@Viking Scott here you go...
Okay, so tried to play a game against an old hand of my local wargaming community, but he had never played this but he has played lots of them and he is now quite enamored with this.
The setup was protracted, and explaining the rules became quite involved. I ended up with 4 spectators too, which both slowed things down and added to the interest level (good because more opponents is a good thing!).
In the end I decided it was better to do a walk through talk through so it wasn't a battle but more of a familiarization. That said like all good wargamers they started seeing exploitable tactics, and win-win/lose-lose scenarios and quickly started to see the clever twists.
Background if you wish to read it (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Sekigahara#Rise_of_the_Tokugawa_Shogunate)
1. The Game is set in two factions (Ishida in gold, Takugawa in black). Each faction a Leader and has 3-4 Daimos (Feudal lords with large clans and castles etc Nobility). These support their lords but their loyalty cannot be relied on totally (Here is the rub!). It is fought over a period of 7 weeks (2 turns per week) so 14 turns.
2. There are two Great Faction Capitols (Ishida have Kyoto, and Takugawa have Edo (sic)). There are also two great Castles, or strongholds of the Factions. (Osaka Castle for Ishida, and Ueda Castle for Tokugawa).
3. How to win :- If you kill the enemy Leader (Tokugawa Ieyasu or Ishida Mitsunari) in battle you therefore become the Shogun of all Japan and win. (this means committing your leader to battle gives a huge advantage in terms of impact, but also a chance it could "Epic Fail" and he dies losing you the game). You also lose if your Stonghold castle (Osaka Castle for Ishida, and Ueda Castle for Tokugawa) is lost.
RESOURCE
4. So this is simple enough. There are also Towns in red on the map (small Resource centres), when you capture one, you gain control of it. The player who has more resource centres at the beginning of a week can recruit more units. So resource management is also key, "Do I attack the Castle Garrison or take the simple option of the town down the valley" gaining resource, but giving the enemy time to "Muster" units to his position and take back the town and kicking you to death.
UNITS
5. Both factions have a Black Bag full of block units. Gold for Ishida, black for tokugawa. When you get reinforcements it is a blind bag pull (e.g put your hand in the bag and pull out 3 random blocks). So you might get 3 blocks of infantry, 2 of cavalry, all of different Clans. Once a unit is destroyed you will not get it back, what you start with in the bag is all you get...There is only a finite amount of samurai for your faction so every loss is critical, every victory significant, every tactical withdrawal prudent. This makes you drive for decisive engagements but doesn't stop skirmishing from being highly effective and significant. The old adage of march seperate, fight together comes to light.#]
LOYALTY/ MONS / CLANS
6. Mons (the Symbol of each Clan) is key to this game. The Units fight for their Lord and ultimately the leader of the faction, they are more effective when combined in groups of the same Mon. e.g a Homogeous Army fights better. The Cards in the packs display a certain Mon, with either x1 or x2 bonus which increase the output of units with that Mon. So why don't we maximise the blocks into all the same Clan for maximum bonuses?
Loyalty Challenges, if the opposing player plays a "Loyalty Challenge Card" your forces with that Mon cannot take part in the battle and by default if your entire force is the same clan your entire army refuses to fight ( Bad Things
TM) e.g you get thumped and standby for mega-loses. So to build armies you need to be sensitive to punching above your weight and getting the bonuses, but no Clan can fight alone so Confederacy is key. So Above you can see 2 Infantry Units with a Cavalry unit from the Mori clan.
IDENTITY & MOVEMENT
7. Another layer to the game is not revealing the Mons on your stacks of units. Leave them facing you, and your opponents facing him, so neither player can see the others force dispostion. (this is how the game is suppose to be played not like in the above photographs). You know a large force is approaching but you have no idea of it's composition and it's loyalty. After it has fought a battle you may have had some of the units revealed but Armies can re-organise and dispatch units to other areas so it is fairly dynamic. So if you win by killing leaders how do find the enemy Leaders? This is the clever bit, you may reveal your leader for +1 movement, this means your Army can move an extra distance over it's normal distance, giving you an advantage of more maneuverability but showing the enemy where your Daimo or Shogun is! So he may well become a priority target for the enemy. Using Highways over roads give's +1, so your maximum move is +3. But you get penalties for large Armies greater than 8 blocks get -1 and so on, to represent the difficulty of moving large armies rapidly.
So now you are starting to see the advantages of moving separately quickly and fighting together!
Not so fast....Here comes some real kickers. Overruns, if you outnumber the enemy blocks by a 4-1 ratio you automatically overrun them (No battles you literally steamroller them), and they get destroyed (or a maximum 2 units retreat to a castle if one is nearby, otherwise the whole force is annhilated ). Skirmishing becomes very important, as 2 Blocks can only be Overrun by 8 Blocks, but as you saw earlier penalties for movement of units 8 or greater. Small Skirmish units can have time in hand to gang together and suddenly 4 blocks need 16 Blocks to overrun and if you have the right cards the Impact of even 4 Blocks can be devastating using the right cards. Suddenly the Enemy General's block of 10 is looking more of liability than a decisive force.
Supporting attacks, Armies can support other armies and yet not take part in the battle. This confers bonuses on the Army in battle and keeps another army closeby in reserve. This reinforces the point of mutually supporting forces. It also means one Army is fighting, but the other despite not being engaged can act as a Swap army. So as soon as you've revealed your Daimyo in battle, once victory is secured you can reorganise your forces and keep the enemy guessing as to which force the Daimyo is now in? (Very Clever use of the forces can lead to some interesting situations where the enemy think they have your faction leader cornered, but he march off with another force after your last victory).
CARDS
8. Are used for everything in this game, bidding for turn initiative (use the cards) movement (Use the cards) Reinforcement (Use the cards) Battle (Use the cards). It is clever, streamlined, and actually builds a nice a tension. You only get 5 cards, so this is when you decide should I bid for initiative more powerful cards have a higher initiative value but you are giving up good battle bonuses/loyalty challenges to gain the initiative. Or do you give up the initiative and then use the cards for extra movement and battle bonuses? How many Battles will you engage in? Will the enemy assault you? Is your hand awful? Should you stop and consolidate and boost your Garrisons? Or maybe recruit some units from your pool? Some Blocks have awesome bonuses like the Arqubuses and Cavalry which when combined with a Sword Card can really put the Coup
de grace Enemy Army and makes them Dangerous Random elements for your enemy to size up. Loyalty Challenge Cards can be cancelled by giving up a Card of the same Mon that the Loyalty Challenge card was played on, if you don't have it all forces with that mon stand idly by and take no part in the battle.
IMPACT
9. So Battles, these are decided by Impact. I like this concept, the initiative in battle (not be confused with turn initiative) jumps between the players as the battle rages. This gives a nice representation of the two generals studying the battle the odds of failure and getting inside the opposite generals mind. You are trying to get a higher impact value in order to win, and it's essentially like poker, back and forth until one side backs down or runs out of forces and cards. Then either general can cut his loses and declare capitulation (useful to save cards and units from destruction and also reveals enemy forces!).
The attack force lays down his 1st attack. So he counts up the Mons of each the units so lets say :-
So using the Ishida (gold), the Ishida General Commits all of the Same Mon into one army lead by their Daimyo, the other Block is held in reserve and can be used to support the attack if required. The General has a poor round of cards cannot stack a further bonus on to this Army. you add up numbers of Mons (2 + 3 + 3 + Daimyo Bonus) with no cards played gives 8 + 2 (diamyo) gives 10 impact (he leaves the other block in support if he needs them). So you mark up the impact on the impact track at 10 with a gold cube(goes upto 48), the initiative now passes to the Tokugawa player, he decides to play the crysanthimum x 2 Card with a Sword (the top two blocks in the black stack). So thats (2 (x2) + 1x Arqubus bonus(x2) = 4 + (1x3) x 2 = 10 and then adds another 2 Mon block to give 12 the Tokugawa Player is now confident in victory he moves a black block upto 12 on the impact track and holds the rest of the blocks ready for another round and has 2 cards if he needs them. So effectively he has only committed 3 blocks to the battle and is already beating 4 blocks because of the bonuses, he holds the rest of the blocks in his army if the Ishida Players wants to the up the ante.
The initiative passes back to the Ishida player, he has an awful hand of cards, though he still has 3 blocks he could commit to this battle. However the Tokugawa player has shown he has put up a strong performance and still holds a large reserve. The Ishida player is no fool, because he knows that casualties are irreplaceable if commits to this battle, he can lose small or lose big, by commiting to the battle he reduces the impact difference between and reduces the potential Casualties. He decides to withdraw sacrificing a single block, but saving the rest of his force, this may seem counter intuitive, but there is a logic to it, by Committing to Battle you reducing the Enemy's local superiority by a margin and therefore it's ability to dominate the battlefield. If he had not committed to Battle before quitting the field he would have lost 2 Units automatically.
You automatically take 1 block casualty for losing, however you lose more and more units based on the difference in impact. In this case, it was 12 - 10, so the difference was only 2, you destroy 1 enemy block for every 7 difference in Impact (rounding down). So in this case it was wise of the Ishida player to withdraw, as he had bitten off more than he could chew, and it was better than fighting with the odds stacked against him and sacraficing his army needlessly.
If the Tokugawa General had been bolder he could have had an impact of 30 (using Cards and committing all his blocks) and this would have forced the Ishida player to commit more of his army to the fight to minimise the difference in impact before with withdrawing. This runs risks for both sides (Ishida might have kept powerful cards in reserve).
So in essence if the Ishida player withdrew he would have lost 10 - 30 = 20 20/7 =2.85 so thats 2 extra blocks+ 1 block for losing.
Ishida loses 3 Blocks.
If the Ishida player had decided to commit his second group of Blocks and then capitulated he would have only lost 23 - 30 = 7 , so that would be 1 extra block + 1 block for losing and loses only 2 blocks.
Ishida loses 2 Blocks.
So the tactical advantages of a retreat is shown over a rout, where you will lose irreplaceable units. By Committing to battle he has reduced the likely casualties (how is that for a mind bender!)
After all the battles are finished you can replenish your card hand. In total you can hold a maximum of 14 cards.
Okay, I've been rabbiting for a while, some of the above maybe wrong, depending on bad maths, misreading rules or misinterpreting them but the essence of the game is there. I have barely scratched the surface of this game and it's complexities but hopefully it's been an insight to it. Any questions fire away?