Shogun 2 : AAR Battruh

[Gerontis]

Short intro :
This is a simple AAR done about a siege that was quite fun to do. I might post more AAR's about other battles or even collab them as I do them often with some friends, using skype or teamspeak to plan tactics or just quickly communicate - as most often we just see what happens and try to anticipate on it. Sadly seeing I am playing the game on my laptop, please don't expect impressive graphics. In order to run the game smooth without much lagging gameplay, I actually play on the lowest settings when it comes to multiplayer. For still not hurting your eyes with the poor graphics I have to suffer, I will try to make it during the time of the screenshots better appealing. Other than that? I will try to detail the ongoings of the battle as good as I can and as my grammar allows me to.

Hope you enjoy.​

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Participants :

Defenders

- @RoranHawkins
Fielding : 957 men
Much like mine, Roran's army was mostly composed out of peasants. Peasants with matchlock guns, swords and one or three unit with yari/spears. He also had hidden away an unit of cavalry with blunderbusses (basically ancient shotguns) and Waki raiders/bandits.
- Gero Bearo,
Fielding : 1020 men.
An army that is mostly composed out of peasants with swords, pikes and bows. One unit of proud samurai with swords.



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Attackers

- Enemy I
Fielding : 930 men.
- Enemy II
Fielding : 1515 men


The enemy had largely a samurai based force, supported by a couple of units that were monk warrior archers. Nasty monks with bows that could outrange and shoot our peasants with bows and guns. They also had two units that made me and Roran not be overly excited about. 30 men with handmortars and fire rockets.

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The siege of Satsuma Castle.

"The fiercest serpent may be overcome by a swarm of ants."
- Isoroku Yamamoto, 4 April 1884 – 18 April 1943​

The dark flags represent the troops under the command of Gerontis, while the white flags resemble the troops that are loyal to Roran Hawkins. As one can see, we have no troops on the lower levels as our treacherous enemies played a retainer against us! All the gates were open and we couldn't thus hope to even maintain control over the lower levels without getting swarmed.

To make it hard for the enemy hard to already lay destruction on most of our troops, the first defenders that were more prone for enemy fire were mostly archers under my control. Cause while we feared and suspected that they had catapults or cannons, they would make us silent for a good long moment. They had hand mortars and fire rockets. More mobile and thus more dangerous, if used right, than catapults and cannons.

The enemy had gathered their armies together in one spot. It gave me the same feels for a moment as one would have spotting a large army of Uruk Hai in front of their Helms Deep. But unlike the brave defenders of Rohan, we wouldn't be relieved by a large allied force of cavalry that would swoop down and save us all. Or well, some of us.

With this scenario, we decided together to just draw their fire on my archers and keep our soldiers with pikes and swords hidden behind the castle. Not to hide them, but to avoid the enemy from firing easily on them, if at all.

Then the sounds of cannons made me and Roran look up surprised. It seemed that our men were fond of surprising us with having our castle some canons to fire back at the enemy! Not that they are too accurate or demolishing the morale of the enemy soldiers, we were more than happy with them anyways.

With the enemy on one position, Roran worked on moving his hidden troops while I tried my best to keep the enemy occupied with my archers. Already the enemy 's fire rockets made some impressive impact as I had to withdraw one unit of archer in order to lure out the enemy fire rockets. Hoping to catch them off guard and thus in range of my archers.

I however seemed to have forgotten about one unit, that bravely stood and answered the enemy's hail of arrows with that of their own.

- "We did sign up for this! No retreat!"
"No mercy!"
"No ramen for them! :D "
"Shut up Bob!"

"I sit and wait,
does an angel contemplate my fate?"​

With returning fire bravely, the enemy slowly kept advancing. They had the advantage in numbers and superior units. This might have likely bolstered their morale, not caring as my archers kept whittling down their numbers. Perhaps slowly, but every enemy that was shot down, meant an enemy less that we would need to face in close quarters later.

As the enemy noticed that Roran was having an unit of soldiers with guns, they used their hand mortars. Occupied with shooting with arrows, I heard Roran over skype suddenly making a sound. Wondering what was going on, I feared that they had discovered his ambush troops (our very small, small scale of rohirrim). Instead, I noticed some movement on the top level, which triggered my curiosity why Roran suddenly moved a troop back. Then as I noticed something very small moving in the air, I groaned softly as I knew that I would be too late for the imminent doom.

Smoke rose from the impact. Men coughed as debris flew into the air and made me fear that they had smashed the deadly ammunition that the enemy hand mortars used had landed right into my peasant with spears.

BUT ARISE MEN OF BEARO! SPEARS SHALL BE SHAKEN! STONES SHALL BE SPLINTERED!

"OH MY BUDDHA! LEE, GET UP! LEE ! GOOD GRACE, YOU LAZY DRUNK!"​

The impact had been just avoided by Roran, who together with me laughed as we noticed that he had avoided in the nick of time what would've devastated his troops that just stood on the place of the impact. Only one unlucky drunk decided to feign he had been hit and thus we counted him as one casualty. But rather one unmotivated drunk with a spear than half an unit with matchlocks.

Then the enemy advanced further. The situation became clearly painful that they were not content with exchanging arrows with my archers and decided to rain further death on my brave soldiers. This time with fire rockets. Managing to withstand the impact, my archers numbers would dwindle as well. In a quick reaction, I had managed to anticipate where the fire rockets would fire and thus move my archers a bit backwards.

Still the impact made by the fire rockets was daunting...

- "This is worse than Bob having eaten chili con carne with extra explosive spice!"

- "DAMNIT, I DIDN'T SIGN UP FOR THIS!"
"Cya bob!"
​

With suffering loses, and forced a bit back, I noticed that the enemy was trying to lure fire a cheap unit of soldiers with naginata's. Not falling for that, I kept firing most of my arrows on the more expensive and dangerous samurai bowmen. It would be rude after all with the exchanging of arrows to suddenly ignore their presence, wouldn't it?

But then I noticed a chance! Sick of the enemy mortar and fire rockets, I noticed that they had nobody guarding those units. It was a gamble, but after proposing the idea to Roran, we came to an agreement that would be worth the risk.

Recreation of our tactical communiction

Gero : "BRUH! I SEE THEIR HAND MORTARS UNGUARDED! :D"
Roran : "OOOOH, CAN YOU TAKE THEM DOWN?"
Gero : "GONNA TRY!"
Roran : "DO IT!"
Gero : "GONNA DO IT! GONNA DO IT!"

With that superior communication, we were assure that our chances would grow as my general rushed out. The reason why I figured it would be worth the gamble was that my general is one stubborn unit. Me and Roran have another story after doing one comedic battle where my general charged right into a volley of heavy gunners. The body guards of my general were decimated and dead before they landed on the ground, but my general took two hits and still kept going with his charge. Ending up smashing two soldiers back and killing one before deciding to take a nap afterwards.

But as I moved out, the enemy started to rush as if Black Friday was already upon us all. It became clear that the enemy wasn't keen on wasting more time as their melee troops started to make their way to meet our soldiers in close quarters.

Then I heard that the men were wavering. Furious about this shamefur dispray, I looked back as one sole archer was the last remnant of the Bob unit. This brave man just had one massive amount of bad luck. Bad luck in the form of fire arrows and regular arrows coming down his way.

"Hello Darkness, my old friend..."

"Wait... I am immune to fire arrows?! HA! COME AT ME BR---"

"NOT IN THE FACE! NOT IN THE -- OW, MY TOES! YOU EVIL THUGS!"​

Unlucky for us, the enemy noticed that my general was attempting its bold move. Running back up the hill, I was forced to pull my general back. Only to be locked out of the castle as the enemy was rushing into third level in attempt to crush my peasants with spears.

Then it became a big battle as both defenders as attackers tried to push each other backwards. My spears managed to hold the line, desperately trying to buy time as Roran's matchlocks armed peasants were ripping them apart from their position. After routing two waves of men, the enemy decided to occupy my spears as sending men to climb the wall in order to prevent Roran's forces from knocking off their fancy helmets with his gun armed peasants.

Occupied by the fierce battle that was wagered on the third level, I saw my chance. I couldn't perhaps use my general to charge the enemy in the back - as they were with too much and had spears, able to counter a cavalry charge - I decided to see if I could run down the hand mortars that were just guarded by the enemy general.

And it seemed that I had gained success. In both routing the small unit with hand mortars as catching the bow armed general in close quarters. Though I lost quite some men as the enemy general had mowed down several of my general guards, I managed to land a good bow as giving an opening for Roran to rush his donderbluss cavalry out of the forest, intending to shoot lead into the butts of the advancing assaulting hostiles!

Intending to hold the enemy off as long as possible, Roran's general managed to become out of nowhere a ninja! See here how the glorious commander on top of a horse, suited in full armor, managed to sneak past the lines and catch an enemy off guard!

"Hey! Pssttt! Psstt! Pretty boy!"
"Huh?"

"What? How did you--"
"Wanna see my sword? Hmmmmm?"
"No, pwrease--"

"Too late! Swinging it!"
"Nuuuuu!"​

As the battle continued, the enemy managed to sneak up a group of samurai on the top level of our castle. Not intending to let this go unpunished, we decided to sandwich them with the reserve forces as our main bulk was occupied in driving and routing the enemy off the third level.

Soon enough, it became clear that we would have victory as the Waki raiders of Roran were assaulting the enemy in the back with the donderbluss cavalry. Which resulted into a domino play as the enemy started to waver all over the place.

"Who ate spicy chili con carne!? BOB?!"​

But eventually we managed to drive the enemy away and win the day. I hope you have enjoyed this after action report and not found it a Shamefur dispray. If possible and wanted, I can try later to make another report on another battle that was quite fun.

 

[RoranHawkins]

And it was glorious.