Summary; I beat the Tokugawa in the first major battle of the campaign, but they are far from beaten, the Imagawa are still waiting in the wings, and the Hattori are bound to take Mino off me. On the plus side, my general gains a level.
Winter 1545.
I try to forestall the Hattori with an alliance offer, but it fails. Ruing my decision to not attack as soon as I could, I march my army down south to take on the Tokugawa army. I can't quite get Nobuhides army to the fight so they end up coming in as reinforcements. Fine by me, I'm the attacker anyway.
Battle of Nagoya.
Pre-battle analysis.
Clan Oda
Takayamas Army Owari
Leadership: Commissioner for Warfare Takayama. Command Rating:1
- Generals Bodyguard: 17 men
- Yari Samurai: 109 men.
- Yari Ashigaru: 425 men, 3 units.
- Bow Ashigaru: 240 men, 2 units.
Nobuhides Army Mino
Leadership: Oda Nobuhide
- Generals Bodyguard: 30 men
- Yari Ashigaru: 150 men
- Bow Ashigaru: 120 men.
Clan Tokugawa
Leadership: Tokugawa Hirotada, 1 Star
- Also present: Matsudaira, General.
- Yari Samurai: 120 men.
- Yari Ashigaru: 300 men.
- Bow Ashigaru: 120 men.
It is a clear day, in snow, and the ground is heavily forested and hilly terrain. Not ideal, this. I begin with my usual practice of placing my soldiers on a wooded hill, with my archers at the front in skirmirsh mode (which I must say has improved a lot) and my Ashigaru behind, my Yari Samurai sheltered to the rear. My general is behind.
The reinforcements come. As I integrate my new forces into my army, I observe the enemy have taken up position on a high, sparsely wooded hill, an excellent position forcing a bloodbath for my forces. Curses! I move my army to the left of the feature, comparatively far away on flat ground, giving the enemy just enough room to hang himself should he get overconfident. While I do this, I move my army into the lethal, offensively minded triple bow line formation, three units of archers spread out into a line or as close as possible in column behind each other, focussing my fire on one small portion of the field.
To my amazement, the Tokugawa attack first. They try to assault with infantry, getting their samurai shot to pieces though they do catch me a little off guard by the speed and boldness of the advance, shortening the number of arrows I get off as they suddenly send their two generals after my archers. Who promptly pull back behind their lines, getting both generals killed off by my spears, who also absorb the worst of the infantry charge and even manage to pull off an outflanking maneuver and an attack on the rear of the Tokugawa army. Meanwhile, my archers suffer quite bad losses at the hands of enemy archers... until my own cavalry explode into them. With both of their leaders dead the Tokugawa army quickly crumbles. They get half their samurai away on the basis of them breaking first while the Ashigaru fight bravely on, confirming my suspicions that samurai are overpriced fops, but the enemy bow and yari ashigaru are all but cut to pieces, the bows being practically annihilated by losing everyone bar four men. By the end of the debacle only 118 of the Tokugawa advance party remain compared to 900 of the 1091 soldiers I fielded. The broken Tokugawa army flees back to Mikawa.
Takayama gets a bow master from his level up, and also gets the strategist perk. I train two units of bow ashigaru to make up for the one I didn't train last turn. And I get the inevitable bad news.
Sure enough, the Hattori declare war, and move towards Mino. And as expected, I won't get there in time. On top of this, I misjudge where the Tokugawa border is and suffer winter attrition, because apparently being just over the border is enough for your men to starve to death rather than, you know, arrange for food to be carried just over the border to them.
I'm pessimistic about where this campaign is going. Turns out the Tokugawa have inexplicable reserves of manpower, seeing as they only have one city, and the Hattori will force me to evacuate Mino next turn (I just hope rebels get them.) I will have to retreat to Owari to guard it and plot how I can go about breaking the ability of the Hattori to fight. One of my enemies needs to go, I can't keep this up much longer. At least I won't be the only one to get smashed; the Shimazu are out the game.
