SBVT07 Oda Nobunaga

JR Tracy will join.
jrtracy@gmail.com

OK, the Draw for the tournament is now up

Round 4: G30 NAGASHINO 1575 AD (Takeda Right Attack)

goshublue (Red - Oda) Banners 7 Blocks 11
Mark McG (Blue - Takeda) Banners 1 Blocks 24

Embarrassed to have won this one by this margin but it was the will of the kami. These Nagashino scenarios go two ways.....the Takeda cavalry get across the river and run riot or the Oda arquebusiers are on target. This time it was the latter. Lots of one shot kills of cavalry at extreme range including 3 hits on 3 dice on a 3 block unit. Two Takeda commander seppukus so that he was working with a command of 3 against the Oda White Dragon command of 6. Two Order One banners from the SSR and the final ignominious nail in the Takeda coffin was a Hail Mary Ninja Assassin kill for the last banner. I'll spare Mark the trauma of recounting the rest of the details.

Brent.

Round 2: beckerdo versus JR: G24 ANEGAWA 1570 AD (Oda against Asai)

beckerdo (Red - Asai) Banners 5 Blocks Lost 19
JR (Blue - Oda) Banners 4 Blocks Lost 21

A very fun game with JR. With few cavalry and many cavalry command cards, I thought for sure this was a loss. I kept backing up and firing arrows. I think the dice were with me as the Oda made very good moves, but I was getting some hits.

The last 3 or 4 turns could have been won by either side. JR could have had it first, but was thwarted by lousy dice. Next, JR had a lone leader, who with stood 3 separate attacks of about 15 dice, survived, and committed sepuku.

Fun times with a great opponent! Thanks, Dan Becker

Round 4: G30 NAGASHINO 1575 AD (Takeda Right Attack)

beckerdo (Red - Oda) Banners 7 Blocks lost 10
PCScipio42 (Blue - Takeda) Banners 3 Blocks lost 26

As mentioned in the G30 battle of goshublue/Mark McG below, this scenario often sees a devastating Takeda cavalry attack or a big Oda missile attack. In this case it was the Oda arquebusiers who had lots of early devastating red dice on the Takeda samurai. Although both sides reformed battle lines, the Oda gunfire eventually knocked out the final samurai spear unit for the win.

Honorable opponent Forrest, and thanks for the game.

boredbeyondbelief (Red) 4 Banners 16 Blocks lost
JR (blue) 3 Banners 15 Blocks lost

This is the second time I'm posting this - something went wrong and the first time it didn't show up. Unfortunately I won't be posting the whole blow-by-blow details again.

I really enjoyed playing JR and hope that we play again soon. It looks like a straightforward scenario, but like most Samurai battles I've played, there was some fun swings and the Dragon cards made for some great moments. While going through the logfile, I noticed that we didn't record a hit on Blue's final turn (it didn't affect the outcome), but the battle tallies have been amended.

 

Round 1: G23 ANEGAWA 1570 AD (Tokugawa against Asakura)

goshublue (Red - Asakura) Banners 4 Blocks 11
rjvonline (Blue - Tokugawa) Banners 1 Blocks 16

This was long and intricate with a lot of manoeuvre for a 4 banner battle. Quite enjoyable. Intimidated by the firepower on the Tokugawa right the Asakura retired their left and pushed forward on their own right flank, just hoping they would have the cards to sustain that and not leave their options lopsided. They did....but only just, a Tactical Wisdom and Brave Messenger helping out. They were far more fortunate than the result suggested, with two crippling dice rolls against Tokugawa red infantry and a leader kill. A very interesting end game with the Tokugawa using Wise Advisor to pull a Cavalry Charge which was going to wreak havoc among the exposed Asakura ashigaru, the Asakura playing a Wild Winds (which they had only just drawn!) to delay the charge one turn and a desperate but successful attack against a Tokugawa samurai bowman for the last banner. Fun game. Well played, Renaud. The dice and cards really decided this and luck could have reversed this result entirely.

Brent.

 

Renaud / rjvonline / Oda / blue: 5 (20)
vs
Daniele / DanieleC / Asai / red: 2 (22)

Daniele started strong with Hold and Shoot, targeting my foot leaders and attached samurai. I was able to grab that card from the discard pile with Wise Advisor, but then he played Counter-Attack and got his second go at Hold and Shoot in the first 3 (?) turns. Soon enough my two units were down to 1 block each; fortunately no leader was killed in the process, but I had to pull them back out of harm. My own shooting was very ineffective in the beginning. Bur then a Ninja Assassin took his cavalry leader, scoring the first banner, and then my shooting finally took one of his samurai bow units out. Daniele attacked in the center right, but then I counter-attacked with Infantry Onslaught, then Red, and then Assault in the Center, and lo and behold, I ended up winning 5-2, with some fortunate die-rolling. This was my first game ever in which all honor and fortune points were stored by the players (Daniele got the lead in that endeavor, being up 18-12 at some point in time), and as a result we also got a large number of Dragon cards, with mine being on the whole more successful than his (not that he didn't have good cards, like Revenge (5d), Desperate Charge (5d) or Famine (3d), but his die-rolling didn't help). 

Round 3 G29 NAGASHINO 1575 AD (Takeda Center Attack) 
Beckerdo (Oda-Tokugawa) 6 Banners 27 Blocks lost
Mark McG (Takeda) 7 Banners 18 Blocks lost

Initial musket fire was largely ineffective, followed by a Takeda cavalry charge up to the river which netted 2 hits out of 12 rolls and a dead Takeda leader. This pretty much set the pace of the game, with nothing spectacular, just a steady chipping away of units.

My view is Dan made a mistake with the Arquebusiers staying in close combat with Samurai, even in the pallisades and river, despite some successes, the samurai generally were unhurt and battled back to gradually wear down the arquebusiers.

So from a 5-2 lead, including a Scout card, Oda was gradually overtaken by Takeda, primarily due to the foot troops doing far better than the cavalry (which all died). At 6-5 Oda way, the Takeda ashigaru made the move on the right, finishing off a worn down arquebusier (6-6) and the highly speculative attack on a full strength unit with a leader, mainly hoping for the 1 in 6 chance to win. The 1 in 6 came good.

Round 3 G31 NAGASHINO 1575 AD (Takeda Left Attack)
Daniele (Oda-Tokugawa) 3 Banners 16 Blocks lost
Mark McG (Takeda) 5 Banners 15 Blocks lost

a rather perverse game where my initial hand was so poor I could do little but hide. The sum of orders on my initial 5 command cards was 11 orders. So the samurai cavalry did a bit of ducking behind trees to take them out of arquebus fire.

After several turns of hand weeding and desultory arquebus fire, the initially weak Oda right flank had been reinforced, and since my hand had developed into more right hand cards, so I went up the Takeda right, closing quickly.

The stream crossing went well, with the defending arquebus unit retreating, and with the Takeda cavalry unit in pursuit, I thought this looked promising.
As it turned out, the cavalry were ashigaru shy, managing just 2 hits on 16 dice despite pushing them back to the board edge over two turns. Not any better on the ashigaru spearmen either, but when it came to Samurai..  killers. Took out the Samurai Archers and Yasumasa before being killed.

On the other edge, Daniele grew tired of waiting and forded the river to confront Masakaga. The cavalry clash in the stream was essentially equal, bother lost 1 cavalry and one cavalry leader. 

Back on the Oda left, Yasutaka came to try and beat the Takeda ashigaru that had crossed in the wake of the cavalry, only to die on a spear.

So Takeda won, killing 3 leaders and 2 Samurai units, versus 1 dead leader and 2 dead Samurai units. Leader casualties determined the outcome, meaning dumb luck was the deciding factor.