January 3rd, 2010 | 
Author: Happy New Year to all!
I thought I would write up a short report with a few pictures of the first battle I played in 2010! Don King, Kevin Rounsaville, Mike Kennedy, Kevan Thomas, and Tim? (Sorry you didn’t sign the sheet and my memory stinks for names!) had met through the Asianwar yahoo group and I found that they were playing BAW (battles in the age of War) Samurai rules. The group invited me down for a January 2 battle and I loaded my troops up and headed off. It is always good to play games with groups outside your own as you find out many things about rules sets that you had been doing wrong, never knew, or found that the other group had a completely different take on it, you also find that other groups struggle in much the same way in interpating the rules as you do…LOL! Such was this game; I learned a lot and even think I brought a little knowledge to them as well.
Kevan was quick to point out important points through out the game!
With 6 players we decided that one big game with a 1000 points a side we be best as we could all work on the rules together. The most knowledgeable players were split up and we had at it. Don, Kevin R, and I being on the attacking side and Mike, Kevan T, and Tim, defending or so we thought! BAW has a typical “Peter Pig” / RFCM pregame setup where players spend “Koku” or money in the form of dice rolled to gain points that are then spent to influence the coming battle. This influence for a samurai battle is in the very historical form of Treachery, Family, Weather, Ninjas, Battle preparation, sieges, and more. This has a very nice effect of creating a battle other than a straight up head bang. With our game it put Tim’s side on the defense with a lot of his troops being late to the battle due to bribery I think it was. Tim compensated with a bold plan of taking the initiative and attacking us! That sort of threw us off balance for the whole game and allowed his follow on troops some time to arrive.
On my flank I was lucky to have some good early generalship rolls and my troops surged forward to occupy the vacant hills were Tim’s “missing” troops should have been.
My Samurai and Ashigaru "Teppo" infantry grab the hill without a fight.
I should have kept going! (hindsight) and tore into his on ashigaru teppo (gun) unit but since the other side of the battle was not going as planned I thought I would hold the hills (my orders) for a bit and see what happened. I figured I could shoot up the opposing troops but again Tim beat me to the punch hit my gunners first causing disorder that several bad rolls on my part could not remedy! At this point the center and far wings under Kevin and Don were a see saw battle with no clear winner.
The battle rages on the left flank. Samurai battles are about as colorful as you can get!
I thought about switching sides with typical Daimyo logic but as Tim’s troops were arriving and he looked like the kind of general that upon swearing loyalty to might ask me to prove it by committing Seppuku! I sent in my smaller Samurai unit to engage his Ashigaru gunners. A fierce struggle insued with neither of us winning at first. At this point I just cared about running out the clock on the battle; it did with the victory going to Tim, Mike, and Kevan T’s side getting “A good Win”
Troops from the enemy defend the hills in the center.
Don our fearless leader (Diamyo) surveys the carnage from his well stocked "Maku" area!
Some of Tim's troops on my side.
Several of us are trying to organize a group to play Samurai Battles a various spot in the Southland and if you have an army or would like to start playing please contact me so we can ad you to the player list!
Thanks to all and we’ll be back!
Bill Witthans
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Absolutely lovely.
Great pictures, Bill. We enjoyed having you join us for this game. It was a lot of fun, and I’m looking forward to playing these BAW rules again.
I think your idea of having a tournament co-located with a future FoG tourney is a good one. I need a big fix of Samurai combat.