Handbags at dawn-Shogun style

 Wednesday 28th July.

                       There was a big turnout this evening at the Garvald Film Studios for tonight’s presentation of a delve into Japanese history with a seventeenth century battle between a Christian Japanese army complete with Portuguese support against their non Christian fellow countrymen.It sounded very promising and the sight of the table set up made it even more mouth watering.The trouble with such a big gathering in these strange times meant that there was a lot of catching up on all sides therefore the game didn’t start till we had all visited the local hostelery for our standard fare of pizzas and ale and not any sake in sight.

Pre-Togugawa Japan.

Little and large.

Cha time.

                     The pleasantries were all taken care of and the ale was quaffed allowing us to get down to divvying up the forces with Mr Ray jumping in and taking charge of Portuguese aided by some samurai cavalry.Bill Gilchrist took charge of the remainder of the Christian Japanese army.The opposition were handed out to myself and Andrew so I plumped for the Ikko-Ikki army which I have always thought of as fighting monks since reading the Shike novels from the eighties which I still read and refer to when it comes to Japanese history and they are easier to read than Shogun. The rules used were Black Powder which I remembered involved me charging into an open field as I forgot the vagaries of the rules. I didn’t intend to make that mistake again.

My command squad-enough said.

Andrew’s faltering cavalry.

My girls about to go on a nite oot!

Handing out the arrows.

                  The evening’s struggle was going to involve a lot of tooing and froing especially from the cavalry point of view hence the reference in the title to handbags as cavalry charges seemed to be just charging in,a very brief struggle and finishing off with both sets of combatants retiring.Not how I thought Japanese battles would evolve.My plan as always with cavalry was just to charge in and see what happens and as his first move Mr Ray moved forward his Portuguese infantry I sensed victory-how often have I said that.As soon as my cavalry moved in on the infantry they formed square or more to the point a blob meaning my cavalry couldn’t engage one of the units.Mr Ray had also intended to assault the middle building but once again due to the vagaries of Black Powder he couldn’t get there and found himself staring at the outside walls.My samurai infantry made up totally of females had no qualms and headed straight in.Mr Ray huffed and puffed but he couldn’t get past my girls and lost have his unit in the process.The girls were not for moving,and to add insult to injury Ray had attached his leader to this assault and the last we saw of him he was heading for the hills and a date with seppuku.His successor dragged his heels and had to wait for two turns before arriving on to the battlefield.

My demon dice-occasionally called into disrepute.

Here we go,here we go!

The Portuguese squares or blobs!

The girls climbing the walls.

On the other side of the table both sides were trying to get to grips with each other but once again as soon as  they came into contact they would take a swipe at each other and then retire.Both of these sides had more infantry than us so they were taking longer to get to grips with each other and being armed mostly with arabesques took great delight in taking pot shots at each other.

As you can see Andrew’s faltering cavalry.

Getting around the blob.

My girls taking up permanent residence.

Andrew and Bill’s infantry engaging with handbags.

                     My Ikko-Ikki were spoiling for a fight but couldn’t get near the Portuguese squares/blobs and even when they did I couldn’t throw good dice for toffee.I even tried firing a few arrows into them but that was next to useless.Things seemed to be going our way but the fickle finger of fate showed its hand and some of Andrew’s ashigaru disappeared in the middle of the field and it wasn’t Godzilla’s fault just rubbish dice rolling.  

And their cavalry not doing too much as well.

Getting the business done.

               Going into the last quarter I decided to go for broke and moved some of my cavalry round the solid squares in order to get to grips with Mr Ray’s cowering cavalry and move my archer monks up to pick of the Portuguese.This cavalry unit was the only to register any success as they caused the Christian samurai to retreat. The only problem was this brought me into line of sight of the Portuguese cannon but once again their consistency was the norm and didn’t do any telling damage.

Stalemate in the middle.

Even with cavalry support.

                    On the other side of the table the handbags were flying but no real damage was being done and we were left with a score draw slightly leaning on the heathen side as the Christians had taken more hits and my lady samurai were ensconced in their new accommodation taking care of their nails or something like that.

Sitting out the battle.

Heading for a slight victory.

                 Even although the game seemed to be a bit slow probably due to our rustiness of the gameplay I thoroughly enjoyed it.Who wouldn’t with all these beautiful toys on display and the company was great.My thanks to Colin for setting up a great table.I’ll see you all when I see you.

                 This has been a Garvald Film Studio production.