DBA at FallCon: Alberta Open 2012

Clan Toho, Post Mongol Samurai, photo by Mark Wall

 Oh sure, I'll cut to the chase... I won the Alberta Open. 

 Yep. Me and my trusty Post-Mongol Samurai army ('a' list if you care) went three rounds with some of canniest and trickiest DBA practitioners in Alberta. And I managed to thump 'em.

Ahhhh. I will bask for a while. OK, all done now.   

C'mon, it's not that often really I get to gloat and roll around on my bed full of prize money and DBA groupies.  

I painted Clan Toho up four years ago for the first Samurai Night Fever game.  It's organized thus: 1 x Cv General and another cavalry unit. 6 x Samurai Blades, 1 x Bow, 3 x Ashigaru Auxilia.  Initially built as a 'b' list with spears, I built a bow and a blade unit to morph it. The blades I made out of warrior monk figures, and it has been the paper tiger of the army. Cory mocks them as 'lousy drunk monks'.  Which for those of us who know about the historical sohei, this  is more likely than not. We'll follow their fortunes throughout this recount.

Why 'Clan Toho'? The banners are painted with the Japanese kanji logo you see at the beginning of all your favourite monster movies. Toho studios, we love you and salute you.

Decided against taking the Medieval Irish. I was in an non-subtle ass-kicking mood and not so much being crafty in woods. Ironically that would be game 3. 
I usually enter Open games with a challenging army, rather than a balanced one. Not today. I wanted blood. 

I had three wonderful games. First round was with Marco and his Sudanese.  This was the trickiest game. Marco is pretty sly with light troops. Initially he tried to rush my camp with his psiloi in the first round blitz. Only my single stand of sohei blades stood to repulse their attack. 

Rumble in the jungle. Marco's Sudanese psiloi rush the lone element of warrior monks.

Relief column tries to save the ashigaru assault force.

Marco left his flank open and his camp unsecured. I took the bait and rushed it with my auxilia.  It went promising at first, but when his light horse pinched off their escape, they were overwhelmed by the psiloi and wiped out.  Only a heated exchange in the center and the sudden defeat of his general secured me the win.  Not really saying it should have been Marco's game, but yeah, it should have been. Fortuna favours the foolish.

MONK REPORT: Beaten and harrassed by psiloi. Driven out of the woods and into the camp.

Game the Second: I faced down the wrath of Mark Stadel's Later Carthaginians. I wasn't too worried. I had superiority in heavy foot and light troops. Mark is not an easy guy to score a win against.  His deployment was...a little suboptimal shall we say. I kept him wedged between bad going and he wasn't able to spread his line out. His warband kept me busy, but I was able to take his flank with my ashigaru. Not a finesse win, more of a rope-a-dope. But I'll take those sorts of wins as well.

MONK REPORT: Steam-rolled by Gallic Warband. Splat.

'WHY WON"T YOU DIE!!!' Mark's Carthaginian general is sorely vexed by the intransigent Samurai battle line. 

Game Three: Byzantine bashing.  Feeling all hepped up on goofballs and two wins I faced down Cory and his Kommnenan Byzantines. 8 units of horse vs my two. Furthermore, without psiloi support (the Achilles heel of the P-M Samurai in tourney) facing down his collection with my blades alone was a dim prospect.

I was lucky enough to lay a cluttered board. I deployed most of my blades in the rough and the woods, creating a funnel for Cory to approach me. I hoped that I would be able to pick off his horse as he approached. Of course Cory would never do that. It's quite nice when you've played a guy before. So I left my back door open. I garrisoned my camp with my singular Bow unit. Cory had three light horse units and I knew he'd go for a camp-rush.

He did.  My archers sallied and with a reserve unit of blades pinning the Pecheneg raiders, I dropped all three units. In the centre Cory had advanced, wiping out my picket unit, but not yet taking the full bait. On the right flank, my auxilia had engaged his psiloi and the Varangian blades (below) with some success.

In the end I pinched off one of psiloi units to take the win.  Quite surprising. 

and gratifying. A battle plan that actually worked. Worked against Cory as well. 

I expect all sort of accolades for this win. 

MONK REPORT: Instrumental in pinning the light horse and driving them off the map. Reputation vindicated!

Cory's Byzantine psiloi and Varangians cunningly lurk in the forest, ready for ambush action.

Last Stand of Liamicus. Sub-Roman British fall before Sudanese onslaught.

I'd like to thank Don and Mark for running the gig. I'd also like to salute my fellow DBA gamers. You are a funny, fun and clever bunch. There was no acrimony, endless debates and other buzz kill activities. I'll sit across the board with any of you anytime. 

Thank-you for reading while I went the Full Rimmer.

-TV

Like the wind from the steppes...

Samurai Night Fever II is but 2 weeks away (Oct 15th!) as is the other cavalcade of DBA action presented by the Calgary Camp Followers. (see the links section for both).

Myself, I've been painting. Much less than I'd really like to as work and family issues have sprung up like so many time draining hydra heads (what's that in old schooly D&D terms? a Chrono-Vampiric-o-Hydra?). Such is life. I've finished off painting my second Early Samurai army. I'll be basing and dull coating it tonight. Here's some teaser pictures.



So far so good. I envy my contemporaries like Neldoreth and Tim in Saskatoon who seem to be able to rattle off beautifully painted and based figures at a surprising rate. And if you haven't been to either of their sites, go to the links and check out their stuff (again, go to the links) which will make you wonder why you're reading my site.

Particularly, visit Neldoreth's site as he will be running 'Visigothic Romance' on Saturday. I'll be playing in that for sure. But in a surprising change of identity I'll be running my new Early Lombards which in another shockeroo is the first army I will play in a tourney that had not been painted by me. This time I out-sourced to the redoubtable (and slightly scary) Mike J. I hope this mob of Knights, Warband and Bow will kick those lousy Romans in the teeth. If not, it will be still be GLORIOUS. As a side note I will be lending my vicious Later Visigoths and ghastly Gepids as loaners for those who don't have period armies.

As to the Samurai Game, I have at least 3 loaner armies. But first come first serve, be quick about it.
I'll have two Early Samurai armies and a Mongol Conquest ready to go. The Pre-Teen Visigoth will be playing my Post-Mongol Samurai aka 'Clan Toho'.


Next up, some pics...

Samurai Night Fever II: The Rules

Wrath of the Khans Rules and outline.

Ok, here's the rules and outline of the tourney. For those of you who played in the first SNF you'll find them familiar. I've liberally stolen stuff from Paul Hannah's 'Skulls of Tamerlane'* tourney from last year and from the tweaks Neldoreth has done to the system.

"Thanks guys for your hard work!"

The Basics

1. All games are played on 2x2 boards with armies based on 40mm frontages (that is 15mm standard).

2. All armies must have the following keyword in their title; 'Japanese', 'Chinese', 'Korean' and 'Mongol'.

OR

May be a legitimate, listed enemy of one of those armies.

Players are reminded this is an Asian themed tourney and as such should adhere to the spirit of the tourney and bring an Asian army. As this is an inclusive, easy going game, nobody will be turned away providing their army meets either criteria. 

Armies with options are NOT allowed to change between games. That would most certainly tone down the terror of rule 5, wouldn't it?

3. The moderator is Shogun of both Time and Space. Both he and those he appoints as loyal Rules-Samurai will have final say in rules questions. Kvetching is very dishonourable.

4. Rules used will be DBA 2.2 in all cases except as listed below.

5. All games will be played on pre-determined terrain. There will be 8 distinct maps, all representative of decisive or interesting battle of Asian history. These maps attempt to reflect a variety of terrain and climates.

Players will dice using their armies aggression ratings to determine defender/aggressor.

Players will choose the terrain assignment blindly and randomly before each match.  

6. Winners of each match are determined by the rules. Scoring for the tourney will be tracked in Bushido Points (BP's) and be scored as follows:

Killing the Enemy** General: 3BPs

Sacking Enemy Camp or BUA: 2BPs

Winning the match: 1BP

Enemy Element Killed by General:1BP***

All are cumulative.

7. Winner with the highest BP score will be awarded the +5 Katana of Mightiness. 

The player with lowest BPs gets the Wakizashi  of Atonement.

That covers most of it. I'm always interested in feedback and ideas to make this fun and outrageous tourney.

*In which my hapless Cilician Armenians were chewed up quite thoroughly.

**Do I really need to put 'enemy' in this list? Perhaps , yes I do.

***That is- in direct front edge to front edge contact. Not supporting, not overlapping or buttocksing.

I suppose shooting counts. If you are brave enough to enter with a Bw General, you deserve all the kudos you can get.

Wrath of the Khans

FallCon 2010 will see the return of Samurai Night Fever. Now with 300% more light horse!

This year 'Samurai Night Fever II: The Wrath of the Khans' expands the tournament to encompass all those wonderful horse armies of the plains. Previously, an army was eligible if it had 'japanese' or 'samurai' in the title or was a legit, listed enemy of one of these armies.

Lord Saketumi, Early Samurai Bow General

Now, the keywords are; 'japanese', 'samurai', 'mongol', 'korean', and 'chinese'. Armies that include those words in their names or are legitimate enemies of them. Books II, III and IV only. Sorry Shang Dynasty, but I had to make the call some place.

And let's try to keep things 'east of the Urals', ok? If you try to convince me to let you play Teutonic Knights or some other sort chainmailed euro-army I will use my Toshiro Mifune grade scowl on you , humiliating you in front of the cool DBA players who brought awesome Asian armies to the tourney.

fear the scowl.....

Sound good? I hate compiling lists.

The FallCon first Friday DBA tourney has the tradition of being easy-going, n00b friendly and a little odd. I'm pleased to continue this tradition. Rules will be posted later and will be pretty simple; kill the enemy general, sack the camp, rout the army. For those of you who are so inclined and require a textual basis for this, I will be posting more concise paragraphs at a later date.

So, get painting! If you need some resplendent inspiration, here's another video from Altan Urag, not just my favourite Mongolian Folk-Rock band, they've been stuck in my head and in my MP3 player.

This is a little more moody and less bloodthirsty than the last one I posted. While you listen go over to Neldoreth's site and read about his Mongol project: http://www.hourofwolves.org/?view=articles&which=mongolProject

I Was A Teenage Ashigaru

No new stuff to report.

Have Samurai and the like on my mind. Working on my next Early Samurai force which will have a fairly substantial warrior monk presence. Why? I have lots of figures and I think they are cool. More on Early Samurai, later.

I came across this link whilst dredging through the vasty deeps of youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv-8vY3iCc4&feature=related

This is the movie 'Heaven and Earth' or 'Ten To Chi' in which I was employed for the summer as an extra. The film was shot on the Stoney First Nations Reserve which lies between Calgary and the mountains to the west. It's the story we all know and love, Battle of Kawanakajima, Uesugi Kenshin, and Takeda Shingen.

For the summer I stood around in red plastic armour baking in the sun and dust. Occasionally we'd run around or engage in mock fights. But mostly we just stood around.

This does not make me a re-enactor as some people have told me. Extras get paid to run around in costumes. Re-enactors pay money to run around in costumes.

This does make me foremost authority of on Samurai warfare on my block, quite possibly neighborhood.

Have fun and watch. It's quite fun, and you can see me! I'm one of the guys in red running away from Kenshin's 70 Kilo-Mifunes* cavalry charge through the red Takeda ashigaru ranks.

Made today it would have countless herky-jerky CGI puppets fighting it out with extra choppy editing. I feel like I was in one of the last of the 'cast of a thousand' epics.

DBA wise all I'm pointing out is how cool the singular massed colours of the uniforms look. Maybe not historically accurate, but dramatic for sure. I'm doing another Post-Mongol Samurai force this spring and black and white are the colours of the season for sure!

Until then, keep your ashigaru away from the cavalry in the open.

-Sean

* You may or may not be aware that the 'Mifune' is the scientifically agreed unit of measurement of cinematic samurai badassadry. One Mifune (MF) is a single eyebrow raise by the actor Toshiro Mifune in 'Yojimbo'. Kikuchiyo's death scene in 'Seven Samurai ranks as 1.6 Mega-Mifunes. The dune sequence in 'Shogun Assassin' starts to red-line the meter at 7.2 Mega-MF's.