Natural interventions

[screwtype]

I remember a particular battle, in Shinano I think...I moved back to my now fairly tired troops to begin new maneuvers, but I seemed to notice something moving... FLASH! Lightening, and in new light I made out no less than three units of Monks charging out of the little wood up there. I nearly fell from my chair of both shock and the coolnessfactor. My own four units were duly ripped to pieces and I lost the battle horribly as my other forces seemed to stumble into enemies everywhere. I was crushed and actually I lost the campaign due to that battle, but I loved every second of it.

LOL, yeah it's funny how some battles stick in your mind.

The STW battle I've never forgotten is the one where I had an elite army of monks and no-dachi backed up by yari samurai, arrayed against an enemy made up almost entirely of archers which was defending on a hill. I marched my army up to just outside archery range, then charged them all straight at the enemy position and gleefully sat back to watch the anticipated slaughter.

Imagine my shock and horror when just a few seconds later my painstakingly built up elite army came charging back in my direction in a total, unstoppable rout with almost no soldiers left!

Afterwards I checked the stats of the enemy archers and found most of them had level two and three weapon upgrades and/or moral bonuses. After that crushing insta-defeat, I never treated archers with contempt again!

Other times I got flanked by cavalry or simply had a chance encounter in the middle of the map... Those were superb times.

But at the same time they were quite seldom. It wasn't likely to get more than a few blizzard/storm battles each campaign, so it wasn't likely to dominate the game. I liked that and I want a return of it.

One of the tricks I eventually learned in STW was to play the weather against the enemy. So if they had lots of archers, I'd wait for really bad weather before attacking, rendering their archers useless. It's not only a good tactic, but it also means you get to see quite a few more bad weather battles with those spectacular thunder and lightning effects than you otherwise would.

Personally, I think weather effects added a whole extra dimension to the battles and I want to see them back and as tactically important as ever, if not more so, in any new TW game.