The Kenshin Ryu Campaign, Scenarios 2 and 3: Assassination and Duel

So, here's a turn-up for the books!

Unfortunately, Gareth was ill last week, but this week his son Tim turned up as well, so they ended up splitting between them: Gareth and I would play through the Assassination scenario to give Tim a chance to re-familiarise himself with the rules, and then Tim would take the Koryu for the Duel.

Game 2 was... well it certainly was something. Owing to the En Garde points changes, the ninja force comprised six men rather than the five from the original scenario, and I chose to deploy four to begin with, with two held in reserve to try and stop the Sensei's advance. This, er, did not work out quite to my advantage. My Ninjas all had a less than stellar performance in melée against all the lesser figures, and one was completely swept aside by the Sensei. Right at the end, I managed to win a critical Priority roll and close in with my Chunin... who proceeded to be cut to pieces almost immediately. This left a single Ninja to flee the field in terror.

The less said about Game 3 the better. My plan had been to get some forces in position to do some damage to the Senpai should things go a bit inauspiciously in the duel. Turns out, 'a bit inauspiciously' meant my Leader dying in the first round of melée, leaving all of my troops horrendously out of position and surrounded by hostile Koryu figures. I managed to pull three men out, and my musketeer heroically took down a Koryu Kouhai before being himself cut down (the only Koryu casualty of the entire game), for a decidedly disastrous continuation.

In the end, across the two scenarios, the Bandits had a mere four survivors: one Ninja, one Gashira, and two Bandits. Points-wise, this did not look very good for them, but I was not exactly in a good enough mood to do the maths on this, and decided to focus simply on congratulating my opponents in public while plotting my vengeance in private...

Having more than reversed the losses from Scenario 1, and with the Koryu up 6 points with both a surviving Sensei and having firm control of the scrolls... let's say I'll be asking Gareth very nicely if I can have some more reinforcements ahead of Scenarios 4+5...

One thing I am wondering is whether the original scenario concept, particularly for scenario 3, may have been flawed. 2 was a close-run thing but the fault was mostly my own for overcommitting to piecemeal attacks rather than running people off the field. In 3, however, I have to admit that I find it hard to see how the duel in the centre is not biased against the Bandits to a pretty considerable degree. Irrespective of the Leader's armour, they have a pretty noticeable disadvantage against the Senpai. Firstly, the difference in Fight values flattens out each side's disparities in defence: the 1 disparity in Fight values means that the Leader rolls at -1 against him when attacking, while the Senpai rolls at -2 against the Leader instead of the -3 that the Leader would have against an equal Fight model. Then, the Senpai gets an extra Attack or Defence token which more or less compels the Leader to adopt a more defensive posture. And, if you include the Intuition attribute – as Gareth quite sensibly chose – the Senpai now has five tokens to play with even if one has to be a Defence.

So, er, yes. I am not happy about Game 3.