After Action Reporter

Hey everyone! I’m the other main contributor here at After Action Reporter.  Though both of us will be writing updates, my first is going to be the introduction to a classic game, one that not many have played, regardless of the brand it sits in.
I’m talking about Shogun Total War.

Shogun Total War is the first Total War game to be released, by the extremely talented Creative Assembly.  Released in June of 2000, it sets the stage for the battle over Japan during the Sengoku Jidai era.  A turbulent and historic time, it sets the scene for multiple clans to begin fighting, all attempting to take Japan as their own, and establish themselves as Shogun.

The game is quite simplistic, unit wise, compared to the improvements made upon the series in Medieval Total War, which has a considerably larger amount of units.  The game plays like any board game in the strategy phase, armies that stack together to move en masse represented by a little samurai with a banner that gets colored more with the more amounts of units within.  Each also has a fancy topping which allows a quicker way to distinguish armies from each other.

The game recieved an expansion in the form of the Mongol Campaigns, which gave a nonhistoric view of the Mongolian invasion of Japan.  In this version, the Mongols succeed in landing on Kyushu, which is quickly set up as their home base.  Many players found it almost too easy to win as the Mongolians, whom also brought in many new units, that were often stronger than their Japanese compatriots.  The only benefit to the Japanese player was a new Crossbow unit which was good against cavalry, and the fact that they could bring in more reinforcements easier than the Mongolians, who depended on a slow build schedule and random reinforcements that could end up dropping into heavily fortified enemy territory.

But I digress!

For the site’s first home hosted AAR, I will be playing this game, and writing down my actions in a yearly or so basis.  As time goes on, the timeframe may lengthen, as the game can stagnate a bit, especially early on, when all rebel territories are taken, and koku (Money) is slow on coming in.  I will start as the Imagawa/Tokugawa, who were the historic rulers of Japan after the culminating battle of Sekigahara in 1600.

I will start posting soon enough, and thanks for reading!