mounted samurai bowmen

[vodnik]

...there were no mounted samurai armed with bow during the Sengoku period. After about 1500 mounted samurai were rearmed with a yari spear and served as lancers...

[David Kuijt]

Thanks, Vodnik.

Could you cite your sources, please? A bald (unsupported) statement like that helps us a small bit -- it points out somewhere that we need to check up on things -- but it leaves us to do a lot of work to verify or disprove the statement. If you cite sources, we can check up on the statement much easier, and make up our minds much more quickly whether we agree or not with the statement.

None of this is intended to discourage feedback and independent research -- but research means sources, and unsupported feedback goes way down on the priority list. We've had feedback in the past that was based upon poor (or no) research; it doesn't take very many hours of wrestling with that for us to put unsupported feedback far down on the priority queue for our attention.

[vodnik]

...there are sources in german and japanese but it is better to mention the text in english. But it is not easy to find it. In Samurai Warfare by Stephen Turnbull, Chapter 5; Samurai Warfare in the Sengoku Period. From mounted archer to mounted spearman. There this transformation start even earlier: 1450. More about the Period you can find in: Samurai Warrior by Thomas D. Cunlan...

[infinite_array]

I also think that the cavalry portion of the Sengoku Samurai list should be changed.

From https://www.samurai-archives.com/military.html

Cavalry still had an important place on the battlefield and yet even this veteran symbol of the samurai had been relegated to a supporting role by the time of Sekigahara. Like guns, horses tended to be difficult to acquire in large numbers, and unlike guns required both a high degree of skill to use in a military capacity and were even logistical burdens. Of course, no samurai army was without horses, but their general availability and the wealth of the individual daimyô (or the retainers supplying them) tended to determine the numbers. This is not to say that horses themselves were rare in Japan at the time; rather, horses fit for war could be expensive. The Takeda, famous for their use of cavalry, were lucky enough to have access to the most reknowned horse-breeding region in Japan at the time: the Kiso area of Shinano Province. By comparison, Chosokabe Motochika's army, on economically backward Shikoku Island, was described as having to make use of animals that did not seem fit for work in the fields.

Mounted general and attendants at Nagashino, 1575Of note to the student of European military history is the altogether different road that the development of cavalry tactics took in Japan. Where the heavy cavalry of figures such as Richard the Lionhearted, for example, had been a battle-winning shock force in the Crusades (see especially his victory at Arsuf in 1191), the samurai tended to focus on the advantages of mobility and position afforded by the horse. The cavalry charge was not an entirely alien concept to the Japanese, but its complexion was much different from the western picture. European cavalry had often been seen as a battering ram, deployed at the right moment to shatter enemy formations, with rider and horse armored both to provide protection from enemy weapons as well as the sheer force of the impact with the enemy lines. The sight of mounted knights thundering down on enemy footmen and the terror it could generate were sometimes decisive in and of themselves. Both the Japanese topography and horses available tended to preclude the development of this sort of warfare amongst the samurai. In fact, the early mounted samurai were rather more akin to the horse archers that Richard's great opponent Saladin employed. By the sengoku period, the samurai had traded his bow for a short spear and his armor had become tailored for fighting on foot as well as in the saddle. The Japanese horseman was often accompanied by a number of men on foot whose task it was to protect him and his vulnerable horse in the thick of the fight. The horses the samurai used in battle were almost never armored (perhaps due to their typically small size and consequently lower load-bearing capacity), and might easily be felled or wounded with a single spear thrust

The question would then be what should they be list as? Bad Horse might be a better choice.

[David Kuijt]

I also think that the cavalry portion of the Sengoku Samurai list should be changed.

From https://www.samurai-archives.com/military.html

The question would then be what should they be list as? Bad Horse might be a better choice.

That's a very interesting thought. And the recommended basing might be a mixture of Samurai cavalry and associated foot. Bad Horse are still a very useful troop type if they don't have to face enemy mounted.

Try to remind me about this topic after Historicon -- prep for H'con (and finishing the final rules text) is occupying all our time at the moment, and I just don't have the time to review these guys right now.