Feudal Japan - Ao Vs Shiro clans testing my homebrew rules

[mmcv]

It's been a good few months since I last did anything with my Sengoku Jidai homebrew rules. Since then I've been tinkering with a few different homebrews for other things and off the back of that took the decision to significantly revamp and revise the mechanics for Feudal Japan. You can read an overview of how the core rules now work here: https://mmcvhistory.home.blog/2021/06/08/rules-for-the-sengoku-jidai-revamped/

I played out a test battle using the core rules to see how well it worked in a full game rather than just the small test runs I'd been tinkering with. As I've yet no figures for the period, this is another 2D report using MDF bases for units. I've included plenty of markers and arrows to help illustrate the action better though.



You can read the battle report here:

https://mmcvhistory.home.blog/2021/06/08/battle-report-feudal-japan-ao-vs-shiro-clans/

Next up will be trying another battle with some of the more advanced period flavour rules to see how it all comes together.

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Good effort.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Like it

[Big Insect]

Yes - very good - really captures the flavour of the era.
I am not sure your loyalty tests need to be changed (personally) as these were often very bloody battles, with the losses to the loosing side being catastrophic.

I really like the idea that you start the battle with both sides having to deploy in the 'historical' text-book formations - it's a bit like the old scissors, paper, stones game.
Personally, I would build that in as a compulsory part of the rules. As it adds period flavour.

What size bases are you using? I was thinking of doing mine as a standard 100mm frontage by 50mm deep for standard units, and 50 x 50 for Commanders and artillery.

I'd be very interested in seeing your mechanisms Matthew - if you were prepared to share?

Thanks
Mark

[mmcv]

Thanks!

Yes - very good - really captures the flavour of the era.
I am not sure your loyalty tests need to be changed (personally) as these were often very bloody battles, with the losses to the loosing side being catastrophic.

The issue was primarily one of support. I had it so that any allied unit within 2 movements of the testing unit added a bonus. This made it so that even ashigaru units were incredibly resilient unless they had a huge amount of fire laid into them from all sides. This felt just a little too difficult. My plan is to play again reducing the support distance to 1 movement, which will make it even more important to try and keep your units in a close formation and leave those who end up isolated very vulnerable. To balance that I'm also going to try out a new rule with Banners, wherein the commander may place a banner on a nearby unit under their command to give an additional boost there, so units held together in formation should be reasonably able to power on, but if spread out or gaps start appearing, they will fall apart more easily. I'm also going to allow the Banners to be placed on an enemy unit to give a charge bonus against them and nearby enemies, signalling the commander's intention to get his formation stuck into close combat. Movements are just a pre-agreed unit of distance, typically equivalent to a base width for smaller scales at least.

I really like the idea that you start the battle with both sides having to deploy in the 'historical' text-book formations - it's a bit like the old scissors, paper, stones game.
Personally, I would build that in as a compulsory part of the rules. As it adds period flavour.

Yeah, I want the formations to be important. I don't intend to make it compulsory as such, in that they have to pick from a "predefined" set of formations, though will probably require that they pick their formation prior to deployment. I haven't worked out anything around deployment and table set up just yet, just laying out what I wanted to try, though will possibly use some form of alternating deployment.

The idea is that rather than force the player into adopting a particular formation as a rule requirement, to make the rules work in such a way that if they don't use historical formations, they will be punished for it in combat. In reality, many of the textbook formations seem to be somewhat fanciful, plucked from the minds of Edo era writers with a lot more military books than military experience. While I have no doubt they are based on historical formations, given the mishmash nature of the armies and the ruggedness of the terrain, it seems likely that the Daimyo would have to adapt the formations pretty heavily to what troops they had available and what the battleground was like. This also meant units tended to be looser and deeper than their western counterparts so I wanted to really get a feel for that in the rules.

One of the key aspects is the importance of the commanders, and if the commander's unit is lost then so too will all units under their command rout (though I do have a draft "worthy successor" rule that may soften this for some). This makes protecting the commander of paramount importance and so forces the player to take a lot of care over their flanks and rear, which reflects the formations that seem to be popular at the time. If they were to just make a couple of wide lines they would have a hard time preventing their opponent from loading up all their units to attack the less protected commanders and collapsing their lines, though I'll want to test this out a bit to see what happens.

What size bases are you using? I was thinking of doing mine as a standard 100mm frontage by 50mm deep for standard units, and 50 x 50 for Commanders and artillery.

I haven't fully settled on this myself and just used a 40X20 standard here to make use of a smaller space. My initial thinking was 100x50 for standard units, then 50x25 for small detachments, then maybe 100x75 for large and 100x100 for huge, though I've been doing some projects on an 80x40 standard which also works reasonably well. I need to get some figures and blu tac on the go to try out and see, though I wanted to wait until I was happy with rules so I know what I need to represent on the bases for ease of identification. The rules will be fairly agnostic so long as you can tell the different types apart.

The idea is that the standard unit would be the mixed arm sonae consisting of a mix of ashigaru and samurai all working in coordination. Small units represent either very small sonae or, more often, specific detachments of ashigaru or samurai split off from the larger sonae. So in the above example game, the Shiro had 3 small units of mixed ashigaru (i.e. mix of teppo and yari) while the Ao instead had 2 small units of yari ashigaru and 4 small units of teppo ashigaru. There'll also be options for samurai detachments as well which provide a bonus to the shock phase of combat. I didn't want to overcomplicate the sub unit formations with lots of text book variations on sonae and detachment makeup, so I've drilled them down to "attack formation" i.e. no shooting but bonus to charge and close combat representing either all spear units or mixed units where the gunners are supporting the spear attacks, "firing formation" where the gunners and archers are out front, meaning they can lay down more fire but can't charge and are vulnerable in close combat, "loose formation" to allow faster movement over difficult terrain at the cost of combat penalties, and "balanced formation" which provides no bonus or penalty. Certain unit types will be restricted to only certain types of formation, e.g. a yari ashigaru detachment may only be in attack or loose formation. So a key part of a commander's decision is to manage how and when the units set the formations for maximum effect.

I'd be very interested in seeing your mechanisms Matthew - if you were prepared to share?

Thanks
Mark

Certainly, at the moment they're spread across a few different documents as I've been tweaking and configuring, so I'm hoping to pull them all together into a single doc and a QRS, then I'd be happy to share those drafts to get some other feedback on them, so can give you a shout whenever I get that done.

[Big Insect]

Yeah, I want the formations to be important. I don't intend to make it compulsory as such, in that they have to pick from a "predefined" set of formations, though will probably require that they pick their formation prior to deployment. I haven't worked out anything around deployment and table set up just yet, just laying out what I wanted to try, though will possibly use some form of alternating deployment.

The idea is that rather than force the player into adopting a particular formation as a rule requirement, to make the rules work in such a way that if they don't use historical formations, they will be punished for it in combat. In reality, many of the textbook formations seem to be somewhat fanciful, plucked from the minds of Edo era writers with a lot more military books than military experience. While I have no doubt they are based on historical formations, given the mishmash nature of the armies and the ruggedness of the terrain, it seems likely that the Daimyo would have to adapt the formations pretty heavily to what troops they had available and what the battleground was like. This also meant units tended to be looser and deeper than their western counterparts so I wanted to really get a feel for that in the rules.

I completely agree with all your logic above - my own thinking was that the use of the 'historic' deployments is actually a differentiator and as long as the player declares the intended formation ahead of deployment and sticks with it as near as possible, they either get specific advantages or penalties for not complying.

My thinking on the use of mixed units has changed. Whilst I think it does depend upon the representative scale you are depicting, it certainly seems to work in your play-test.

When you are ready I would love to see your thinking and mechanisms.
Thanks
Mark

[mmcv]

I completely agree with all your logic above - my own thinking was that the use of the 'historic' deployments is actually a differentiator and as long as the player declares the intended formation ahead of deployment and sticks with it as near as possible, they either get specific advantages or penalties for not complying.

My thinking on the use of mixed units has changed. Whilst I think it does depend upon the representative scale you are depicting, it certainly seems to work in your play-test.

When you are ready I would love to see your thinking and mechanisms.
Thanks
Mark

I did toy with the idea of certain formations giving certain bonuses, but felt it would be difficult to quantify just what staying in that formation would entail. It was much easier to instead apply formation bonuses down to the smaller functional units (e.g. the sonae and kumi detachments) as that could then reflect their role in the formation, i.e. firing focus, attack focus, etc. For instance, if using a cranes wing type formation you could set the individual sonae and kumi in a firing formation in the centre, with those in the wings set to an attack formation primed to counter an enemy charge. Then in the rear have some in loose formation ready to move up quickly to support and the rest balanced formation to deal with the situation. Fixed Formations might be a sensible addition and an optional rule, thereby preventing them from changing their formations throughout the battle, though it seems like most were able to at least change their sub formations a bit as the situation required so don't think it should be too needed. Again I'd rather if this behaviour flowed naturally from the player decisions rather than adding something to enforce it.

I do think the mixed units are important, especially for representing the larger battles, though the rules around the kumi detachments are done in such a way that if you wanted to play a smaller battle, i.e. where each division is a sonae rather than each unit, they should still interplay nicely to reflect the different roles. I haven't really play tested at this level yet, but should flow naturally enough from the existing detachment rules. There'll also need to be some variations for moving to earlier periods. I think the current rules will cover the Sengoku Jidai reasonably well, but want to have a few tweaks and variations to cover some of the earlier periods too as the overall command structures were fairly similar, even if the method of fighting varied.

I'll be sure to let you know when I have it all together in an "other-human-readable" format. Shouldn't be too far off provided I don't get sidetracked by other stuff!