Slitherine

Hi All,

After perusing my list for the Early Japanese, I started to think about the "Poor Unarmoured Spearmen" Ashigaru.

Hell, they cost 2 points! That's 12 points for a 6 base BG!

Useless as tits on a bull in combat, but absolute gold in boosting your BG count and giving rear support.

So, my question: In anotherwise well balanced army is 4 BG's of Poor crap worth 1 BG of Superior Samurai?

Difficult question as the USP for Japanese is the superior Samurai which the poor BG's don't provide rear support to. Personally I don't use them (that's not necessarily a recommendation. Ask Kevin J - he's the Guru (or should that be Sensei )).

Don

quackstheking wrote:Difficult question as the USP for Japanese is the superior Samurai which the poor BG's don't provide rear support to. Personally I don't use them (that's not necessarily a recommendation. Ask Kevin J - he's the Guru (or should that be Sensei )).

Don

You're right, but you can have a crap load of average Ashigaru too. My current design has 3 BGs of Average Ashigaru, and 1 support poor, meaning that they really have to 'stay together' or not get the +

I don't think I deserve Guru status on this, but I do agree with Don, the main thing that gives this army its edge is the Superior Samurai. I don't know how your list is made up, but I tend to intersperse the Ashigaru and Samurai to stop people picking on the weaker type. If you have them all in one clump it makes for a bigger target, with the added bonus of a Poor BG to pick off afterwards. I've tended to use a couple of BGs of Average Ashigaru with Heavy Weapon as support/second line, but they are of course more points.

It's worth looking at the recent postings on the Roll Call event if you've not seen them. There were 4 Japanese armies (it was an Eastern/Americas theme) and Ben's winning army (with maximised Samurai) seems to be the way to go, certainly against other Japanese armies (which are also your most likely historical opponents).

alasdair suggested to me the 1543 version.. 8 bgs of samurai, 6x Lf , 4xtc option and rest of points spread around the compulsory average. This was the sub option of zero mounted, ronin and sohei... was quite solid. I built list from mixture of advice, plus i like my armoured horse archer armies so i have made the sin of mixing two approaches... see you at the bottom of the ladder, im sure i can make room...