Dark & Feudal Ages at Alicante 2022
The Peoples Crusade vs Samurai
Game 1 The Peoples Crusade vs Ghaznavid
Game 2 The Peoples Crusade vs Ghaznavid
Game 3 The Peoples Crusade vs Samurai
Game 4 The Peoples Crusade vs Maurikian Byzantinos!
Game 5 The Peoples Crusade vs Vikingos!
With some nuclear-powered roast chicken in a bucket consumed, and a shorter than planned siesta (when the timetable ended up with only a 90 minute lunch break rather than a two and a half hour one - thank god for a hotel across the road from the venue I say) the as-yet undefeated march of militant Christianity continued ever further eastwards as The People's Crusade were drawn against the Samurai in the third round.
The Samurai are always tricky to cook up in any wargames rules, as they are famous for being really cool and stuff, but their military context was so wildly different to any of the other well-known pre-Gunpowder armies that it's a challenge to shoehorn them into a fairly generic and broad-brush set of rules. In ADLG they had always been more than decent but also somewhat flawed beast, never quite doing what they felt like they should.
In v4 however many of their flaws have been addressed through some list changes, which see them allowed a handful of skirmishing bowmen, and the frankly awful and numerically-over- mandatory Ashigaru of v3 reclassified and drawn down a little too, allowing you to make a much more competent and balanced force.
These changes have seen Samurai either place, or come near to achieving podium finishes in competitions around the world - a great result for anyone who's spent ages painting the blighters !
The lists for the The Peoples Crusade and Samurai from this game, as well as all the other lists from the games at Alicante can be seen here in the L'Art de la Guerre Wiki.
These battle reports come with their own unique and hand-crafted The Peoples Crusade-themed Spotify Playlist, which you can listen along to while reading through the ensuing nonsense.
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Terrain for this game had followed a by-now familiar pattern, with a waterway narrowing the table and a couple of The People's Crusade-placed fields in play, and the Samurai dropping a huge wood into the table as well.
Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh ! All of the Crusader pieces were placed in an attempt to try and give the Samurai an obvious place to put the bulk of their forces so that the hordes of religion could pour themselves forward at a single target in multiple waves, all the better to batter through the inevitable storm of shooting that the Japanese would put out.
The Samurai in question today were led by a Strategist, giving them a big boost to their overall command and control - something they took immediate advantage of by marching pretty much the entire army over to the edge of the table.
This secured the line of katana-waving bowmen a secure flank, but did also make themselves into a fast-moving target which now sat firmly in the crosshairs of all 8 units of the actual proper almost-real-fighter better-equipped Pilgrims, allowing the Levy to play a supporting role in the upcoming melee.
Christ's Alive! The standard tokenistic mounted force began their historically dubious but heck-its-cool sashimono-waving parade at the same time, galloping over from the coast where their appetite for sushi had presumably been tempered both by releases of radioactive seawater and the presence of a solid, and Knight-supported line of wall-to-wall European peasantry blocking their way forward next to the woodland.
Samurai Mounted Archery
The departure of the actual cavalry had left only a couple of skirmish-ey horsemen to try and deal with a two-wave cross-bearing band of Jesus-freaks.
Half-hearted skirmisher on skirmisher shooting occurred, but everyone involved knew that they would be lucky to even feature in any more photos this report, with the light horsemen destined to fall back slowly and then squirm out of the way of the plodding religious pedestrians as the real battle was decided elsewhere on the tabletop of play.
And, that place was here.
With the Samurai army being composed entirely of, erm, Samurai (Medium Swordsmen with Bow, Elite) the Crusading hordes had a simple and clear plan - get as many of the 8 units of their own proper fighters (Medium Sword Impetuous) into contact with the line of bowmen as possible all in one go, carrying as few wounds as possible from shooting in the process.
Holy Moly! Everything The People's Crusade leadership cadre (OK, "Peter The Hermit") were hoping to do was subservient to this plan - including the lives of any number of actual Levy peasants who here were tasked with holding off the Japanese cavalry force to buy time for their real fighters to get into the fight.
In an ideal world, bringing up the Knights, who here lurk just on the edge of the shot, would also be nice but with less command bandwidth in the entire army than the Samurai had in just their CinC's command, doing anything else at the same time as planning the massed infantry assault on the line of bowmen was going to prove one task too many for the Crusader command to juggle
The People's Crusade had made it to the Holy Land and now far beyond on the back of patient walking, but the final few hundred yards to the inevitable line of battle in semi-Feudal Japan would be the hardest.
Arrows seemingly not fired by men, but instead propelled by the power of a miniaturised and extremely well engineered arrow-firing knock-off Gatling gun slammed into the advancing line of men, women, children and goats who were protected only by their faith, and also an ablative screen of brave but rather no-longer-water-retaining but heavily perforated Light Infantry slingers and javelineers.
L'Art de la Guerre hint - in ADLG, units of skirmishers and main battle troops both count the same towards army losses - encouraging you to withdraw your Light Infantry to safely after their initial delaying role has been undertaken, and to do so double-quick if they start to take hits (2 hits will see them being removed from play).
In this case however, getting the main battle troops into combat with zero hits from shooting is a goal that is beyond vital if the Crusaders are to stand a chance of winning the game.
This is bad news for the skirmish screen, as on balance it's actually better for the army if they are killed soaking up arrows and in the process they buy the main battle troops behind them another turn or so without being shot at.
The plan had worked almost perfectly - unless you were a light infantryman of course - as the whole line of battle-capable non-kitchen-implement armed pro-peasantry crashed with the force of a well-hurled Book of Common Prayer (hardback edition) into the Samurai line with not a single scratch on them from incoming archery fire!
Jesus H Christ! With Levy to spare, there was even an opportunity to blank-off overlaps at either end of the line of scrimmage by hurling hapless peasants into the terrain and into combat
L'Art de la Guerre hint - The levy unit at the left end of this line is going to lose. They are disordered by terrain, they have taken a hit from shooting on the way in, and the Samurai are really good at cutting peasants up with katanas as well.
But the entire game plan is to maximise the odds for the 7 units of Medium Foot in this exact moment of combat - and putting a lone levy into this position helps the almost-proper Medium Swordsmen next to them by denying their Samurai opponents a +1 for overlap.
It's a case of bet the house on Red, and pray to Jesus for success!
Not Bad.. but not great!
7 of the proper religious fanatics had hit cleanly, and that had resulted in 4 wins - all doing 2-point double-damage as the Impetuous Pilgrim Swordsmen benefitted from "Furious Charge" in the first round. The Pilgrims had however failed to destroy any of the Samurai outright, and had taken 5 hits in reply, meaning that now a desperate struggle would ensue
Samurai Mounted Archery
That struggle suddenly developed in a much more desperate direction than the God Botherers could possibly have imagined, as the injured Samurai fought back spectacularly and cinematically, carving great holes in the line of given-it-all militarized pilgrims through skill and spectacular dice-rolling.
For the love of God! Even the flag-carrying pedestrian lead-from-the-front Pilgrim general was in trouble against his injured opponent in a spot where the Christian Legion had fully hoped to be breaking through ot breaking down.
Poof! In a move which some of The People's Crusade's members may indeed have welcomed, a rapid transition to heaven then took place as the Samurai stepped up their game yet another level to sweep the very best elements of the Crusader attack from the tabletop in double-quick time!
This was now rather tricky as The People's Crusade had committed everything to this one attack, so it's abrupt failure now left them with nary even two looted candlesticks to rub together in their efforts to bring a new religion to the isles of Japan.
In the name of the Baby Jesus, Mary and the wee donkey! The evaporation of the actual soldiery suddenly created a double-problem for the still-reeling elements of the Crusader skirmish screen who had managed to escape semi-intact from their shielding role only moments before.
As great vistas of table opened up in front of the victorious Samurai, the reeling crusader infantry realised they were now all in shooting range yet again of the powerful Samurai bows!
Samurai Battlefield Archery
The main attack may have faltered, but the Samurai army was still tiny - barely half the size of the countless hordes of Crusading Peasantry.
Christ on a Bike! Realising that all was probably, but not yet totally lost Peter The Hermit urged on his remaining rabble to ever greater and bolder attacks as the Knights finally started to make it into the fray.
But with much of the skirmish screen committed to the Big Plan, the rest of the fervent peasantry were picking up damage from archers all along the width of the army - and the skilled mounted bowmen of the Japanese army were an accurate and deadly set of opponents always able to evade away from any threat the slow-moving infantry could hope to conjure up.
The final dregs of the main assault on the Samurai line were now playing out a sad, hopeless end game as lacquer-armoured Japanese nobles started to advance forward read to roll up their flanks and put the well-travelled congregation out of their misery.
Many of the Samurai units were on their last legs, but with capable command in oversupply their officers and Daiymos were gradually starting to rally the well-trained and loyal warriors and redirect their efforts at finalising the mopping up operation with some style and alacrity
Heavens Above! Finally the Christian Crusading Knights had fought their way through the waves of their own sub-par infantry, wrestling with low command values along the way to get into charge range of the Samurai Horsemen.
And, doing what Knights have done since they were invented in the transition from Cavalry which happens in all Wargames Rules around 1050AD but which I suspect may have gone unnoticed in the real world, they charged!
With so many metal-clad Normanized horsemen hurling themselves forward from all angles, the Samurai cavalry suddenly realised that they were at risk of running out of table if they all continued to evade.
The straws were drawn, and one hapless heroic-age warrior was tasked with trying to hold up the advancing waves of seen-in-the-rulebook charging Knights - finally a combat to conjure with!
But, it had been too little too late.
The infantry Samurai were even then completing their clean-sweep of the field in which they had chosen to make their stand, eliminating the last vestiges of rampant Christianity and with it condemning the almost-twice-as-big-as-them The People's Crusade army to defeat!
Click here for the report of the next game in this competition, or read on for the post match summaries from the Generals involved, as well as another episode of legendary expert analysis from Hannibal
Post Match Summary from the Peter The Hermit, The Peoples Crusade Commander
Maaan, what a bummer! After three games I was starting to actually positively consider the idea that this whole outside and meeting people thing could be the way forward for me - but then these sushi-dudes have put a right dampener on that this afternoon
I mean, raw fish, whats going on there? Even when I was in self-imposed lockdown I managed to keep the microwave pinging away - after all, 35 years of eating Pot Noodle is a challenge to the spirit and soul, but if it had been raw Pot Noodle I think I'd have given up the old Hermit stuff and popped down to my local Nandos in what, maybe a couple of weeks.
The soldiery did try their best here though, giving a good impression of working as a team - but I suppose with a leader who is kinda a poster boy for solo and remote working practices, perhaps a Zoom call might be better for them next time they need to get up close and personal with a load of Samurai ?
Anyways, on to the real challenge of the day - remembering how to behave at a restaurant that doesn't involved a phone call and a guy on a pushbike
Hannibal's Post Match Analysis
How it burns here in southern Spain - and for you, hermitage beckons again as the outside has shown in this battle that God himself thinks that even thine face is not worth sunburning
Thou art pigeon-liver'd and lack gall, this goes without saying, but here you also lacked guile too. Frittering away the 4 Knights in a battle where they would have plenty of room to roam was a terrible error - the enemy was always going to be in the fields, and refusing the coastal flank so you needed to be ready to race upon them before they could get there, not skulk behind the bushes waiting for something to happen that never did
The attack your men mounted on the Samurai line did perhaps deserve a little more fortune, but you took the defeat in such bad grace that despite your protestations of peace and love, the tartness of thy face afterwards was one to sour ripe grapes
Your pilgrims follow you now, but for how long with defeatls like this? Their loyalty is like that of a wife - but if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise women know well enough what monsters you can make of them. I can only hope that the lure of Byzantium is enough to take us all onto the next game
Click here for the report of the next game in this competition
You may also like....
Game 1 The Peoples Crusade vs Ghaznavid
Game 2 The Peoples Crusade vs Ghaznavid
Game 3 The Peoples Crusade vs Samurai
Game 4 The Peoples Crusade vs Maurikian Byzantinos!
Game 5 The Peoples Crusade vs Vikingos!
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