Dark Ages at the Burton Doubles 2018

Samurai vs Tamil Indian

Game 1 Samurai vs Samurai

Game 2 Samurai vs Anglo Irish

Game 3 Samurai vs Feudal English

Game 4 Samurai vs Tamil Indian

Match Reports Index

The Tamils - another entirely different variety of army for the currengtly-unbeaten samurai to get their teeth and katanas into was what faced us across the table at the end of the second day of competition.

The lists for the Samurai and Tamil Indian from this game, as well as all the other lists from the games at Burton_Doubles can be seen here in the L'Art de la Guerre Wiki.

Having successfully navigated a proper Sunday lunch for well under a tenner the afternoon was something the Samurai felt was within their tactical nous to navigate - especially as the opposition were almost certainly to have a big solid line of near-identical troops all along it. And so it transpired

The terrain had thrown up a handful of fields, an orchard (put there to reduce enemy bowfire) and a gentle hill nestled at the front of our deployment area. The approach was pretty straightforward - brace for impact and hope to do as much shooting as possible before the enemy arrived. Just to keep things interesting we had also deployed the Cavalry command on the somewhat open right of our army, on the assumption that the Tamils would struggle to respond to a mobile threat in this area.

Right from the off the Samurai climbed the not-quite Mount Fuji hill, giving them a seemingly unassailable combat advantage against the advancing Indian hordes.

The Tamils were not mucking around, and neither were we. With limited tactical innovation and a hitherto entirely justified belief in the martial superiority of our well painted foot soldiers there was every expectation that an almighty Sumo-style clash of forces would result in the Samurai coming out marginally on top

With the Waterway dice roll failing to succeed, the Ninja-tastic Wall had been pushed back a few inches to demarcate the edge of the table. Nothing too tactical was happening and so it seemed a good opportunity to take some artistic closeup shots of the men in action.

With the mounted wing not that keen to engage with the Elephantry at the end of the Tamil line, the main body of Samurai Elite Bowmen and Swordsmen were polishing their blades and notching their bows as the enemy force advanced - each elephant screened as usual by a lone javelin-armed light infantryman

Up on the hill the Samurai were kings of all they surveyed - and what they surveyed was a herd of elephants off in the far distance, snorting and harrumpfing as they too itched to get into close quarters combat.

After some frankly disappointing shooting the two lines clashed at the right hand end of the Japanese line with an almighty roar. Impetuous swordsmen flooded forward in perfect lock-step with their elephant escorts into the solid line of Japanese military expertise that made up the Samurai formation. Swords long and short swung dramatically as the two sides closed to nostril-gazing distances and started to hack big lumps out of one another.

Galloping Godzillas! With the battle already in full swing on our right, the Warrior Monks were also keen to get into combat - hurling religious incantations and whirling their bladed weapons above their heads they flooded forward from the Japanese army's start line and hurled themselves at the opposition with grim abandon.

Yes - tactics did exist! With the Tamil army fully committed its generals had little appetite or ability to manage the flank guards, and soon Samurai cavalry were swarming all over the no-isolated formation of Tamil warriors and elephants. Already stripped of their protective Light Foot by deadly shooting, the elephants on this end of the line looked in some peril and realised that they could well soon end up as a new type of sushi

The Samurai were now bracing for combat all along the line as the two centres approached to charging distance. With the chopstick-tastic Monks somewhat bogged down but slowly gaining the upper hand the Samurai were starting to realise just how numerous the Tamil army was - to match its frontage the Japanese generals were having already to push forward Mediocre Spear-armed Ashigaru - not ideal opponents for charging elephants.

One last round of shooting before the lines clashed produced a scattering of hits on the advancing Sri Lankans, enough to make things interesting but falling short of making them 'good' by some distance.

The English however were equally capable of a cowardly retreat in the face of superior quality enemy. As the Samurai looked out from the paddy field, the enemy turned about and fell back in a feigned retreat which was about as convincing as Sean Connery's Japanese disguise in You Only Live Twice

The Tamils charged home faster than a bullet train in a flurry of swords, trunks and tusks - an onslaught the Samurai suddenly appeared utterly unable to resist! Despite their Superiority, despite their Swordsman ability cancelling the Impact of the enemy infantry, Samurai were simply picked up and tossed to the 4 winds by the dice-led ferocity of the Tamil assault leaving in their wake a gaping hole and a pachinko machine winning spin's worth of counters all along the Samurai lines. Ouch!

With the main battle already looking deeply grim, the Samurai on top of the hill quickly realised that the game could be lost without the Tamils facing them even needing to consider an attack on ther fortified position. Standing in a castle whilst watching their colleagues die in droves was no way for a Samurai to behave and so the Japanese warriors unsheathed their swords and charged down the hill in support of the Monks.

Sri Lankan infantry were now flowing into the gaps that had already opened up all along the Samurai line - and with a far higher per-unit troop cost the Japanese army had little of any reserves with which to contest and plug these gaping chasms in their military competence. Flank attacks were coming.

As the Samurai continued to flood down the hill, the Tamil infantry facing them were digging in stoically against the Japanese assault. The stubborn southern Indians refused to yield ground even as their colleagues elsewhere on the battlefront were taking ground and taking liberties with glee from the shellshocked Samurai.

As dark storm clouds gathered in the land of the Rising Sun a temporary respite from the relentless pummelling occasionally shed light on the darkness into which the Japanese army was even now descending - the Tamils were taking hits and creeping ever closer to destruction, but seemingly for every hit inflicted the Tamils were trading telling blows and causing dangerous markers of their own to spring up - and with the inexorable logic of a larger army in their favour this was a trade they could well afford.

Even the swirling, command and control -rich Samurai cavalry force was finding it impossible to crack the high-rolling expertise of the Tamil formations. Flank attacks were stalling, and attempts to ride down second string bowmen in the open were faltering - the advantage here had proved fleeting and ultimately illusory.

The Samurai line was being rolled up by the waves of aggressive Tamil pedestrians - and the Japanese had no answer. This was a depressing time for the legendary Japanese warriors, as they saw death coming from their flanks, but were too busy contesting their frontal opponents to react.

When the Levy end up engaged as front line troops things have already probably gotten to the point at which seppukku is the acceptable alternative to continuing the unequal fight.

The only partly-bright spot was the performance of the 4-hit heavy Infantry Unfortunately there were only 4 of them in the entire Samurai army so even when they succeeded in carving a blood-stained four-katana-wide gap in the Tamil line it was only a temporary respite from the waves of enemy troops rolling them up from both flanks.

Two full commands of Samurai and Monks had been hurled into the small isolated formation of enemy troops at the foot of the hill seeking to sweep them away - but as the battle ebbed away even this small task had yet to be accomplished.

Maybe the Levy should have been used earlier ? They seemed to have the hang of rolling combat dice far more down pat than many of their better-equipped colleagues this afternoon.

But, when levy winning a combat is a noteworthy high point, the baseline is already pretty low. The Samurai slipped to defeat under the relentless onslaught and Sri Lanka came out on top in this edition of the Island war games...

Read on for the post match summaries from the Generals involved, as well as another episode of legendary expert analysis from Hannibal

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That's the end - so why not go back to the Match Reports Index and read some more reports?

Game 1 Samurai vs Samurai

Game 2 Samurai vs Anglo Irish

Game 3 Samurai vs Feudal English

Game 4 Samurai vs Tamil Indian

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