• With the introduction of the Mantis Clan, I was wondering how people would see a naval engagement playing out in the game?
• Obviously some sort of epic fleet engagement with hundreds of ships on each side would be a mass battle, and can be abstracted up just like one on land, but how about two ships?
• In theory, we should have the tools in the beta as it stands to address this.

We have, for the sake of argument:

• a pair of more-or-less warships
  • The Mantis Clan Ship Unyo ('Cloud Falcon')
    • A Mantis captain, Unyo no Satoshi. For simplicity we'll use the Veteran Bushi profile, who we can give a rank of seafaring because he's Mantis clan.
    • Assorted officers with the same statline
    • A crew of professional sailors, archers and marines we can treat as an ashigaru army in mass battles and as a mix of ashigaru and peasants at skirmish scale
    • The larger size of the mantis ship, possibly equivalent to an 'outpost' fortified position
  • The Pirate Ship Mikazuki ('Sickle Moon')
    • A Pirate Captain, Kagetaka. For the sake of argument we'll use the Bandit Lord profile, who we can give two ranks of seafaring because he's supposed to be an adversary and the GM says so.
    • Assorted officers we'll consider Experienced Bandits
    • A crew of ne'er-do-wells we can treat as a peasant levy army in mass battles and as a mix of bandits and peasants at skirmish scale
    • A bolt thrower (consider it a Third Watchtower Command Ballista), for which we have stats, or the archery trait from a samurai army in mass battles

How would you resolve this scene?

What tests would you call for?

What kind of conflict(s) would you use?

How would you manage damage to the ship versus casualties amongst the crew?

Mass Battle with each ship being a cohort and the captains being the commanders/leaders.

Challenge = boarding action time.

It is pretty easy and straightforward, actually.

So essentially ignore 'the ship' itself once the battle starts (presumably after some seafaring checks to catch your opponent in the first place) save for fortified position/archery effects from weapons?

The ship itself should be included in the Cohort Strength. Say, +10 Strength for the pirate ship (for a total of 45) and +20 Strength for the Mantis ship (for a total of 75).

Had a try - seems to work.

• Should probably have added some more officers - I ended up using Satoshi as a Ronin and Kagetaka as an Experienced Bandit, because both have trade skills (including seafaring) by default, and wearing lacquered armour seems an odd choice at sea.
• The mass battle objectives are really hard without multiple leaders! Landing 10 casualties would be nigh impossible even without the Unyo being a fortified position.
• It ended up as a duel-by-successive challenge actions as it was about the only objective the two captains could feasibly complete...

Still, it works in theory (with a few cardboard cut-out officers providing support actions or seperate assaults).

I shall have to go get a new enemy character ready for the players: combining the Mantis Clan and the Shosuro infiltrator school to produce a sort of pirate ninja*, complete with a riddles and traps.

* The Shadow.

The Shadow?!?!?!

The Shadow.