Battle of Mikata Ga Hara 1572

The first game of the year was provided by Jon, who got out his Samurai for us once more. We were looking at one of the interminable battles that preceded the installation of the Tokugawan Shogunate that closed Japan from the outside world for nearly 300 years.

We were to use Jon's Basic Impetus hex variant for the period. He provided his usual briefing and victory conditions, including the above map. Unfortunately for this report all of the subsequent pictures are taken from the other way round, as I was in command of the Tokugawan army along with Chris K. We were up against the combined might of Ian, Steve and Richard. I chose Tokugawa as he's the guy who "Shogun" is based upon, and is the eventual winner. Alas his ultimate victory is 20 years in the future, and he doesn't come well out of this one.

We are outnumbered, but not by as much as the historical reports suggest (at least according to Turnbull) but we had the element of surprise, and were allowed to move with some freedom in the first two turns, before the Takedans would eventually all become activated. This advantage led us into error.

[Apologies for the picture quality. Jon had the odd bandwidth issue, and I was also running two camera angles side by side, so the screen grabs were smaller than normal]

Which is to say we got our forces into position to launch a devastating attack at the start of turn three, only to lose the initiative roll, and have our activation dice pulled out somewhat tardily from the game bag.

Our plan is for a form of double envelopment. I have command of the left. I have got my spears out wide on the left, and I am moving my missile troops into position to soften up the enemy on the ridge before charging them. Chris has more of a problem on the right, as the enemy is further back.

What the failure to keep the initiative meant was that our opponents were able to open fire first, and inflict a few hits along the line. Our return fire was ineffective. Disorder is shown by the presence of white plastic crosses behind the units.

My left flank commander lurking in the trees to the front of left centre is positioned for a master stroke.

Undeterred by my lack of success with my shooting, my spears on the left attack and are repulsed. NB There might be some confusion if you are trying to follow the values of the dice behind the units, as Jon realised he had all the spears one pip too low. The spears on the right therefore go from 4 to 5 then back to 4 when they are hit. The big dice are tracking the army breakpoints. don't try to follow them, either. They're recording it in base 6. Apparently. So 3:2 is 20 (3 x 6 + 2) I reckon, out of a starting total of 22 for the Takedans.

Oh, and my master stroke with my commander and has samurai mounted bow fails dismally, and he is thrown back in disorder.

On the right Chris has launched some coordinated punches, and is pushing Richard back.

Chris now launches a death of glory charge with the Samurai cavalry led by Tokagawa himself from the right hand end of our centre line.

The charge smashes through some Ashigaru, before colliding with smoe samurai mounted bow and grinding to a halt.

On our right Richard tries to get round our flank, but he is forced to charge the end of our line to hold it in place.

Chris shows inspired leadership (***rolls great dice***) and throws the enemy back.

The attacks on my wing finally come together. A one/two with my spears and samurai mounted bow destroy one of the enemy units on the ridge, and my spear breakthrough into the rear area. This should prove to be the key to the battle, if only I can get it right.

Over on Chris' flank, Richard has massed an enormous force with which to overwhelm him.

Tokugawa is beaten in combat, and retires back behind our centre line. His bravery has kept that wing pinned back until we can act. I have a unit of samurai bow to the left front of the tree on my flank, positioned to prevent Steve exploiting the space I opened up with my attack several pictures back. They are more than a match for the Ashigaru spear Steve has facing them.

However,  Steve storms off the hill top and to everyone's surprise defeats my samurai bow. I wasn't too worried, but that was because I'd forgotten that my command unit (the one with the circular base) hadn't about faced after being beaten earlier, so has its rear to the enemy.

As you can see, my beaten bow were pushed back in line with my General's unit. Luckily Steve was unable to follow up.

On the right, Chris counter attacks via the high ground, after we've had a quick exchange about the best sequence to do the attacks in. Chris is a great guy to have on your side, but sometimes he forgets exactly how the rules work. In this case he hadn't remembered that you have to resolve all a unit's actions, before moving on to the next. Once he has a system fixed in his head, he's lethal.

His attack went in successively from right to left, shooting first where possible. He rolled BRILLIANT dice, to go with his superb tactics, and drove back the front line flank unit, and declined to pursue to avoid being caught in a 2:1 combat. Note the big dice, top left, showing 1,1. That's 7 in base 6. We're ahead by 6 points, I think. Not bad as we started 4 behind. 

The unit to the left of his successful charge then attacked, and again forced the enemy back, declining to follow up. The push back drops them another BP. See - they only have one dice now - and 6 means 6 in this case.  It's looking pretty good.

Another push back drops them to 5. Then Richard counter attacks on Chris' flank. After discussion with Jon, his well co-ordinated troops drive Chris off the high ground. Our BP is dropping quickly.

Steve then attacks again by the tree, and breaks my samurai bow. Damn. We're down to a single BP dice now, as Chris' flank reels back too. Are we about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?

Feeling confident, Steve moves his unit top left, up on to the hill line, to stop my spears at the back attacking them. He has sort of done what I wanted, as he has turned them into the path of my samurai bow. I move my spears across to block his retreat path with my ZOC. Or so I thought.

That unit of Steve's is a badly beaten up spear unit from early in the game, that was sheltering out of the way. Now I can get at it. The samurai go in, and drive them off the top of the hill. My spear unit ZOC will destroy them.

Oh no! In my excitement I had forgotten that disordered units have no ZOC!! We need to fight again, but at least my spears can join in. A couple more hits, and Steve's Ashigaru are destroyed, and we grab a last minute victory.

Phew! A tense, free flowing game, which - Jon told us - turned history on its head. I can't claim any particular genius in what we did. Chris had a good evening with the dice, which compensated for some of my less successful encounters, and we did, mostly, get our unit attacks delivered in the right order. This was a good result, seeing as how we threw away our initiative advantage from the first couple of turns.

Looking back at the pictures, and reflecting on the game, it is odd how dislocated the time line sometimes seems. Some units accomplish a lot in a turn, fighting several rounds of combat, and effectively sometimes tripling their move distance whilst other units stand and look at them. Contrast this with how long it took to get my breakthrough spears back in the game and the fact that I never did about face my General and his unit. It provides a really interesting dynamic to the game which creates situations where the death or glory charge does stand a good chance of glory as you can also see from the account of the first such game we played, almost exactly a year ago.

Good start to the year.