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| A note about Command groups while I'm on the subject. I'm a big fan of using Command Groups, especially with a high glory general like Toturi, for one very simple reason, the morale re-roll. Morale in Clan War is critical and anything that will aid you in passing or avoiding Morale checks is worth having. After that, the important abilities are: the tac card draw, the additional free maneuver, and finally the ability to project skills. I do not consider 4 hatamoto necessary as they are only required for the "Rally routed" ability, which in my opinion is a waste. Odds are, if you have a unit routed it's probably not combat effective anyway, the ability spends your general (very bad), and it only brings them up to "Broken", so they still aren't ready to fight. At a minimum that unit just missed 4 turns of the game (turn routed, turn rallied to broken, turn rallied to ready, turn to reform) which is half the game in a typical length game. |
And the Warriors Who Follow Him
Now after the general you have your unit commanders. This is
where Toturi's army has great strength. Within Toturi's army
there is arguably the best collection of unit commanders available.
I'm not going to review all of them exhaustively, I'll just advise
you to pick among them in support of your plan. If you know who
you are fighting you should be able to tailor your leaders to
your advantage. The one exception to this is the ronin leadership
packages (LP's). If you are going to go with a LP either use
a Ronin Taisa or don't bother with an LP. Taisa's are the only
LP that give a flat bonus to ML rolls in addition to their special
ability. All the others just give bonuses to maneuver tests which
is not nearly so useful, especially with the CG available for
additional free maneuvers.
The Army
Now, I've talked about troops, the plan, and commanders, now it's time to talk army and then we'll talk about using the army on the battlefield.
Design Criteria
I'm not going to go into specifics of "take this much of
these troops" as much as I'm going to put forth the design
criteria I use when recruiting an army. For an offensive army
I look at speed, number of maneuver elements, Ranged defense,
support.
First off, for any army, hitting someone in the flank is the most desirable method of engagement. The easiest way to do this is to get where he doesn't want you, which means speed. The fastest troop in the game oddly enough are the Ise Zumi with the Centipede tattoo. They are premier flankers with a grand total of up to 36" of movement while under it's influence (usually it's around 30 or less). This is extraordinarily fast. After the Ise Zumi you have cavalry. I like cavalry because the speed is always there (you don't have to turn it on), and they get nice bonuses when fighting infantry. The problem with cavalry is that it can't stand up to a ranked infantry unit, so you have to hit them in the flank, rear, or otherwise negate the rank bonus (which will kill cavalry dead). Your final option for fast troops is to take any standard infantry unit and cast Wind Borne Speed (hereafter referred to as WBS) on it. This has a nice flexibility, but has it's own downside (can be countered, cost of the shugenja, etc).
When recruiting an army I almost always include one unit of actual cavalry. I also almost always have a shugenja with WBS (generally Morito Tokei exp). I may also bring a unit of Ise Zumi, but all 3 usually gives you more mobility than you really need. Mobility can be a two-edged sword in that you want to use the mobility, but you can't get too far from your support lest you get cut off and eliminated before help can arrive.
Maneuver Elements
Next you have to look at number of maneuver elements. I define
a maneuver element as any unit or individual which can be maneuvered
for contact with the enemy, or in response to enemy units. I
do not include any unit which can only engage under certain conditions
(i.e. skirmishers) or units which are not suitable for engagements
(i.e. archers). The tricky part is, that you want more maneuver
elements than your opponent, without making them so weak that
they are combat ineffective. In my opinion a minimum is 1 per
500 koku of roster. I've seldom been able to get more than 1
per 300 koku of roster, but I have made small lists where I had
1 per 250 koku. Now when recruiting units the general rule of
thumb is that their minimum effective size is inversely related
to their cost. This means that the more they cost, the smaller
the unit you can have and still have it be an effective unit.
The cheaper they are the more of them you need. Part of this
is a function of morale, the cheaper troops have worse Morale
so you want more of them to space out the percentage morale checks.
The other part of it is that troops without big bonuses will
do most of their damage through rank and overlap bonuses, so
you need lots of them to maximize those dice. Having said this,
for elite two wound troops I think the minimum size is in the
10 to 12 range. For cavalry I usually field 8 plus a leader.
Since we're talking about unit size I will touch on something
that is fairly common practice. It's called several different
things, but most commonly it's referred to as fours plus one.
This means you make your units an even multiple of 4, plus one
more. For example 13, 17, 21, etc. What this does is set your
morale percentage checks slightly higher for minimal cost. For
instance if you have a unit of 17, you'd check after 5 casualties
(for the first percentage check) just like a unit of 20 would,
but without paying for the extra 3 models. This is a valid rule
tactic although it makes your units oddly sized. I don't know
that it is really worth the trouble, but it's worth keeping in
mind. The following are some common unit sizes I use: Flanking
unit (i.e. Ise Zumi or Cav) 8-12; two wound elite unit - 16;
one wound line unit (20-25); Vet ashigaru with Leadership package
- 20; Vet ashigaru with personality - 28-35; support unit - 12-16.
Now when I take all this into consideration and recruit an army
I usually end up with a cavalry unit, 3 or 4 infantry units,
a shugenja, and a command group. Sometimes I have more infantry
units, but usually I wind up with 4-6 combat units. With this
number of combat units I can usually engage my enemy with one
unit and have another in position to flank them either the same
turn or the next. Being outnumbered in units gives your opponent
a tough problem because each time they commit a unit they are
committing a higher percentage of their total strength than you
are giving you the opportunity to commit your reserve last and
hopefully where it will do you the most good.
Minimize Losses on the Advance
The next thing you must plan for while recruiting your army is
defense from Ranged attacks. You must expect to see some ranged
attacks during the game, so you must plan ahead.
Now, the best defense against Ranged attacks (hereafter referred to as RA) is to not let them shoot at you. This means using intervening terrain to prevent them drawing LOS to your troops. Unfortunately you can't bring your own hills and forests and such to the battlefield, so you have to improvise. By far my favorite anti-ranged attack tactic is the spell Illusionary Terrain. With it you can put your terrain exactly where you want it. The downside is it's easily gotten rid of, but if it saves you from a turn or two of RA then it's worth it. There are a number of other anti-RA spells and tac cards you can bring. I won't exhaustively cover them all, but you should familiarize yourself with them.
Besides spells and cards, there isn't much you can do to stop RA. What you can do is choose who will bear the brunt of the damage by manipulating which unit is closest to the enemies RA unit(s). Despite their cost I prefer to use two wound units to soak RA damage as they can absorb quite a bit before they're rendered combat ineffective. You can also rotate the unit that is being hit so that you can spread out the damage somewhat. Obviously you should try to minimize the number of turns you have to take RA damage. More than 2 or 3 and you might not have enough punch to win the battle when you get there.
Support Your Combat Units
The last thing I recruit for my army is support.
These are the spells, items, and tactical cards that make the
army work. The grease in the gears so to speak.
Spells
For spells my favorites are Wind Born Speed (WBS), Illusionary
Terrain, and Counterspell (for magical defense). There are a
plethora of others, but these are the ones that most often find
their way into my army.
Items
For items I try to use very few. Everyone has their favorites,
so I won't comment here except to say that the fewer you use,
the more troops you have (consider that 2 or 3 items could add
up to the cost of a unit). The one item I consider a must take
is the Fan of Command. Not only is it's presence in Toturi's
army backed up by the storyline (Yokuni gave it to Toturi) but
it ensures you get 3 tac cards per turn (plus the CG draw), which
means that in an 8 turn game you have the potential to see your
entire tac deck. Not something every army can do.
Tactical Cards
The tac deck is always a critical item. You can only have 30
cards, and there always seems to be about 50 that you want. Obviously
there is a great deal of repetitiveness in tac deck building
(does anyone not use 3 Grim Determinations?) so I'll just cover
a couple of cards that I feel should be in a Toturi tac deck
that might not show up in other armies.
First and foremost is Peasant Revolt. If you're using a large percentage of veteran ashigaru this card is a must. You can effectively give your entire army +2 to all ML, maneuver, and resistance tests for a turn.
Another card I think should show up frequently (when using Toturi as your general) is Tactical Demands. This card normally costs your general a Void to play, but for Toturi it doesn't. While in play each time anyone plays a tactical card for it's printed effect that side's general takes a wound. Toturi has 7 wounds. Not many generals are going to want to get in a wound swapping contest with him. Played at a critical time this can prevent your opponent from using Tactical cards for a turn.
Delayed Orders is another favorite tac card as it can change a unit's initiative after your opponent is powerless to do anything about it (unless he also has a Delayed orders)
Now not surprisingly recruiting an army is never a simple task, I frequently have to tweak here, trim there, but the points I have laid out here are the ones I use during the process.
Position Yourself for Success
Once you have your plan and your army then it is time to take the field. Not surprisingly this is the part where everything can fall apart. The old adage that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy is as true on the Clan War battlefield as it was in the Ardennes in December 1944.
The last thing you can do that your opponent can not interfere with is deploy your troops. Ideally your deployment was determined when you made your battleplan, and hopefully the realities of terrain has not interfered too much. Now there has been libraries worth of books written about strategies and tactical maneuvering and anything I write here is going to be redundant.
That being said, I will cover some tactics that I have used that have been successful.
Tactics
Refuse the Flank
I prefer an extreme refused flank for most deployments. This
means I stack all my units in a very narrow frontage at one end
of the deployment zone. Since I have more units, and can place
my CG and other support units first, I can usually evaluate which
side is going to be weaker and aim my attack there. I usually
keep one unit (preferably cheap) to anchor my other flank, but
by concentrating on one side while my opponent evenly covers
his deployment I can create an even greater disparity in the
number of units. If my opponent has spread out too much I may
have eliminated some units from the battle entirely or at least
delayed their involvement significantly. Another advantage of
a contracted deployment is that your opponent may have his units
tripping over each other trying to get in position to deal with
you. The downside of a contracted deployment is that your units
are more susceptible to cascading morale failures and you can
get your own units tied up with each other if you aren't careful.
Out-maneuver Your Opponent
Once the armies have closed to within engagement range, things
get interesting. You can generally tell by the initiatives whether
or not your opponent is planning on engaging you. If he is, then
you have two options, let him, or attempt to make him miss. I
like the Hiruma withdrawal (usually performed with a Parade Ground
Practice card) for making someone miss an engagement. I will
sometimes do the withdrawal even if I know my opponent still
has the range to engage, just to pull him closer to my other
units and farther from his support. I also like doing the "sidestep"
maneuver with a unit my opponent thinks he has in his sights.
This requires some planning ahead to accomplish, but if you give
a unit an additional free maneuver (from the CG) you can have
a unit turn left or right, move four inches and turn back (without
making a roll, very important to note). This sudden displacement
of a unit can seriously hamper someone's attack, especially if
they were at the limit of their engagement range to begin with.
Once engagements start, I always try to use my greater unit numbers to flank the engaged unit(s). A flanked unit loses a great deal of it's combat power, even if it doesn't break from being flanked. Once the unit is neutralized in this way you will begin slaughtering it at a rapid pace (generally). Even Veteran ashigaru can do significant damage when on the flank.
I have covered almost every stage of the battle from planning, recruiting, deployment to engagement. Even with all that nothing can compensate for bad dice and bad tactical card draws. Planning, forethought, and maneuvering can, however minimize the vagaries of luck and occasionally they will pull a victory from the grasp of defeat.
I hope this treatise was useful and educational.
Shotokami
Hatamoto to Toturi