Chinese warfare ideas?

[Veldric1]

I'm playing a 5e mechanic's game in the three kingdoms period of china. I play a barbarian mongol who accidentally took the lead in stopping the yellow turban rebellion from taking over the Xu province of china.

I have 4 villages nearby that i run and i have roughly 1,000 villagers at my command. A yellow turban army of 11,000 is on the other side of a thick river (the si river) and they want to raid these villages.

I put a field of pit traps in front of the first village they need to reach, and a big defensive wall on our side of the river along the only bridge across.

Winter has just set in,and soon the rivers will freeze negating my biggest defencive advantage and i am thinking about recruiting from places outside the valley. However i doubt i will get enough troops to combat with 11,000 when the turbans attack in the spring.

I need tactics to fight a massively larger army. What are your ideas?

[King of Nowhere]

winter is generally bad news for an invading army. what are they eating? how are they staying warm?
maybe you can try guerrilla tactics against their supply lines

[Brother Oni]

The Yellow Turbans weren't much more than a peasant uprising and certainly not a professional army.

If they're camped out on the other side of the river just waiting to attack you, I'd just ask your GM to enforce the rules for morale for lack of food, shelter and pay and the problem will start to self correct after about a week as the desertions start along with the disease from having so many soldiers cooped up - by the start of Spring in a few month's time, there won't even be an army left.

In the event that your GM ignores this or somehow magics up 3 months of food, fuel, shelter, sanitation and medicine for 11,000 men, I'd just retreat straight away as the vast majority of your troops are civilians and other noncombatants, not professional soldiers.

[Veldric1]

winter is generally bad news for an invading army. what are they eating? how are they staying warm?
maybe you can try guerrilla tactics against their supply lines

Good idea! I haven't considered starving them out.

[xroads]

Are you the only player? What level are you?

If you have a team of allies and are of at least tier 2, I'd ask your party to do hit & run tactics on the enemy troops as they sit waiting for the water to freeze. Strike at important targets such as the enemy larder and leadership. Harass their supply lines. Conjure or animate creatures to randomly go wild inside their camps as they sleep.

As Brother Oni points, out the Yellow Turbans weren't much of an army to begin with. It shouldn't take much to morally devastate them.

But even if the DM does set them up as professional soldiers, they aren't going to want to stay for long if a team of wily adventurers keep hitting them like a thunderstorm.

And remember, clerics have water walking as a ritual (of course that could work both ways :smalleek:).

[redwizard007]

Scorched Earth.

Burn everything that could aid the enemy and retreat. If you find a defensible position that you like, then take advantage of that to slap enemy lead elements. Then retreat some more. Eventually, the enemy army will starve or go home.

[awa]

scorched earth is very effective if you have the control to pull it off. If you dont then it just creates peasant rebellions. Likewise even if it does work you need to be able to justify it afterwords.

In short scorched earth is a hammer and not every problem is a nail.

raids to harass them and take out their supply lines. A small elite group could move much more easily than a huge unwieldy army if you can find a team of say 4-6 elite warriors:smallwink: this might be a perfect mission to destroy their supplies in a midnight raid. Without supplies they will break up.

[redwizard007]

scorched earth is very effective if you have the control to pull it off. If you dont then it just creates peasant rebellions. Likewise even if it does work you need to be able to justify it afterwords.

In short scorched earth is a hammer and not every problem is a nail.

raids to harass them and take out their supply lines. A small elite group could move much more easily than a huge unwieldy army if you can find a team of say 4-6 elite warriors:smallwink: this might be a perfect mission to destroy their supplies in a midnight raid. Without supplies they will break up.

Comrade,

The party finds your lack of confidence in accepted strategy disquieting. If you can not properly execute such simple tactics, we will have you shot. Perhaps your successor will have more success.

- Strategic Command

Also, entirely correct. Scorched Earth requires a number of things to be a viable option. Not least of which is a deep, deep area into which you can fall back. A parity, or superiority, of mobility compared to the enemy is another must. As you mentioned, the clout to convince people to burn their own homes is also not to be underestimated. A hammer? Maybe. Possibly a flame thrower.

[TheYell]

1. Go read Sun Tzu's Art of War. It will not only give you ideas for any warfare setting, all its examples are Chinese warfare.

2. Burn that bridge.

3. You aren't going to fight 110,000 soldiers anyhow, so take all but 1000 out of range.

4. 110,000 soldiers are probably going to eat 330,000 pounds of food every day. How's it getting there? By river? That's gonna freeze. Probably by overland route. Take your 10,000 soldiers and split them up and slam their supply lines a day's march from the siege.

Ulysses S. Grant, to put 100,000 men on the front line, had to deploy 200,000 as guards of his supply line. In his case the Confederates made an art out of raiding.

[Vizzerdrix]

Catapults. Aimed at the river. If they start to cross, break the ice under them. Between the few holes you make and the vibrations they make marching over the ice, you can drop most of them into the river unless they cross in small groups. Then you can just archer them to death.

[Knaight]

First things first - read Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It's full of larger than life tacticians and strategists doing all sorts of ridiculous nonsense, and a solid book that basically starts with the Yellow Turban Rebellion besides.

Fortunately you're defending a river here, which is a good place to be. It's basically a peasant rebellion against a bunch of peasants not in rebellion on top of that, which suggests that there's likely some sloppiness in terms of watches and the like. Night raids by boat involving slipping across the river, hitting a camp, and then getting back to your boats and rowing away while loosing arrows at the Yellow Turbans might be a productive strategy. At the very least it's not great for their morale.

[Brother Oni]

1. Go read Sun Tzu's Art of War. It will not only give you ideas for any warfare setting, all its examples are Chinese warfare.

3. You aren't going to fight 110,000 soldiers anyhow, so take all but 1000 out of range.

4. 110,000 soldiers are probably going to eat 330,000 pounds of food every day. How's it getting there? By river? That's gonna freeze. Probably by overland route. Take your 10,000 soldiers and split them up and slam their supply lines a day's march from the siege.


Have you actually read Sun Tzu's Art of War? It's very short and is mostly fully of strategic and logistical quips rather than tactical or practical advice. Even the annotated versions I've seen tend to be a bit short on details.

Personally I'd recommend an annotated version of the Thirty-Six Stratagems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty-Six_Stratagems), since it will include practical examples of each of the stratagems in action, making it more practical.

The OP also doesn't have 10,000 soldiers, he has a 1,000 villagers. Given it's only a few villages, that's probably the whole population, not just those of working age, so take off anywhere up to 25% for those incapable of working (infants and the very elderly) with about another 5-10% for the reduced capacity (children and elderly).

[Resileaf]

If Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Dynasty Warriors have taught me anything, it's that the ancient Chinese love fire attacks.

[Brother Oni]

If Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Dynasty Warriors have taught me anything, it's that the ancient Chinese love fire attacks.

"If in doubt, kill it with fire" had to have started somewhere. :smallbiggrin: