Mark, I only just noted that you'd posted some comments in the Genpei blog following your GP04. Miidera match. Thanks for those. Sorry, I didn't see them (subscription failure). I posted some thoughts there but I'm sure nobody will see it, so I've pasted part of it here, specifically in response to the role and power of monks in general in these scenarios.
I'm very keen on feedback for these scenarios and they will certainly alter based on the results of this tournament, but I thought it might be helpful to clarify some of the design decisions I've made.
Mark wrote:
5-1 Taira win, and the Monks were pushing to get that banner.
Monks are all Blue, which makes all Red units able to ignore a Sword and a Flag, and for the cavalry, 2 Swords. Ergo, the Red units attack. Monks can get stuck with Green & Red cards.
I agree the monks are outmatched toe to toe against reds, as is the case with all three colour level mismatches and cavalry in this game....although their H&F rerolling does give them a boost over the standard Ashigaru Spearman. This mismatch is intentional for simulation purposes and is designed to be specific to the few limited scenarios that predominantly feature the monks (only 4 out of 30....Taiken Gate, First Uji, Midera and Nara). It was not planned as a design feature for monks in general. I was more interested in how well the monks can fight their lost cause for this brief historical period than creating a general system for monks. In my solo playtesting of this scenario, which I think is the hardest of all the scenarios for the monks, the results were 75% Taira/25% monks, which is about where I wanted it.
What this first phase of the Genpei War clearly demonstrated, with the Taira victory over predominantly sohei forces at The First Battle of Uji, Miidera and Nara (and to some extent Taiken Gate a few years before the war) was the ascendancy of samurai equipment, tactics, organisation and particularly combined arms systems over the religious warriors. By the end of Nara, in six quick months from the initial showdown at Uji, the Taira had completely and utterly broken the temples as a military force. This had been coming for some time and it was only the awe and reverence in which the temples were held, and the belligerence of the sohei, which had kept the warrior clans in check until then. Kiyomori blew all of that away.
So the inability of the monks to effectively use order red and green cards, particularly in this scenario which is the only one where they have no other colours, is specifically to reflect the mismatch in tactical systems/combined arms between them and the samurai. Monks do appear in a couple of other scenarios (GP09. Hiuchi Fort and GP16. Siege of Hojuji) but in smaller supplementary numbers as part of a general force, so this would not be an issue there.
I also didn't want to get too complicated......special rules for three different colours of monks would be too much. In all the principle monk scenarios they are combined with another colour, with the exception of Miidera. In those cases these are regular units of their type and this would be how I would handle this in any further hypothetical generic monk scenarios, rather than making new multicoloured monks. So, for the sake of argument, if players wanted to tweak these scenarios to edge their balance toward the monks, I would recommend simply substituting a couple of sohei warrior units with samurai naginatas. I'd also note that in each of these scenarios the monks are given something to protect them or use to their tactical advantage (palisades, defending a river crossing, an instant victory condition at Taiken Gate)......they're never going toe to toe with the reds without a tactical edge to attempt to manipulate. In both Miidera and Nara, the monks have the Palisades to put them on an equal footing in the sword and flag ignoring stakes and working out how to do that (and for the Taira, how to get around it) is part of the tactical challenge.
One oversight that did strike me on reviewing the logfile of your match, is that I have the Taira burning temples for a victory banner if they start their turn occupying them. This was worth 2 quick victory banners to them. While this sort of mechanism is consistent with "occupation banners" in SSRs in other C&C games, I'd moved away from this in later scenarios in the project, making these sorts of destruction/occupation banners available only when the occupying unit is ordered and generally not allowing them to move or battle while they concentrate on the destruction. This swings the tempo back a little to the defender....I expect you might have had an opportunity to score another banner or two against depleted Taira units in your match. I wouldn't change this mid-tournament but will almost certainly do so for the finalised scenario.
). I wasn't going to cancel those initial forum threads as they have other posters' comments in them but I'll make a note in them to redirect to the blog.
