"Which is why suggested various types of heavy matchlocks counting as jezzails for game purposes. The other option's to use Dogs of War Galloper guns as light artillery."
Um, the heavy arquebus you refer to aka 'wall guns" were nowhere near as numerous as the ubiquitous teppo, and were IIRC used for defending castles or besieging same, rather than as battlefield fire support.
Actual cannon were rather rare due to the difficulties of transporting them over Japan's mountainous geography, and again, were mainly for sieges or defense of castles, and of course there's the expense and issue of procuring and transporting the shot and powder for the guns on the limited roads of 16th Century Japan as well
"
I'd avoid the usual "superman" stat lists for 16th Century Japanese."
Oh, I wasn't advocating "superman" status for the samurai necessarily, so much as I was advocating not assigning "rapscallion" status to the ashigaru if they were meant to resemble anything akin to the permanently under arms sort found in the later Momoyama Period
"Not all ashigaru were alike
"
Of course not! But neither were they of such appallingly poor quality as Skaven slaves with any frequency in the Momoyama Period *unless* you're talking earlier in the Sengoku Jidai, in which case some pretty hopeless press-ganged human material was not unusual
"Prior to the Tokugawa Shogunate, there were still part time ashigaru, so not all daimyos troops were professional and professional doesn't doesn't necessarily mean effective stats."
Um, the official separation of the samurai social class and the right to keep and bear arms as signified by the right to wear the daisho being the exclusive purview of the samurai was established by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who predated the Tokugawa Shogunate (although Ieyasu was indeed one of his contemporaries- and pretended to be his most loyal supporter until Hideyoshi kicked the bucket
).
The part-timers who tilled the fields until called to arms as the mainstay of the ashigaru pretty much ceased to exist under Hideyoshi's rule, a marked change from pervious centuries when the distinction between fighting man and farmer was more blurred, and social advancement from peasant to samurai through exploits on the battlefield was possible.
Hideyoshi took that all away with his Great Sword Hunt, and clearly did so deliberately to prevent someone else from doing precisely what *he* had done in his rise to power from commoner to Taiko and unifier of all Japan after circa 200 years of civil war. Hideyoshi had finally managed to complete the work of his late master, Oda Nobunaga in unifying the country, and Hideyoshi clearly saw that unity as a fragile state of affairs, with many hundreds of thousands of combat veteran samurai and ashigaru suddenly no longer fighting one another. IMHO this issue as well as his apparent inflated ego led Hideyoshi to launch his invasion of Korea with the stated intention of marching into China to make himself the next Son of Heaven!
Clearly Hideyoshi was IMHO aware of the dangers of *not* directing the potential ambitions and capacity for armed mischief *away* from his newly established rule, and channel those energies into furthering his own ambitions, and preventing his ostensibly loyal daimyo from getting any funny ideas
"Turnbull's Samurai Armies 1467–1649 is a good intro: link ."
I've been reading Turnbull's works since I was a teenager, and in fact have read just about everything the good Dr. Turnbull has written on the subject
including that handy tome. AFAIK neither Dr. Turnbull nor the other sources I've read over 30 years of studying the military history and traditions of the Far East contradicts the chronology of events I have outlined above
" A nagae-yari wielding ashigaru, even a professional, shouldn't be equal to a landsknecht or Swiss pikemen."
Of course not. You're comparing a screwdriver to a mallet IMHO. At the same time, an ashigaru who is a combat veteran who is in the service of one of the daimyo of the post-Great Sword Hunt period may be a rather different proposition fighting styles aside, than a mere peasant levy of the Thirty Years War
Certainly the hapless Choson Dynasty discovered this, as did their Ming allies during the Imjin War. Ashigaru were not phalangites like the Swiss or their Catholic opponents; they certainly didn't train or fight in the sort of close order phalanxes found in the Thirty Years War, nor did the geography in which they evolved encourage that sort of close-knit, ponderous formation IMHO. Theirs was a more mobile style of waging war, which IMHO should be kept in mind when trying to convert historical samurai to serve in a fantasy setting..
"The problem here's that the size of Chinese armies have been exaggerated,"
Which dynasty? Which period of which dynasty? Chinese armies have ranged in size from a few thousands to tens of thousands to a hundred thousand or more even after allowing for the tendency of contemporary chroniclers to exaggerate numbers, be they Chinese, Japanese, or European. *Abundant manpower* has always been an asset that Chinese Emperors and warlords alike have been quick to exploit again and again in Chinese history.
" since the later Ming had difficulty raising sufficient troops – source Chris Peers."
Um, the Japanese who fought the Ming in Korea in the end of the 16th Century who bothered to write about matters commented on the substantial numbers of troops the Ming brought to the party, as well as the abundance of cannons the Ming dragged along (circa 400 pieces by one contemporary account).
The issue of the delayed Ming response had less to do with raising troops than it did with the fact that when Hideyoshi's troops landed in Korea in 1592, the Ming were heavily engaged with finishing off a protracted rebellion, *and* dealing with border nomad incursions (ie., for the Chinese, the usual suspects). Once the rebellion was squashed and the border nomads put in their place sufficiently, the Ming turned their attentions to the issue of one of their loyal vassal states being picked on by a bunch of "dwarf pirates."
The Ming clearly still had some serious fight in them when the Imjin War rolled around, having put down said protracted rebellion in the North, and dealt with nomad incursions prior to marching to the aid of their Korean client state. Many of the troops who marched South to aid the Hermit kingdom were veteran fighters to some degree or another, not as well equipped or trained as the samurai and ashigaru they would face but still would prove formidable in their own right, and if the contemporary accounts are to be believed, quite brave, even recklessly so as the Chinese held their Japanese opponents in much the same degree of utter contempt as they themselves were so held by the Japanese!
Later on post-Imjin War, you'd be absolutely right, as the Ming came to rely increasingly upon mercenaries, and corruption in procurement had become endemic, hence why when the Jurchen/Manchus roared across the border later on, the Ming were unable to respond to the threat effectively, and were brought crashing down (I've read Chris Peers' work on the Chinese, as well as others).
IMHO adapting an historical army to a fantasy setting is as much about *which* period of the army's history are you basing the conversion on. of course, to me, that's half the fun, settling upon which iteration of one's favorite historical army to adapt.
Cheers!
Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net