Design Considerations for Ikko-Ikki Units

 

I started creating another army so that I can design historical scenarios that involve the Ikko-Ikki. Photo shows the progress of the project.

As you can see I am using the Peasant Levy Unit art for Ikko-Ikki for now as I think the illustration is appropriate enough. However I will not likely use the levy unit rules for the Ikki units as I find them extremely underwhelming even when going beyond the 3 unit cap in the base game armies.

So far I have a few unit design ideas for Ikki units:

Ikki version 1 (swarm type):
Light Foot Unit (follow armor and stature rules)
4 blocks
Movement: 0-2 and battle
Retreat: 1
Close combat: 2 dice, hit on sword
Range combat : X
Special: Opportunist strike - after any friendly unit attacks an enemy unit (close or range), this unit may conducts bonus attack against the same unit if able. This action does not require the Ikki unit to be ordered and can be performed by the same unit for an unlimited number of times a turn against one or more targets. If the Ikki unit happens to be ordered, it may conduct its normal, active close combat as usual in the same turn and the two types of combats do not conflict or replace each other. The enemy unit battles back only after all Ikki bonus combats are resolved, and may only battle back against the original attacking unit. Leader inspiration cannot be applied to Ikki bonus attacks.

The major difference between this and the original levy rules is that this rewards proxying the enemies more than just giving one unified combined dice roll. The Ikki unit adjacent to the enemies will continuously harass them as long as they keep getting attacked by other units. Each attack will at most be 2 light unit dice (swords ignored by armor and stature) so I think this is actually very reasonable. One tactic to use with this is that the bonus attacks can be triggered by ranged combat so in this case the enemies will simply take light hits without being able to battle back against any units, not even the original attack initiator.

Ikki version 2 (zealot type):
Light Foot Unit (follow armor and stature rules)
6 blocks
Movement: 0-2 and battle
Retreat: 1
Close combat: 3 dice, hit on sword. 2 dice after the third block loss.
Range combat : X
Special: Before the third block loss, may ignore 1 flag.

Brute-force light units that can take a little more punch than generics. They have a C&C Ancients warrior type of bonus at higher health.

Ikki version 3 (skirmisher type):
Light Foot Unit (follow armor and stature rules)
4 blocks
Movement: 0-2 and battle
Retreat: 1-3 (player choice, but only loses 1 token).
Close combat: 2 dice, hit on sword.
Range combat : 2 dice hold, 1 die move
Range: 2
Special: May convert 1 sword rolled against it into a flag per combat. Retreating causes a maximum of 1 token loss per combat regardless of the number of flags or the number of hexes this unit retreats.

Ikki units with the option of ranged combat, though at a lower efficiency than proper bow units.
May retreat farther than enemies can chase them. May also retreat instead of taking a sword hit. Basically annoying units for heavy enemies to kill. Token loss is capped at 1 per combat to make the maneuverability not a burden.


These types of units may co-exist to make the combat more dynamic for the Ikki factions. Though I will probably need new illustrations in order to create the unit blocks to distinguish between them. 

Let me know what you think of these units the comments below! Also please share with me any illustrations that are appropriate to use for these unit blocks. Thanks!!


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