Battle of Dongnae Chainmail report!

First off, apologies. I remembered to bring everything with me except my camera. So no pictures of the game. Sorry about that.

In the last two days, Josh had been texting and sending messages on Facebook with tons of questions about the rules. He had volunteered to play the weaker Korean side, and wanted to know all his options. Well, I ended up overcompensating for his weaker forces. I didn't realize the wall would be such a benefit ruleswise. Actually, it wouldn't have been, except that we gave him double the ranged figures he otherwise would have had.

One other change we made was that since Josh's table is only about 3' by 4' (quite a bit smaller than the minimum 4' by 8' Gygax and Perren suggest, but we're in Korean apartments not Midwest basements) and we were using 1/72 scale minis was to change measurements to centimeters instead of inches.

With the ranged units all on the wall in two large groups, he was able to do enough damage with pass-through fire then his normal attack to totally wipe Alex's ashigaru archers in one round, and my ashigaru footmen in a two rounds. At that point, we stopped the game, as none of the Japanese units were large enough to take that punishment and return fire, especially as he had the cover bonus from the wall.

So while it may not have been the best game ever played, we did learn a lot.

a) the rules are simple, elegant, and play well
b) save actions involving walls for 1=1 scale combat
c) try to get a bigger playing area so we can actually maneuver

Even with the change to cm instead of inches, we still had the Japanese forces bunched up with little room to move, and the Korean forces behind their wall, basically just sitting there doing nothing.

It was a good experience, and I think I'll be able to set up some more fair battles in the future. We're looking forward to trying out the Man-to-Man scale rules, and definitely the Fantasy Supplement!