Rising Sun: the Japanese Arrive in FoW

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Very, very cool!

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Here are just a couple of the many special rules for the Japanese:

Banzai Charge
Another iconic image of the Japanese are their Banzai charges. Once again we tried a number of ideas. First we tried Assaults where they were never Pinned Down, but only saved on 5+, this proved a little too bloody for the Japanese. It was even part of the general Seishin rule. In the end we actually looked a something older, the Go For Broke rule used for the US Nisei troops in Cassino. This rule allows the assaulting platoon to assault again if it gets Pinned Down by Defensive Fire after passing a Motivation test, but also allows the defender another round of Defensive Fire. We thought this captured the somewhat bloody and fanatical nature of the Japanese Banzai charge.

Kendo
One of the simpler rules was the Kendo rule. We wanted to represent the fact that every Japanese officer was armed with a Katana (sword), and were often quite enthusiastic about using it. Initially we thought about give each Command Sword team two dice in assault, but on refection this could be stacked quite effectively to give a lot of extra dice if the Company Command and 2iC Command Sword teams were thrown in alongside a Platoon Command Sword team and his men in an assault. We decided to just make them hit on 2+ in Assaults. For most of playtesting a Sword team could not shoot, but eventually we gave Sword teams the shooting stats of a Pistol team (Range: 4”/10cm; ROF 1; Anti-tank 1; Firepower 6) as Japanese officers had pistols and were escorted by other troops.