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The Oyoshima Campaign, Game 1: The Peasants are Revolting!

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For this summer, I've planned to run a multiplayer, open-plan campaign pitting various forces against each other. An introductory post will, paradoxically, come later, once I have a bit more material pinned down, but with a pause in gaming time coming up due to a small trip (a reminder to me that I never rounded out the Kyushu photos from 2024), I thought it'd be best to write up the first battle report first, and then do the general introduction at a suitable juncture. The overall setting of the campaign is a fictional island, albeit heavily inspired by real-world geography, in the Seto Inland Sea. Normally ruled by a branch lineage of the Ōtomo clan, the lord has taken his troops out to fight on Kyūshū, leaving it vulnerable to revolt and invasion. Multiple factions now vie for control of the island. To start with, I am taking control of the Ōtomo clan, centred on an Onna-Bugeisha force; opposing them is Gareth, controlling a band of warrior monks who will be the first challe...
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Some Practice Runs

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Skipping rapidly ahead to the mid-19th century, last Friday saw James and Timmy of the Hong Kong Society of Wargamers come over for a go at Sharp Practice. The HKSW has picked up Sharp Practice recently (at my recommendation, as it turns out), but mainly for the Napoleonic Wars, to which the Boshin War offers a rather different setting, with its longer-ranged, and in some cases faster-firing weapons. Although I've been toying with some house rules (the ideas for which mostly originate with others), the aim for this game was to build more familiarity with the rules as written, so that's what we did. I set up the table with a stream running down the middle and buildings either side, with woods sprinkled liberally about. The idea was to avoid giving either side a wide, uninterrupted field of fire. Each of the six buildings concealed a playing card, one of which (the Joker) represented a spy whom the Shogunate force had to make off with. 10 Task points were needed to search each bu...
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Restoring my Honour

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At long last, reunited with my Japan collection, I decided it was high time to get the old Test of Honour engine fired up again. Gareth (whom you may recall from reports such as for  this game last year ) and I have agreed to do an intermittent ToH campaign during the summer months, but we decided it would be best to try and really get the mechanics under our belt again. The most straightforward option seemed to be to try to play through the first half of the six-game introductory campaign, using standard forces. Game 1 was set up as laid out in the book: each side would have one armoured samurai, a group of three ashigaru spearmen, one archer, and one musketeer; whoever cut down the other's Hero would win. Not wanting to beat around the bush, I decided to move swiftly and aggressively. In retrospect, deciding to attack up the stairs of the shrine may have been injurious to my commander's health... Despite some valiant efforts, Gareth's samurai struck down mine with nary a ...
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