Jim suggested he had individually mounted Japanese Samurai to add to my collection for a “Lion Rampant” rules game.
These rules, while designed for the European medieval period, work well for other conflicts and convert well for early Japanese warfare ( well for tabletop wargames anyway)
The introduction of the gunpowder handgun (‘teppo’) into Japan in the early 16th century adds a weapon not within the Lion Rampant rules arsenal. Jim declared he would rather use a bunch of bows, but I like them as Samurai killers. But each troop type has advantages and disadvantages…as long as you can activate them! That is the key to LR, and outcome of games as usual, will depend upon them.
The scenario has the holders of the castle running out of the castle to prevent Jim and his contingent, along with the ambushers of Kevin arriving randomly later, to systematically burn each of the fields and village buildings thus burning the castle inhabitants food source.
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| Jim's ashigaru burning along. One of the banner designs he used is the same as mine and the same Kingsford Miniatures. |
Jim and Kevin were having the usual LR trouble with activating, while Will and Peter were doing better, shooting up opposing teppo units “before they can shoot back!” Even the rather weak firepower from the castle wall got a couple of important hits. As Peter points out: “Every courage test required could be a disaster”.
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| a teppo unit about to be attacked by irate peasants |
The game swung slowly to the castle defenders favour despite my back up plan to have a reinforcements arrive after a (d6) number of units from one side or the other were eliminated and we had a few more hours to go. Kevin’s dice rolling had the extra unit depart rather quickly unfortunately.
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| Jim's ashigaru vs one of Takeda samurai commanded this game by WillB. More of the Samurai's friends are just off camera. |
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| Fighting at the village gate |
I had my Peasant favourites situated in the village to attack any unit trying to burn a building. Peasants are rather poor fighters and did little, even against a teppo unit, so fell back to their station within the village. One of Kevin’s ashigaru infantry units ignored them while torching ( well, TRYING to alight the thatch of a village building…all that was needed to do so was the unit’s ‘move’ activation, something he was unable to do for many turns! ). My peasants, finally rallied, had enough of this burning and went into these elite fighters. The results were not good. The peasants were slaughtered. And their attack on the ashigaru? I needed sixes. I got 6 ones! Ugg. But as was agreed by all, it was “Doug’s usual rolling”.
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| my usual dice rolling....... sigh ...... |
Fun game with the usual unpredictability.
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| ground eye view of the action between my collection's clans (Kingsford Miniatures) |
