From: Baron Samedi Subject: Mikata-Ga-Hara Replay Alan Poulter writes about Samurai: ----------------------------- 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. ------------------------- Dave Townsend and I played Samurai for the first time versus a human bean (each other) recently. We chose the Mikata-Ga-Hara scenario, partly because we had already started an attempt at PBEM of that scenario, partly because it's a Shingen scenario, and I've been a fan of the Takeda clan ever since I saw Kagemusha. In all other respects, Mikata-Ga-Hara is wildly unbalanced in favor of the Takeda clan, who outnumber the Ieyeyasu/Oda factions several times over. I agree with what Alan writes here about the game system, so I won't repeat it with specifics for Mikata-Ga-Hara. For those of you who don't know of the battle history, it was a fairly minor affair that ended with a historical Ieyeyasu loss. However, Tokugawa handled himself with some distinction during this battle, neatly maneuvering out of disaster. Dave rolled for initiative and got it. he advanced one clan and got continuation, moving the clan within five or sex hexes of my advance lines. I moved one or two smaller clans to engage. Our commanders fought and my guy chopped off his guy's head, giving me a bundori to view in my HEADquarters. He moved up the formidable Ii clan, with one of the baddest so-taishos in the battle. I moved to flank this unit, since they fought absurdly well. I managed to get units behind the Ii clan to surround it, making for a better attack. With a lot of soak-off style shock combats, I managed to whittle it down to nothing. This was a calculated risk, since the maneuver exposed MY troops to a flank assault by some of the Tokegawa men. I was willing to roll those dice since he could not move them into shock combat range on the fifth movement point, and I was five hexes away from his units. Dave was having a very difficult time activating other units. He brought another clan up on my left, which I easily flanked because my dispositions were much more spread apart. Some punishment started, and I took another head for viewing. By this time, the line was getting pretty static, but was weak in places, as I had taken tons of cohesion hits (as had Dave). I achieved victory conditions after another turn. It being late, we opted to call it quits for the evening. My analysis: Dave was facing a hard battle, even versus a newbie. Mikata-Ga-Hara is almost unwinnable as a stand up battle (for the Tokugawas), we both knew it but were more interested in having a great time and learning the system. Numbers were important here-- I could play for time, Dave had no such options past turn two. I could also move to flank on both sides, and did (I had the soldiers to do it, he didn't). Activation is CRITICAL in this game. If you blow the activation or continuation, you can get in a lot of trouble PDQ. This really hurt Dave's side, when I surrounded the Iis, he could not activate to respond when I was sitting there with my flanks exposed. The terrain was wide and flat, with few interruptions to slow my mostly cavalry force down. This helped the Shingens more than it helped the Tokugawas. The only game mechanic we didn't try was single combat using Samurai. If the game had gone longer, I would certainly tried to activated a few. On a qualitive level, I enjoyed the game immensely. The rulebooks are, like a lot of GMT's products, badly organized and unclear on some points. The components (maps and counters) are, like all GMT products, very attractive and well designed. There is some inconsistency with the placement of the same information on different types of counters, but we overcame this. I strongly recommend Samurai to those of you sitting on the fence. Walt O'Hara