Samurai v Goths

[martin goddard]

Dennis and martin with Goths.
Mike and stewart with Samurai.

The Samurai army had no shields.  Mainly auxiliaries and close order. Very few skirmishers.
The Goths went for a lot of infantry and quality cavalry.

The samurai generals achieve 1 gift between them and the Goth generals ended up with 6 gifts between them.

Dennis rolled wonderfully. Getting 10 out of 12 scores of 5,6. A wonder.

The Samurai army held a row of hills.
The Goth cavalry achieved a central break through.

The Goths ended the game with more kill dice and more zones.
A significant Goth win.

A great game but tough on the Samurai (and the causes of samurai).

martin

[Colonel Kilgore]

Sounds very wrong to me, Martin, but presumably the rules were adjudged perfect as you and Dennis won with a frontal charge from lots of hairy types? 

Simon

[Stevewales88]

Interesting, Martin. I too wonder why the Samurai lost - apart from because of your superior play of course! What could they do differently in the next battle to improve their chances of winning,?
Steve

[John Watson]

I was under the impression that the Samurai made great use of the bow, both mounted and on foot, but there are none on the list. The only shot is with the auxiliaries. My knowledge of these armies is very superficial so I could be thinking of different Samurai armies.
On the other hand there are some armies in these lists that are very hard to use successfully, even though some were historically dominant. Early Imperial Romans are one. I suspect Vikings might be another, but I haven't used them yet.
I think the rules may be nearing completion but the army lists may need a lot more work. e.g. every army listed should have at least one historically realistic opponent.
John

[Moggy]

That was my impression as well John. 

As far as I can recall about the only experience the ancient Samurai had fighting someone else was the early battle on the beach when the Mongols invaded. I seem to also recall they didn't do very well there either. It was only the great storm that saved them.


Martin what was the downfall of the Samurai in the game?  Not making saves or what?  This could be something important for the game. I would hate for there to be an Army in the lists that has no chance of winning.

Derek

[Stevewales88]

My understanding is that before the Samurai era in Japan there were the Emishi who were nearly all bowmen with more and more mounted as time passed. Then came the Samurai as mainly mounted bowmen and  then more and more bowmen on foot, although very willing to go toe to toe hand in hand. Then the armour became heavier and the bows less, with naginata etc more common place. My two cents ...

[usagitsuki]

I think the first time the Japanese encountered Goths was when the Sisters of Mercy toured there in the 80's.

[martin goddard]

These are Sengoku samurai.

The musket/arquebus had become dominant.Some bows but  a small minority.

The samurai themselves were not using bows.
The cavalry were mounted on smaller horses. No match for proper charger cavalry.
The mass of infantry was now conscript/feudal/trained types of quite good quality ,which allowed for bigger armies.
Japanese infantry was not close order in the way of European close order.
An army of only samurai would be very very small, hence the need for normal (ashigaru) troops. The main body of an army are the trained spear(not naginata) and arquebus units.

The sengoku armies have nothing at all to do with the wargamer idea of mounted bowmen and individual fights.

The Japanese armies did not advance (?) to European standards because they only had each other to learn from.
Japanese armour was pretty lightweight , which allowed good movement and easy manufacture.
Overseas adventures/opponents  (Korean/mongols/Chinese) usually went badly for the Japanese.


BAW has a lot of battles listed if folk want an idea of how it all works.

At the time of Sengoku period (age of war) the Europeans had better armour (plate etc), better horses, better firearms, bigger armies, better artillery, better diet etc...


The game
The Japanese had a lot of auxiliary but few shooters.
The Goths used their cavalry to smash into these formations. Added to which the cavalry were able to move  faster than the Japanese. The Japanese needed some more  bad scenery and better dice too.

We shall fight with samurai again next week to see what is going on.
The Japanese are not a very good army under CK. However players can choose to play against Koreans and other  Japanese which will give them a better game.

I feel CK has to copy the idea of ancients stretching from chariots to knights.
CK overcomes some of the discrepancy by only having a few troop types.
There would not be enough of a following for a narrow period. Of course players can fight historical opponents, that would be great.


I am certainly biased, but I am enjoying playing CK more than any other ancient rule set I have played in the last 50 years ( obvious of course).

martin

[Stewart 46A]

The Samurai force had to have close order veteran amerouerd infantry with 1 armoured cav and bow armed auxiliaries, as per the army list no shields and very few skirmish units, only 3 allowed.

The samurai didn't have the units to hold the ground and cover the flanks so a square being hit twice lost the fight and even though few casualties from the actual fight were few, lost usually 3 in the after fight persuit.

Weymouth Mike was unlucky in every morale test he was rolling the worst result and losing more men.

The samurai ran out of men quickly.

We will try again.

Stewart

[John Watson]

From what Martin is saying this is really a Renaissance Samurai army, in the mode of Kagamucha, rather than an ancient army. I fear that CK is heading in the direction of the old WRG rules where ancient Egyptians took on 100 Years War armies. Surely opposing armies should be at least vaguely contemporary.
John

[martin goddard]

Yes John you are totally correct.

CK will allow the old WRG "any one fights anyone".
However, players (most) are able to discipline themselves to fight "in period".
CK also allows them to fight wildly out of period if they want.
But this is purely their choice. If they choose to fight out of period then they can.

The "anyone fights anyone" gives a greater chance of getting a game but it might be historically outrageous. That is entirely a player choice.

CK will allow players to build an army they really like and use it.
If CK only allowed a choice between 5 armies then it would sell very few copies indeed?


Because CK generalises troop categories the armies become more historically plausible.
i.e if army A has auxiliaries and army B has auxiliaries they are treated the same.

The troops in a CK samurai army could be achieved by using the CK later Roman or Chinese list in the most part. Thus  folk can use the figures they like and match it to any army list in the CK army book.


martin

[John Watson]

That's fairly revolutionary. I trust that this will be made clear in the final version of the rules.
John

[usagitsuki]

That's pretty much how the first DBA did it. There was no difference between Anglo-Saxon huscarles and Roman legionaries, they were both 'blade.' We used to play DBA with blocks marked as troop types to play any army.

I think we should draw a distinction between these kind of generic '4,000 year' ancient-medieval rules and those which focus on a narrower period within the larger ancient-medieval one, as they are trying to do different things. The first type is trying to enable players to play games with armies in what wargamers have come to define as the same period (and thus lend themselves more to competitions), the second type is going to try and do a better job of modelling the warfare of a specific period. It's always going to be difficult to fit in non-typical armies (such as Sengoku Japan) into the generic kind of sets without some kind of compromise, and sometimes this compromise will move the army a long way from its historical roots. But if you try and model all the aspects of Sengoku warfare, the army will no longer 'fit' with all the other armies.

You could make period 'modules' which added rules and/or restrictions for particular periods within the ancient-medieval range, but that would require a lot of modules, and a lot of expertise in the periods concerned. There is, of course, nothing to stop players making their own modules using the core rules as a basis.

[Colonel Kilgore]

That's fairly revolutionary. I trust that this will be made clear in the final version of the rules.
John

I think it's pretty standard in the ancient "period", John!

I'm with Usagitsuki's nice summary of how this typically works in practice. Martin is providing the toolkit - up to us what we do with it.

Simon

[Stewart 46A]

Peter Pig do produce period specific rules for
samuai, Vikings etc but I think  C&K is for those  gamers that like a more loose period in time but still a fun set of rule.
I have built 4 armies to play with,
Roman, Mongols,Egyptians  and  Carthaginian
I can also use my Samurai , Vikings and Carolingian armies built for other rule sets so lots of choice

Stewart