A game I have both been playing and thinking about a lot lately is RAN, a game featuring seven battles from the Sengoku jidai (Age of Warring States) period of Japanese history. It is in fact the 12th volume in Richard Berg’s Great Battles of History series and a sequel to volume five, Samurai.
I picked this up during GMT’s P500 sale and am really glad I did. I’d always been interested in the GboH system, but was put off by the games’ high prices and legendary complexity. According to word on the street RAN was relatively streamlined as far as the GboH system goes, the sale made the price right, and who could not be attracted by the theme?
RAN is probably the most thematic hex-and-counter wargame I have ever played. CDG’s have recently set the theme bar pretty high because of the ease with which they integrate historical events into the game-play, but RAN does an impressive job too of melding theme and mechanics. Each scenario in RAN covers a single battle; history here is not introduced via the occurrence of historical events, but rather through the abilities and limitations of various troop types. The game system is intricate. I certainly won’t be giving an overview of the rules here, but I will describe some of the basic mechanics in order to give you a feel for the game.
Here’s a pic of the start of the Mimigawa scenario:
Each of those groups of units is called a contingent. Here’s a close-up:
At this point I should say that I really like the counter art. I mean just compare these detailed drawings to old-school AH counter art and you’ll realize that counter art has come a long way.
This unit is a Busho, or commander, of a contingent.
In order to function properly, units need to be within the Busho’s command radius, the large number at the bottom of the counter. That number is also used to roll for momentum. After a Busho completes an activation, he can roll against this number to see if he can move again immediately. A Busho can take up two extra Orders Phases in this way. So the higher the ratings on your Busho, the more mobile your army is going to be.
Contingents, however, don’t get to all move at once; they have to be activated by the So-Taisho, or general, of your forces. Look here’s one now:
That number on the bottom right is how many different contingents the So-Taisho is allowed to activate each turn, so you’re going to have to make some strategic choices about which contingents to get moving, especially early in the game. Once contingents come to blows with opposing units, they tend to remain active and no longer need the So-Taisho to point them in the right direction.
There are three basic types of combat units, infantry
Bowmen and gunners,
And cavalry
Each type has different strengths in close combat and, obviously, the bowmen and gunners can fire from a distance.
Finally, there are the individual samurai units, which really serve to give this game its unique flavor:
Instead of ordering his troops to move and/or fight during an activation, a Busho can call in a samurai champion and send him off to hunt for the heads of his enemies. Samurai can issue challenges within a certain radius; any enemy samurai, Busho, or So-Taisho (unless in his honjin, or command tent) must answer the challenge or Lose Face. Losing face causes a reduction of a Busho’s stats; lose face a second time and the timeless code of the samurai warrior will demand that you commit seppuku – ritual suicide! To avoid all that, you’re going to have to duel that chest-thumping samurai calling you out. Dueling involves tossing dice and adding each samurai’s combat strength; the loser will take hits to their stamina. Once your samurai's stamina is reduced to 0, he's dead and his head becomes the opposing So-Taisho’s new favorite wall decoration:
That’s right, folks, there are counters for the heads you collect! Apparently, this was actually a routine practice during the battles of this period.
So how do you actually win? The goal is to rout the other army from the field and you do that by accumulating ‘rout points.’ Units rout when they acquire a certain number of hits from combat (number varies with each unit). An eliminated bowmen or gunner is worth 2 rout points, a unit of Ashigaru spearmen 3, samurai infantry 5, and cavalry 6. Additionally, once a contingent has suffered losses you have to check to see whether or not the contingent sticks around for more or heads for the hills. The larger the portion of the contingent that is either eliminated, routed, or disrupted the greater the chance that the contingent will call it quits. The contingent’s original Busho gives a positive modifier for the roll; the loss of the Busho in samurai single-combat will give a negative modifier. Troops apparently don’t like seeing their commander’s head paraded around on a pike. On the other hand your troops LOVE to see the heads of enemy commanders on pikes, so for each head your samurai manage to collect you get to subtract 3 rout points from your total.
So there you have it. There’s a lot more detail of course, but that should give you a sense of how the game plays. So what do I like about the game?
1) ‘Strategic’ decisions. Yeah ok so this is really a tactical battle game, but players do have choices on how to approach the battle that are beyond the placement of particular units. For example, let’s go back to that first picture, the set-up for the Mimigawa scenario. Capturing Takajo Castle is worth 10 rout points for the Otomo clan (blue). Sadly, the Otomo leader can only activate a single contingent per turn. So – do you try to beat the Shimazu to the river line and exploit what looks to be an advantage in numbers on the left flank or do you use the Tagita contingent to make a dash for the castle before the Shimazu can reinforce the position?
2) Tactical decisions. There is a lot to master with respect to the unit types. How best to use bowmen and gunners? Cavalry? Cavalry is great for flanking moves, but costs you a ton of rout points to lose. Bowmen and gunners need to be up front to do any damage, but are weak in close combat. How can you both use them and protect them? Gunners are particularly interesting units because of Gunfire-Induced Aggression. If a gunner does 2 or more hits to an infantry unit there is a chance that it will charge your poor gunners in a blind rage. This will do real damage and might even eliminate your gunners. So – do you keep your gunners at long range in order to reduce the chances of such a charge? Or do you risk it? Or do you in fact try to set up your units specifically to take advantage of any enemy unit who foolishly breaks ranks in this fashion?
3) Samurai combat. One-on-one samurai combat is mechanically a bit simplistic, just throw dice and add in the combat factor over several rounds, but the trash talk really starts flowing when the samurai line up to tango and continues even long after the combat is over. There are few things more satisfying in wargaming than collecting the severed heads of your defeated enemies. The only disappointing aspect of the system is that a samurai can choose to run away between rounds of a combat if it looks like he might get beheaded in the next round. If a samurai or Busho runs then they are out of the game, but it is still a bit anticlimactic. I want my head dangnabit!
4) Variability. Along with player decisions, the momentum rolls and the contingent flight rolls will ensure that battles develop along different lines each time you play.
5) Solitaire-suitability. Since there is no hidden information and you never know quite how far either your own units or those your opponent will be able to move (due to momentum rolls) the game plays solo really well.
Although I love the game and can see it getting a lot of play in the future, the game is not without its flaws.
1) The rules. Ahh where to start? As I mentioned earlier this is the 12th game in the GboH system and it is apparent that the GboH engine has been modified to fit the context of the Age of Warring States. I believe this explains the large number of ambiguities and gaps in the rules. Just check out a few of the threads on BGG to see what I mean. At this point, I’m not sure the designers are capable of proofreading their own rules because there are now 12 different versions of the same basic system; that’s just too much mental interference. None of the issues are game-breaking, but your first plays will require some head-scratching and you and your opponent will need to make a few reasoned judgments concerning whatever gaps and ambiguities you come across.
2) The map for the battle of Nagakute. This map is missing a huge patch of rice paddies that are supposed to lie between two large contingents. The difference between the impact of clear terrain and the sloshy rice paddies on movement and combat is sufficient that one pretty much needs to print out the map patch (available on BGG or the GMT website), but really who wants to have to paste on a patch?
3) The system is a little marker-heavy. There are markers for everything: contingent activation, open vs closed order, whether or not a unit must engage in Shock combat, engaged markers, markers to indicate a Busho has already given orders . . . you get the idea. As a consequence all that great counter art spends a lot of time covered up by pedestrian looking markers. A small point to be sure, but it bugs me nonetheless.
4) The rules for contingent flight. Whether or not a given contingent runs away is based on several factors you can control: the level of damage to its units, the survival or not of the original Busho, and the survival or not of the original So-Taisho. But at the end of the day, it comes down to a die roll. Now this doesn’t bother me – it is both thematic and will help to ensure that each game plays out differently. But the impact of these die rolls can be dramatic. In one scenario my devious opponent had executed a devastating attack using a cavalry-heavy contingent and was rolling up my right flank unit by unit. I had no reserves at this point and was in big trouble, but the gods must have been smiling because needing to roll only a 1-9 on a ten-sided die to survive his contingent flight check, my opponent rolled a ‘0’ and watched his entire flanking contingent turn tail and run. As a result I was able to shore up my right flank and press home my advantage in the center for the win. So if these kinds of wild swings of fortune will bother you then RAN is probably not your game.
Despite these flaws, I rate RAN a 9. Not only do I plan to enjoy this game far into the future, but I also plan to check out other GboH titles; the upcoming Chandragupta , in particular, has caught my eye.
Posted Sat Mar 29,2008 10:01 pm
