Beachhead 2025 - Yamato Era Japanese Day 2

 

So after a first day of mixed fortunes in my games (win and losing draw) followed by a convivial evening involving Six nations rugby, beer and an Italian meal, the second day of the competition dawned bright and sunny.

To see if I could improve on the first day read on ...

As a reminder, here is my army list:

The morning game saw  a near repeat of the first match-up on the Saturday as I faced Nigel Emsen who was using a Foederate Roman army. Nigel's list (and all the lists used) can be found HERE if you wish to have a look. Nigel's army was similar to Robin's in that it had 3 infantry units and the rest were all cavalry.

I again won the initial die roll and chose to defend. We had less terrain that the game against Robin, but still enough for me to be satisfied. There was a march in the centre and some patches of rough ground on my left with the right hand side of the field open ground. Given how much cavalry Nigel had this pretty much meant the majority of these would be on my right.

I was again outscouted by 60% - hardly a shock. I deployed with archers in the centre and to my left in the terrain and then the spearmen and all the cavalry on my right supported by the guard archers as they can manoeuvre relatively well compared to my other infantry. The Romans placed their infantry facing my left and as expected all their cavalry facing my right. Likely to be a straightforward battle 😄

It looked like this (taken from the Roman side with sunlight streaming through the windows):

The Roman cavalry did not hand around and advanced at me at speed, sliding to their left to ensure I could not sneak anything around their flank. The Roman infantry followed along but a little slower as they are on foot. I pushed forward wheeling slightly to me right to also ensure my right flank was safe and to maximise the number of spearmen and catafracts I could get into a fight.

Nigel looked to start the fighting as soon as possible. He reasoned that although many of his cavalry could evade that doing so would just delay the inevitable clash to no real effect or enjoyment; can't argue with that really. His first charge was, for him, annoyingly slowed by my Emishi causing Slows when he charged, however, the Emishi rolled a 1 for their evade and were caught and destroyed in revenge.

At this point it looked like:

Not wanting to delay the following move I charged. Nigel did skirmish one cavalry unit being charged by catafracts and spearmen, however, like me he rolled a 1 and I caught him. However, the fighting saw very little damage done to either side (despite my having significant advantages). In addition, the Roman infantry have moved up to my archers and spearmen on my left.

Rather than engage in what would probably have been an endless, and losing missile exchange between the infantry, Nigel charged my line. This was probably a good call as the fight is mostly even but as his troops are Close formation and mine Loose he can get a Shove result which could tip the balance.

On the rest of the battlefield the fighting between the Roman cavalry and my troops continued.

At this point I must make a dice comment - well, I'm a wargamer so it is inevitable really 😂 Where I am fighting the Roman cavalry I was rolling Red, Yellow and Green dice depending on the match-up against White dice. This is a really good thing for me. However, the dice were consistently rolling few or no hits of any sort and Nigel's kept chipping away with annoying wounds. It did get a bit wearing even though I was slowly winning.

The infantry fight saw the Romans get a whole slew of Shove results which was tipping that otherwise even fight in their favour. It happens and is a risk of using large numbers of Loose foot. Also as with the cavalry fight I was not rolling much damage at times. As an aside, the proposed idea of using the Pacto Shatter/Shove mechanism would have worked well here, making everything smoother to play.

However, despite the dice I was slowly chipping away at the Romans. The fight against the cavalry moved my way and I started to remove units, although the Roman infantry did break through on my left.

In the end the Roman cavalry succumbed and the army broke. I had lost 2 infantry units on my right. A 15-5 win.

The afternoon game matched me up against Matt Haywood and his Tamil Indians. Nasty match-up in my view. The army is a bit different, odd even, but suits Matt really well - he specialises in left-field armies 😁

For the 4th time I won the initial die roll and, inevitably, chose to defend. I wasn't sure whether I should but in the end went with what I had done in the other games more or less just to be able to use my Fortified Camp for the 4th time. Probably made little difference.

I actually managed to outscout the Tamils - by a massive 10%. In reality this made no difference and due to the way my army works there was little advantage in seeing Matt's troops before I placed mine.

We ended up with a lot of terrain down each flank and, for me, an annoying (for me) patch of rough going in the centre. I deployed with infantry on my right and the cavalry on the left; the latter as there were fewer elephants on that side at deployment. Matt's army of elephants and swordsmen (some of both were Superior and really nasty for me to face) deployed compactly opposite.

I must apologise at this point for the lack of pictures from this game. It was one of those intense thinking games (they often are when Matt and I play - but always enjoyable) and taking pictures got missed. Sorry 😭

My chance, as I saw it was a rapid cavalry push on the left to turn his flank and get behind his army and expose his camp. This would require the Korean catafracts to redeploy somewhat in the first move. Their first move cards rather stymied that plan ...

Still, at least they weren't hesitant ...

The game developed rapidly. The Tamils pushed quickly on my right towards my infantry. I was mainly archers whilst they were swordsmen (including SUperior ones) and the Superior elephants. I was expecting to lose here but hopefully slowly and that my shooting would cause damage to whittle the Tamil's down.

On the left Matt pushed his relatively weak cavalry unit forward to slow my advance and I pushed as best I could. Due to the aforementioned bad cards for the Koreans this meant I was leading with the Japanese cavalry rather than the catafracts. Of course this meant that the Japanese cavalry would not be able to skirmish with the swordsmen and elephants of Matt's centre as planned - but needs must and it was making the best of a bad job (sitting back had no advantages here).

On the right despite some heroic shooting to slow down the Tamil advance - one round saw me cause a slow effect of some sort on every shooting dice - the Tamil infantry contacts and quickly broke through my archers; the guard archers not even acting as any sort of speed bump.

In the centre there was a bit of a stand-off but that worked to Matt's advantage as he could redeploy some elephants to come to fight my catafracts. My ally continued to have poor cards and I was unable to try and get the catafracts out of the way. I kept thinking if only it was the Japanese cavalry in their position 😆 They did, however, have a punt at a unit of swordsmen and inflicted a couple of bases of damage before breaking off. This was useful as my small unit of Japanese cavalry had worked its way into position to charge the damaged swordsmen in the flank. My other Japanese cavalry had caught and were (slowly) beating up the Tamil cavalry.

The game now sped to a conclusion (no pics though as mentioned above).

On my right the Tamil left wing combination smashed my remaining troops pretty quickly and brutaly. All I managed to do in return was destroy 2 "junk" skirmisher units which had been shielding the Tamil advance.

In the centre a slightly isolated swordsman unit took on an archer and a spear unit of mine and was whittled away and broken - bit of a bonus bit I'll take it.

The least said about what happened to the Korean catafracts when faced by the elephants the better ... 😉

My one real area of success was in breaking the Tamil cavalry and the swordsmen on my left as I had planned. Alas, as my army broke shortly afterwards they were just a compensation.

The game ended 8-15 which propelled Matt into 3rd place at the end of the competition. As ever, a really good game against Matt even if it was a bit brain intensive for a Sunday afternoon.

In the end I finished on 43 points and 7th from 16 - and mid-table is about right for this army usually in my view. A great weekend all round - thanks to everyone involved😁