreciate his approach to Vietnam terrain. (Stephen, if you're reading this - *hint hint nudge nudge*)

 

The rules we used were a homebrew system called Bushido: Way of the Warrior, developed by Stephen's co-GM and fellow SBGC member Bob Burke. It's a simple, fast-play game designed for large skirmishes. Bob created these rules as an alternative to Saga for samurai skirmish wargaming, and I quite enjoyed them. With Saga's "battle boards" and special abilities, Bob's game feels less "gamey" than Saga, and I believe it does a better job of reflecting period warfare. I've mentioned this many times to my wargaming friends: my main issue with most samurai battle games is that they simply take European medieval warfare and apply a Japanese veneer on top of it. Hearing Bob discuss the extensive research he conducted to accurately portray Sengoku Jidai warfare was truly refreshing.

 

The scenario we played was not a recreation of any specific battle; rather, it was set during the Imjin War, the Japanese invasion of Korea. The conflict pitted the Japanese against an allied army of Koreans and Ming Chinese. For simplicity, I will refer to the Korean and Ming forces as the 'Allies' for the remainder of this battle report.

 

 

Both sides would sally forth from their bases to contest two objectives in the center of the table: a village and a temple compound. Both objectives began the game occupied— the temple by the Allies and the village by the Japanese. I chose to play as the militant Buddhist monks occupying the temple

 

The Allies had the advantage of superior ranged weaponry, but in melee combat, they were outmatched by the Japanese samurai. Bob tells me that history reflects this, and since I don't know much about the Imjin War, I'll take his word for it.

Given that I had a relatively lightly armored force deployed far from reinforcements, I figured I was likely to be one of the first players knocked out of the game. My plan was to defend my objective as vigorously as possible and inflict as much damage on the Japanese as I could before being eliminated. Knowing the Japanese held a melee advantage, I aimed to maximize the effectiveness of my many ranged units while relying on my melee units to hold the temple compound.

 

 

My army was able to deal significant damage to the two opponents that attacked the temple, but with reinforcements far away and angry Japanese standing between us, we were gradually worn down. When we were nearly defeated, I had my army leader challenge one of the enemy daimyos to a duel, which I promptly lost. After that, I was left with only two ranged units, but they failed to make any significant impact for the remainder of the game, as I couldn't shoot into melees and my line of fire was often obstructed by friendly units as the battle became more and more crowded as reinforcements streamed into the center of the table.

 

 

 

 

On the other side of the table, my ally Trevor managed to beat his opponent off of the hilltop shrine and assault the village. 

Unfortunately, by the time Trevor reached the south side of the village, Japanese reinforcements had managed to stream in from the north and occupy the village center. They pushed Trevor's forces back, making it unlikely that we would take the village. Both objectives were now close to being completely under Japanese control.

 

 

In the center, we fared no better, as death balls of 8-man Daimyo-attached samurai cavalry decimated all who opposed them. At one point, Curtis was hitting on 2-6 with rerolls on 1s, prompting Bob to agree that this aspect of the rules might need adjusting. The samurai cavalry annihilated several of our units before we eventually managed to whittle them down to a point where they were no longer combat effective, but by then, the damage had been done.

 

 

By the time the Ming forces in the rear managed to catch up and engage the enemy, it was too late; both flanks had been defeated, and a formidable Japanese reinforcement force was still on the way. We decided to declare this game a Japanese victory.

 

It was a great game and I had a lot of fun. There were a lot of great moments, like Geoff charging a lone samurai head first into the temple compound

 

The models were beautifully painted with fine free handed decorations painted on each model. Gives me a lot of ideas on how I will paint my own 28mm Samurai.

 

 And of course, less I forget, here are the other games being ran at the club. I didn't get many pictures because the Samurai game was that engaging.

 

 Alright, first blog post done in a long time. I've got a bit of a backlog to catch up on and will hopefully get those out soon, until next time, folks!