Test Of Honour - Capture the settlement!

This is mission 2 Capture the Settlement in our "Linked Battles" campaign that we are going through in the club. The scenario is that by turn 5 you need to have captured more objectives (3 in total) than your opponent.

Will & Lee

• Ronin Hero
• Ronin x 3
• Archer
• Devoted Samurai
• Archer
• Musician
• Spearmen x 2

Paul

• Unarmoured Samurai Hero
• Devoted Samurai x 2
• Archer
• Spearmen group
• Mustketmen group

The setup was interesting where we due to having lost the previous linked battle are the attacker. We start off on the edge of the board with our entire force ready to go.  Paul has 2/3 of his squad in the town with the last 1/3 ready in reserve.

I thought that this would had put Paul at a significant distadvantage but in fact the crafty bugger pulled a stunning move on us!

For his first turn one of his devoted samurai appeared on the board edge next to our spearmen and charged right in for an instant KILL.  This immediately forced a test of honour on the beleaguered spearmen who promptly failed and ran away.    What dishonourable tactics!! Tadashi (blessed be his name) would be most proud.

In my turn my Ronin hero skulked up to the nearest fence and assumed a defensive stance. I was worrying about not racing him ahead of the troops so had to stall.  

Paul pulled another Samurai token and charged his Devoted Samurai into the now defensless ashigaru who lost his token after having spent it running away.  Paul took a dishonour card to enhance his mighty attack, which killed the poor Ashigaru instantly.

For some much needed revenge we shot a lucky arrow and killed the now tokenless samurai.  I can't think of a more fitting end.. eheheh

Paul pulled yet ANOTHER ballsey move and moved on to the board edge a musketman group and took a shot at the Lee's Samurai. It was a HIT but luckily Lee had a defence token and successfully avoided the shot, leaving him with a thirst for VENGENCE for his fallen comrades.

A few turns later of uneventful edging forward, Lee and myself finally gather the courage to charge into the middle of the village to start claiming objectives. Only however after getting a tactical Ronin to act as a meat shield for the Ronin Hero.

Some harsh words about Lee's mother were exchanged with Paul and so his samurai charged in.

Insults and sword blows of equal measure were traded by the only damage that managed to get through was a fumble on a hit by Paul. 

The Ronin hero had quite enough of this incompetence and so charged in to show everybody how it should be done. With a warcry of IT'S CLUBBING TIME and a Dirty Trick, the ronin hero (Not tadashi) smashed the unarmoured samurai to the ground with a critical hit.

I cackled with glee when rolling 6 dice to wound but... BUT annoyingly the club missed the mark and failed to kill. 

Our basic Ronin eventually caught up and started to swarm into the village with the purpose of being meat shields for our valuable samurai. 

 With time becoming short we all start rushing in to try and claim as many objectives as possible.  Lee's samurai charges in on Pauls troublesome archer for a kill.

Paul in return charged his Unarmoured samurai to instantly kill Lee's red samurai! 

The Ronin hero then heroically charged into the now actionless unarmoured samurai for a cheeky kill (Took a dishonour card of course).  Ahhhhh so much death!!

We were conscious that a single death could spell doom for us as the ronin have incredibly low honour a single dishonour card means an instant fail when we come to roll for morale checks. If one of our basic Ronin died (highly likely) then everybody would flee and not contest the objectives. With this in mind the ronin hero charged in for another attack and took an HONOUR card (deduct one dice for the hit roll).. absolutely unheard of but would it pay off? 

No.. it did not pay off...  

With this failure and lesson learned to never take honour cards again, we moved our last miniatures to try and contest as many objective points as possible as the game ended. 

Final state of the battlefield. (We left the dead on the floor) 

So, according to the rules to control an objective you must have no enemy troops within 3”. However all three objectives were contested and so we could not declare a winner based upon that. Instead we had to go by the points of the slain. After tallying up the heads we declared that the RONIN won!  The local peasantry quaked in fear and locked their doors as they knew that tonight… there will be some celebratory pillaging.