First Playtest of Samurai Rules

Brother against brother in Japan! Allen-san and Joel-san prepare to engage in battle in our Samurai rules playtest

I had been urging Mike Stelzer to bring the Samurai miniature rules he's been working on to one of our Sunday evening gaming sessions. He's been revamping the rules to simplify them from his first iteration years ago. Once Mike explained everything to us, they definitely seemed fairly straight-forward. We learned the rules as he had as fill in our card for our force of ashigaru, samurai, and lord.

A peaceful village - but not for long! Six gamers are about to engage in some serious playtest mayhem in Japan

He and Keith had set up a peaceful village for the six of us players, and it was our job to wreck that peace -- and incidentally, chase off the enemy clan opposite us. My force was composed of five ashigaru (ordinary soldiers) with bows, two samurai with katanas, and a samurai lord in full armor with katana. In Mike's system, each class of troops (he uses the term "rank"), uses a certain size dice for activation. My ashigaru would roll a d6 to activate, samurai a d8, and the lord a d10. The number you score determines how many actions you receive for your activation, from one to four.

My enemy crests the hill in the distance -- Keith's clan! Hated rollers of average or above-average dice!!

Mike's intention is for those using larger dice to receive more actions, and for the most part, my opponent Keith adhered to his direction. On the other hand, I proved to him that -- no matter what size dice you get me to roll -- I can find the "1" on it! I thought I was being clever seeking out the high ground as a firing platform and shooting at Keith's yari (polearm) ashigaru and samurai as they closed with us. Keith took advantage of the +3 Mike gave to troops hiding behind a tree, and darted from tree to tree, affording us almost no chance at inflicting hits on them as they closed. Under this playtest version, missile troops need to triple the score of the target to cause any hits. Since even a roll of a "1" meant he scored a "4", it didn't matter what I rolled on my ashigaru's d6 attack. We were just hitting a lot of tree trunks! Mike agreed we probably needed to look at that chart for the next playtest.

On my left, my ally Joel-san moves up...destined to receive the same smack-down the my troops are about to receive!

Once Keith got close enough to charge into combat, he proved that his yari-armed ashigaru were pretty good at slicing and dicing my troops. He used the rules effectively, ganging up on lone targets and inflicting hits on them. I foolishly ran my lord up into combat against a lone ashigaru and promptly rolled a "1" to the ashigaru's "6". We misread the chart and said the result was my lord was knocked down, when it should have been a recoil. The way Mike had structured the combat results, the worst that can happen to the attacker (I believe) is to recoil out of combat. He agreed that the chart needed to be streamlined for the next game and the results more simplified.

My samurai lord in the bottom center proves his tactical ineptitude -- being engaged by four enemy!

Either way, my lord's face plant was symptomatic of the way my dice were going, this evening. One by one, Keith ganged up on and sliced and diced my clan to ribbons. When both of my samurai were down and one or two of the ashigaru, the lord (he had survived, amazingly!) decided we had diced with fate long enough and ordered a retreat. Keith was kind, and let us abscond from the field, with the loss of only one of his ashigaru.

Fratricide in action! Things are getting ugly as older brother Allen puts the hurt on younger Joel-san

In the middle of the table, brothers Allen and Joel had waged a bitter, gang-fight. As the elder, Allen got the better of my ally Joel, and his survivors were also soon retreating alongside me. On our left, Steve had decided to make things difficult for Bruce and defend the walls of his lord's home. This meant Bruce had to do end arounds and leap over the walls to engage him. Their battle was somewhat indecisive at that point when we decided that the good guys had had enough.

Alarmed at the way Joel and I are folding like a house of cards, Steve would soon retreat behind his walls

The rules were easy to learn, and played very quickly, which is what Mike was hoping for. We discussed tweaks to them for future games for awhile. Keith and I felt that a differential chart would be better than one that provided results when you scored 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x your opponent. With wounds being a cumulative -1 to your combat rolls, there is a distinct possibility of rolling negative numbers. I think you'd want to avoid arguments of how many times a roll of "2" beats a "-1" by, or results like that.

It's time to cross the bridge and draw the bamboo curtain on this sorry disaster...!

This is the first time we've played this iteration of the rules, though, so it provided a good playtest of the system. Mike is a bigger fan of samurai movies than I am, so I feel handicapped at making suggestions to give it more of a samurai "feel." The fact that my lord survived, despite his horrible luck (he rolled more "1's" than all other numbers combined, I think!), shows me it has a cinematic feel. The heroes don't necessarily die, but escape to fight another day. 

The fact that we all knew what to do and just asked Mike for rulings on minor matters showed that the system certainly flows well. I look forward to trying it out again.