Terry and I had many discussions about the definitions and compo-sitions of the AW and MW army lists. One that was a particular issue for me as I disagreed with Terry’s interpretation of the weapons of the two Japanese lists for MW.

Now before anyone says anything about emasculating a "killer army", let me remind you that I have a 15mm Japanese army and all of my comments were based on years of research, much of which was from reading Stephen Turnbull’s first rate books on the Japanese military. My approach to this army was no different than that applied to all other lists, although I had done my personal research to develop my own army.

Before sending the two lists to Terry, I asked him to reconsider the definition of the weapon type, longbow. My theory is that previous army lists were too generous in defining Japanese bows as longbows on par with the English and Mongolian weapons. This was based primarily on two historical observations: first the Japanese bow was used mainly at short range, and second that the Mongolians outranged the Japanese during the two unsuccessful invasions during the 13^th Century AD/CE.

Terry preferred to retain the longbow classification because of the parallel use in other army lists. It was not until Cold Wars 2004 that he realized that the armies were just too powerful given their weapon and armor classifications. This "epiphany" came from a discussion with Rob Robertson, the SP tournament director and owner of a Later Japanese army.

Editor's Note:

We have generated quite a bit of interest on our yahoo rules group since Perry mentioned that we were going to do this. Most of the response has been positive, but there has been a bit of negative reply as well.

Again, we are doing this because of the fact that history simply does not bear out the use of a Japanese 'longbow' such as the English and Burgundians were using. One respondent likened the Japanese art of the period showing the warriors looking like porcupines and noted that it was obvious from this that the weapon was simply not that powerful.

Another email brought up the point that Japanese would shoot on horseback at very close ranges again noting that it was not that powerful. I have since amended my view and accepted that the Japanese had a bow, but not of the same caliber as the composite bow or longbow.

An interesting discussion, none the less! Please be sure to check out our rules group at GoreAMwar@yahoogroups

Ancient and Medieval Warfare: Official Later Japanese MW Army List Revision