"AAR: 6mm Sengoku Jidai" Topic

A report on a recent Sengoku Jidai battle using an adaptation of the board game 'Tenkatoitsu' by Hexasim. After this game, I bowed to the inevitable and decided to convert to bigger unit-sized bases rather than the small ones here.
wargamesasp.wordpress.com/2018/01/10/6mm-sengoku-jidai-battle-with-tenkatoitsu

Very nice. I might have to look into Tenkatoitsu for my 6mm Samurai.

Beautiful looking battle, the rules seem interesting. I'd love to do the Sengoku era battles but I feel the problem is scale. I think its best to do at skirmish or big battle, otherwise the formations can be daunting…

It's a big project to be honest. I first tried it in 15mm, but it was way too daunting. If you want to represent units as 'combined arms' entities, then you end up having to use more figures per unit as a necessity. And the unit footprint grows with it, of course, which would be an issue with larger scales. I doubt you could use less than 30 figures per unit, and even if you were using a ruleset that played with 12 units a side, that's a lot of figures in 15mm or 28mm. Especially if you're doing it on your own…..

So, aiming at doing the classic Sengoku battles is not something I'd try and do in any scale other than 6mm or maybe 10mm. In 15mm I think I'd do it differently and aim at smaller battles with a few thousand a side.

That looks great I have the Kawanakajima board game and I will take a look at coverting it. I have a box load of unpainted 10mm Samurai and just have not found a rule set that captures the aspects that you talk about in your artcle on the rules. I have all the big rules for big battles and have found the same problems that you point out. Now i can use all those great minis and the Killer Katanna scenario books.

I have had the Kawanakajima game for years and never got around to playing but I will get it onto the table this week to see if I can convert it the same as you have done.

I see you are thinking of using larger bases, would it make sense to use movement trays, and stick with the smaller bases to represent the different abilites of the formation?

Thanks

Ah 10mm…. I almost did it in 10mm after seeing the Castle Arts stuff. Their buildings are really good too.

I thought about movement trays, But it would mean having trays for maybe 6 bases and then having empty bases to fill in the gaps for the 4 or 5 base units. Then there'd be the problem with the bases fitting in snugly enough (bits of glue on the edges etc).

Ultimately, I figured I'd go for permanent large bases. This also allows for better unit labelling. Now, I hate having labels, dice, numbers etc on bases, but I thought I could use counters in dice cells and make them as unobtrusive as possible.

This is the result, the stat counters show: Clan A, Shooting 2, Elan 1, Mass 4.

That does look good, i will have to figure out how I am going to follow your lead.
William

I was going to look at the Killer Katanas scenario books and see if I can figure out some kind of way to figure out how to rate different clans etc, so creating scenarios is a little easier. This is also why I thought of having as you did multiple bases on a movement tray. That way it is easy to customize the units to fit various scenarios.

By the way the 10mm I have are the old AIM figures sold by minifigs in the US. Not sure who has those at this point, it would be nice to find them again.

Had you had any thoughts or plans to do that?

Ultimately units can be customised by changing the numbers on the base. I will do some bases for smaller clans with fewer figures on the base, fewer guns etc. to try and keep the visual relation between figure numbers and unit size. I think if you can make movement trays work then that may be a better way to do it, as you'd maintain that relationship a lot better.

For battles, I thought I'd start with the basic numbers and then increase the elan ratings for better units. The other idea I had was to have poorer units start with a permanent step loss which couldn't be rallied. Adding leaders is another way to increase unit quality.

There is a scale in the Tenkatoitsu rules based on the unit stats, so each point of shooting/elan/mass is about 100-150 men or so iirc. If you're using the Killer Katanas scenarios, you can cross this over directly to unit stats. E.g. each 100 missile troops equals one shooting point, each mounted samurai equals 1 elan point etc. You could get more creative and count each 100 archers as half a shooting point and each 100 teppo as one point for example.

No idea about the AIM figures, they've been gone for some time as far as I know.

That sounds good. I just ordered Tenkatoisu from Hexsim games so that will be intresting to play.

The differant points for archers vrs teppo is intresting.

The Aim figures I bought in 2005 but they are really nice and I think they will work with the Castle arts figures, and even pendraken.
William

Second game using the Tenkatoitsu rules:

wargamesasp.wordpress.com/2018/02/01/sengoku-jidai-with-tenkatoitsu