Andy and I met this week to fight for the first time with the Samurai armies that Adrian painted for us. The leaders of our clans first met on the battlefield to discuss peace terms but then decided to roll their aggression dice instead.
As defender, Andy (top of photo) laid our the terrain and James (bottom) decided to attack over the difficult hill and hold the banks of the river within reach of the initial deployment.
Unfortunately, when testing the river, James rolled a 6 (one of few he rolled ;-) which meant the river slowed progress and could only be crossed by single elements or columns.
A series of 2 PIP dice from James and sixes from Andy, meant James couldn't safely get across the river and Andy pressed up on his right flank and repositioned to hold the difficult hill on the left.
Soon Andy burst across the river in numbers and pushed James off the bank, taking casualties.
On the other flank, James started attacking Andy's Auxilia in the difficult hill - which we accidentally allowed to fight as Blades but they still started taking losses.
Both clans had lost two elements each but James left flank was in disarray and under a lot of threat from Andy. So James managed to get in and around one of Andy's blades and his general for a couple of 50/50 rolls that would either win it - or leave him even more vulnerable. Sadly for Andy it paid off, with rolls of 5/2 and 5/1 killing off Andy's 3rd and 4th elements, and giving James' Hojo clan the win.
A slow game as we're still not acquainted fully with the V3 DBA rules but a lot of fun. Key learning points were:
- a difficult river isn't a particular class of Going that means elements use their Bad Going speed, everything moves at 1 BW per turn
- we forgot about command distance which is important when Generals are in terrain or troops behind hills
- and Andy's Auxilia who played as Blades made us wonder when we would ever use the 4 Auxilia option over Blades, since the latter are so much better, and none of the Samurai historical enemies have Knights. We decided we'd just agree to both use them or both not in future civil wars!
As defender, Andy (top of photo) laid our the terrain and James (bottom) decided to attack over the difficult hill and hold the banks of the river within reach of the initial deployment.
A series of 2 PIP dice from James and sixes from Andy, meant James couldn't safely get across the river and Andy pressed up on his right flank and repositioned to hold the difficult hill on the left.
Soon Andy burst across the river in numbers and pushed James off the bank, taking casualties.
On the other flank, James started attacking Andy's Auxilia in the difficult hill - which we accidentally allowed to fight as Blades but they still started taking losses.
Both clans had lost two elements each but James left flank was in disarray and under a lot of threat from Andy. So James managed to get in and around one of Andy's blades and his general for a couple of 50/50 rolls that would either win it - or leave him even more vulnerable. Sadly for Andy it paid off, with rolls of 5/2 and 5/1 killing off Andy's 3rd and 4th elements, and giving James' Hojo clan the win.
A slow game as we're still not acquainted fully with the V3 DBA rules but a lot of fun. Key learning points were:
- a difficult river isn't a particular class of Going that means elements use their Bad Going speed, everything moves at 1 BW per turn
- we forgot about command distance which is important when Generals are in terrain or troops behind hills
- and Andy's Auxilia who played as Blades made us wonder when we would ever use the 4 Auxilia option over Blades, since the latter are so much better, and none of the Samurai historical enemies have Knights. We decided we'd just agree to both use them or both not in future civil wars!
