Subject: Samurai (Nagashino) replay From: admin@grognard.com I teach a week on a special library course that runs once a year at the Royal School of Librarianship in Copenhagen. I have Sunday free and traditionally I go and visit Erik Lawaetz, the Consim-l listowner. This year we decided to play GMT's Samurai, a GBOH series game on battles in the Age of Warring States in Japan. Erik lives way out the north of Copenhagen, a train and a bus ride out of the city. Nearest town is Helsinor (of Elsinore and 'Hamlet' fame). On a clear day you can see Sweden from Erik's kitchen. I got there just after midday. Erik thought we should play the 'Nagashino' scenario, as it looked to have the shortest playing time and not too many units to set up. We rolled to determine who played what side and I got Takeda Katsuyori's side. Now the historical background for Nagashino made it appear a tough one to play. In the historical battle Katsuyori had just charged his cavalry en masse at a strong infantry line well supported by musketeers behind a stream and a palisade, and got massacred. Even worse, his army was numerically inferior. As the setup progressed (a slow affair as the armies comprised clans, each a collection of regimental-sized units and recognising who commanded which units from which clan took a while) a replay of history looked all too possible. Erik was in good spirits, especially since he had done a Japanese course and could pronounce with style all the tongue-twisting names of leaders and unit types (teppo = musketeers, yumi = archers, kibamusha = cavalry, infantry = ashigaru, leader = busho etc). The only good news for my side was an optional rain rule which we decided to play, which would stop the teppo (see previously) from firing for a turn. The basic game system is very interactive. Sides roll for initiative, affected by your overall commander's rating. You then activate a clan and do something (move/fire, recover, rally, withdraw etc) with it. Then you either roll to do something more with that clan or try to activate another one. Another disadvantage of my side was that I had one commander while Erik had two with more activation points than me. There is an error in the setup for Takeda Katsuyori as he should get to choose a activation point and not an initiative point rating. The other side can either wait until you fail a die roll to continue or 'trump', intervene and try to roll to grab the initiative. Shock and fire combat take place when a clan's units are activated and are next to or in range of the enemy. Attacking an enemy clan will activate it for free. Also reaction fire and withdrawal are available to enemy clans withing range while your clan moves. We decided to play for fun for a turn to pick up the feel of the game. I decided to attack the southern end of Erik's line. His commander that end had only one activation point and my cavalry could get around the flank. Erik had virtually no cavalry in his army at all. Shock combat was especially fiddly to work out initially. Things were not helped by the large number of ratings on units and the stacks of units and markers (of different sizes) that began to accumulate. Attacking in the south paid off: the shock combat routine rewards cavalry charges against unit flanks (everything has to face a hex vertex for its front two hexes/ZOC). Shock combat involves dishing out cohesion hits to the enemy which total first towards disruption and then towards rout. I got most of one clan of Erik's routed and a couple more beat up. The opposing bushos in one shock combat squared off against one another in personal combat and my chap won. Erik hit back in the centre where his teppo started shooting up my cavalry which made nice targets on a forward ridge. They did not rout but one turns worth of volleys had pushed a few units towards disruption. The game continues till one side or the other reaches a critical number of rout points. Apart from fire and shock combat there is personal combat involving samurai. This is a unique feature of the game as samurai can be used to challenge your opponent's bushos into personal combat, which they usually lose. Losing a personal combat gives a 'severed head' counter (worth rout points) to the opposition! If a busho refuses a challenge then he 'loses face' and his command ratings go down. Spending an activation point allows you to pick a samurai blind from a cup instead of moving a clan. I used a samurai to take out some of Erik's leaders for his southern clans. At this point we looked up to find out that it was nearly 5pm! This is not a simple game. Erik made a tasty dinner and we started again from turn 1. I tried the same strategy but this time Erik withdraw his southern flank to contain what damage I did. I drew a good samurai and killed one of Erik's bushos. He promptly drew his ownsamurai and got the best one in the pot. This fellow (Mitayomo?) killed my samurai and one of my bushos. Two severed heads to one in Erik's favour! The errata we had recommended limiting samurai drawing as without limits it seems potentially possible to cripple an army through personal combat against its bushos. I pulled my forces back behind the hill in the centre, reducing drastically the effects of Erik's teppo fire. I also tried some flanking in the north but the terrain there is not suitable (and the map edge is close). We had to finish after a few turns as I had to get back to my hotel in Copenhagen. Nagashino is not so unbalanced after all. If it had rained, I might have risked a frontal cavalry charge, as teppo are easy to kill with shock. Without them Erik would have only had infantry to fight cavalry. The rules took some delving in to find answers. We had questions over the set up. For example, we had to put a cavalry unit of mine in the honshin (HQ) hex as there was no where else it could go as stacking was basically one cavalry or infantry unit per hex. Also it is not clear how a samurai 'charge' through a line of teppo could result in injuries from their fire. We played that cohesion hits from fire equated to stamina hits in personal combat. All in all a game that grows on you. Its exotic subject is captured well (once you understand the Japanese terminology used). The basic system models the ebb and flow of battle nicely and there is plenty of chrome (samurai combat etc) for period flavour. Alan Poulter