Jim Butters, Cliff Sayr, and I are wargaming fans… we are all retirees, we all spent some time in the Navy, and a couple of years ago, we three formed the Ancients Mariners Eating Society (AMES). AMES meets about once a month, at which time we head for the local buffet, gorge ourselves, and come back to the Simon house for an afternoon’s game. In our latest effort, we spent some 2 hours pushing my collection of 34mm single-mounted Samurai figures on the table top. Many years ago, I purchased about a dozen 34mm figures at a convention, and have added to them ever since. I don’t know the name of the original manufacturer, and I have never seen a 34mm Samurai line on sale. Tom Elsworth gifted me with an assortment of 25mm Dixon Samurai, which are absolute abominations… I have never seen worse sculpted figures. From the waist up, the figures approximate 30mm in size, but from the waist down, there’s nothing there… the legs seem to be attached directly to the crotch area, making for a sort of crippled hobgoblin. What I did was to cut the figures at the waist, and by soldering, join these upper portions with the ‘waist and legs’ portion of a number of 30mm figures, creating a semblance of normal anatomy. Some of my creations worked well, some look rather awkward, but the result is that I’ve assembled about 80 figures, enough to present a skirmish game. In our AMES skirmish, Jim was given the task of defending Castle Yoru, and for this, he was assigned three 5-man groups. Each group, or band, had a leader, and the men in the bands were of five types, identifiable because of the different weapons they carried. Mounted Samurai This guy was the pick of the crop, the fiercest fighter, easily identified simply because he sat in the saddle. In combat, he’d get a +10 Foot Samurai Almost as fierce as their mounted brethren, these men all bore swords. In combat, he’d get a +5 Warriors Run-of-the-mill soldiers, these men all bore spears, for a +3. Wanna-bees Apprentice types, who carried nakka-nakkas, which looked like a couple of … well… nakka-nakkas… essentially, a couple of sticks. The wanna-bees were in training for bigger things. The wanna-bees got a +2 in combat Archers And then there were the archers, which rated, in combat, the lowest of the low, simply because I didn’t know what else to do with them. They got a +1 in combat. What the above definitions did was to make each man easily identifiable… you saw a guy with a sword, and he was a foot samurai. You saw a guy with a couple of sticks, and it was obvious that he was a wanna-bee. And so on. Now if I were a true samurai aficionado, I would have had ronin swordsmen running around, and ashigarus waving their naginatas, and sohei warrior monks with chippy-choppers… but, for me, the designations I gave above were sufficient to impart the "flavor of the period". ‘Nuff said. In each of Jim’s 5-man bands, he was assigned an archer with a 25 inch range. For the archery procedure, I borrowed a page from Terry Sirk’s book, and tossed in a windage factor. This used a 10-inch stick, marked off in 10-inch increments, labeled 1 through 10. When the archer fired, we placed the stick perpendicular to the line of sight, with the center of the stick in front of the targeted man, and with the increment labeled #1 to the firer’s left, and the last increment, # 10, to the firer’s right. A 10-sided die was tossed to determine the increment number through which the arrow passed. If the die roll was a 4, 5, 6, or 7, the target was hit, otherwise whatever man happened to be at the particular critical increment was deemed to be the poor soul to receive the arrow. Note that, nominally, you’d have 40 percent chance to hit the desired target (tosses of 4, 5, 6, or 7), but even if you missed the target at which you were aiming, you might also hit any unfortunate who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. This was how Rak, one of Jim’s leaders, was hit. Cliff had one of his archers aim at the archer in Rak’s band, and instead of hitting the archer, the arrow went off course, and took out poor Rak. Rak was immediately removed off-board to a rally zone. The sequence contained a phase for rallying, or recovery, of wounded men. Rak had an 80 percent chance to rejoin his men, which he did… but Cliff and I noticed that when Rak reappeared, Jim placed him directly in back of one of Rak’s own men, so that he couldn’t be targeted again. We thought this was exceptionally un-samurai-like behavior. Cliff had five 5-man bands attacking Castle Yoru, versus Jim’s three. A deck of cards was used to determine the band to be activated. Each side was given its own deck, and cards drawn alternately, with each card designating one of the bands. In fact, each band had 2 cards in the deck, the functions of which were slightly different. One card said that the player could determine the actions of the band… move, attack, fire, etc. The other card said to refer to the "Response Charts" to determine the action of the band. In effect, therefore, the player could control his bands only half the time… the other half, they’d be governed by the annotations on the Response Charts. There were five such charts, each predicated upon the distance to the nearest enemy band. Enemy within 5 inches, and under cover Enemy within 5 inches, and in the open Enemy within 20 inches, and under cover Enemy within 20 inches, and under cover No enemy within 20 inches Here’s the last chart, the one used when no enemy was present within 20 inches of the band. Percentage dice were tossed to determine the actions of the band. The charts drawn up for the situations in which enemy bands were close up (less than 20 inches) contained some fairly high percentages for the activated band firing and charging in. The chart previously shown, that for no enemy within 20 inches, essentially caused the attacking force to lose the battle. At the start of the battle, the attackers were all off-board. Cliff would draw a card, say for Oja’s band. He’d move the band 10-inches onto the board. Then, later in the sequence, Oja’s other card would appear, this one referring Oja’s actions to the charts. The chart to be used would be the one previously shown, for the castle was some 30 inches across the field. And so Cliff would toss his percentage dice to determine what Oja and his men would do, and end up with a 95… indicating that Oja’s band would fall back 10 inches, off the board again. As each of Cliff’s units came on the field for the first turn, and referred to the same chart, he continued to toss over 90, with each toss resulting in the affected unit falling back off the table. This was no way to conduct an attack. Due to this slow, slow start, the attackers never made it to the castle proper… Jim was easily able to keep them away. Jim started with three bands… 15 men… and Cliff’s archers did good work. At battle’s end, over half of Jim’s men had been hit and were in the rally zone, awaiting the rally phase. If Cliff’s men could have closed to contact, he’d have smashed through quite easily since Jim didn’t have that many defenders left. But it seemed that half the time, Cliff’s tosses on the response charts resulted in his units holding or falling back. When two bands clashed in combat, we’d look at the leaders of the two bands. In essence, it was the leaders doing the fighting, while the other men assisted. First, the higher status leader was given 5 points for every grade above his opponent. If, for example, a band led by a mounted samurai attacked that of a warrior, then, since the mounted samurai was 2 grades above the warrior, the mounted guy would start with a +10, while the warrior would start off with nothing. Second, we’d add the values of all the remaining men in the band to the leader’s value. I gave these combat values when I listed the types of men. Third, we added a percentage dice throw to the above numbers. The high total won, and the winner sent one man to the rally zone, while the loser sent 2 men there, and fell back. I should note that I had drawn up this set of rules to run as a solo game. I didn’t want to select the band to be activated, hence the use of the sequence deck. And each time a band was activated, as designated on its sequence card, I’d refer to the appropriate chart to determine its response. In effect, activation decisions were taken out of my hands. Solo was fine, but for a 2-party game, it turned out that it wasn’t the best of the best… a rather lurchy sequence. I’ll work on it. Back to PW Review June 2001 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com