Nagashino

Nagashino 1st appeared in Samurai Warriors.

Samurai Warriors
In this series, this battle signals the end of the Takeda. The first game has Nobunaga's army defending from the fierce cavalry. With morale low, Nobunaga and his vassals are given missions to protect the supply depot and Mitsuhide. From there, they may provoke the Takeda army to advance by taking an enemy camp and provoking Naito to charge. They may be given another objective to protect the riflemen so they can fire. If they succeed, their plan to fire the rifles will succeed and Yukimura charges for the main camp. Katsuyori will attempt to flee and the Oda-Tokugawa army pursue him. Should the plan fail, morale will plummet and the battle will be harder to win. Yukimura's upper path and the player's original character focuses on defending Katsuyori at Nagashino. To secure an escape path, they capture Nagashino castle at the start of the conflict. Keiji and Hanzo both attempt to charge the main camp and take Katsuyori's head. In spite of their efforts, Katsuyori eventually loses patience and orders a full scale assault, falling into Nobunaga's trap. Yukimura, desperate to claim victory, offers to perform a solo charge for Nobunaga's head. With the battle a severe defeat for the Takeda army, Katsuyori safely retreats. Shingen's version of Nagashino is similar to his son's version. The main difference between them is that Shingen waits and focuses on defense. As he does, rain falls and the Oda rifles become useless. Using this window of opportunity, Shingen orders his men to advance to victory. Masamune, in his quest to rule the land, also leads a campaign here to defeat Nobunaga and Shingen. Suffering a defeat at Mikawa, he flees with his forces to Nagashino to avenge his loss and simultaneously halt Shingen. Samurai Warriors 2 better includes Ieyasu and Tadakatsu as a major defense for Nobunaga's camp. The Oda-Tokugawa side of the battle prevents the Takeda advance force from reaching the ally main camp. Once the rifles fire, Katsuyori sees that he is losing ground and attempts to escape. From then on, the battle becomes a chase for his head. Upon forcing Katsuyori's retreat, Nobunaga orders the total annihilation of the remaining Takeda vassals. The Takeda version of the stage remains somewhat similar to the previous title. Yukimura's version of the stage has the ally army already losing and Yukimura is fighting for his survival.

Kessen
Kessen 3 stages Nagashino as the decisive battle in chapter 7. Ieyasu requests reinforcements from the Takeda and Nobunaga decides to aid him with rifles. Although he makes an open call for officers skilled with firearms, Mitsuhide excuses himself from the conflict to tame Tamba province. Nobunaga allows the departure and readies his men to march. When they arrive on the battlefield, Ieyasu thanks Nobunaga but worries that the rainfall will spoil their rifles. As Katsuyori is confident that the stormy weather will lead to Nobunaga's downfall, Yoshino assures them that the rain will cease as they fight. Nobunaga and Ieyasu's armies are stationed on the bottom of the map behind three separate wooden barricades. They face the larger Takeda force from the north who relentlessly charge the three barricades. Since they are crossing a river before Nobunaga's army, their speed is not as quick as usual. Nobunaga can only choose two more generals to assist him since his required generals are himself, Yoshino, Ieyasu and Tadakatsu. Equipping rifles and spamming their troop ability behind the barricades is the simplest way to win the battle. Ideally, only one or two of the barricades will break from the Takeda's assault, which may require one or two strong war generals to defend against the invading forces. If the player can spare quick troops, they may lead them to collect items in the north and around the river. During the battle, Nobuharu Baba, Masakage Yamagata and Masanobu Kosaka will receive in-game cutscenes for their deaths.

Devil Kings
In the 1st game Nagashino can only be played by using Nobunaga and invade Shingens land.

The battle
Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu brought a total force of 38,000 men to relieve the siege on the castle by Takeda Katsuyori. Of Takeda's original 15,000 besiegers, only 12,000 faced the Oda-Tokugawa army in this battle. The Oda and Tokugawa positioned their men across the plain from the castle, behind the Rengogawa (連吾川), a small stream whose steep banks would slow down the cavalry charges for which the Takeda clan was known.

Seeking to protect his arquebusiers, which he would later become famous for, Nobunaga built a number of wooden stockades, setting up his gunners to attack the Takeda cavalry in volleys. The stockades served to blunt the force of charging cavalry, provide protection from sword blows and spear thrusts, and provide limited protection from arrows. Ports or gates in the staggered and overlapping stockades were positioned to channel the cavalry charges into lanes where they would be at a disadvantage to further gunfire, arrows, and sword and spear thrusts from the stockade's defenders. There were also approximately three gunmen for every four Takeda mounted samurai. Of Oda's forces, an estimated 1,000-1,500 troops were samurai arquebusiers (while most sources in English list 3,000 as the number of arquebusiers, the vast majority of Japanese historians now agree that the document used as a source for the number of guns deployed had the original number of 1,000 altered by an Edo period Tokugawa family historian to read as 3,000) and they were placed under the command of his horo-shu (母衣衆), or elite bodyguards. Oda sent out small forces against Takeda to feint frontal attacks, which caused Katsuyori to move against Oda's forces.

Takeda's men emerged from the forest and found themselves 200-400 meters from the Oda-Tokugawa stockades. The short distance, great power of the Takeda cavalry charge, and the heavy rain, which Katsuyori assumed would render the matchlock guns useless, encouraged him to order the charge. Takeda's cavalry was feared by both the Oda and Tokugawa forces, who had suffered a defeat at the Battle of Mikatagahara (三方原の戦い).

The horses slowed to cross the stream, and were fired upon as they crested the streambed within 50 meters of the enemy. This was considered the optimum distance to penetrate the armor of the cavalry. In typical military strategy, the success of any cavalry charge depends on the infantry breaking ranks so that the cavalry can mow them down. If the infantry does not break, however, cavalry charges will often fail - with even trained warhorses refusing to advance into the solid ranks of opponents.

Between the ferocity of the arquebusiers’ attack and the rigid control of the horo-shu, the arquebusiers stood their ground, and were able to fire multiple volleys at the charging cavalry. Ashigaru spearmen stabbed through or over the stockades at any horses that made it past the initial volleys, and samurai, with swords and shorter spears, engaged in single combat with any Takeda warriors who made it past the wooden barricades. Strong defenses on the ends prevented the Takeda forces from flanking the stockades. By mid-afternoon, the Takeda broke, fled, and were pursued and cut-down without quarter. According to Shinchō kōki, Takeda suffered a loss of 10,000 men, two-thirds of his original sieging force. However this figure is excessively high, and is most likely an exaggeration. Other contemporary sources gives a number of 1000 killed in battle and another 2000 during the rout, and this seems much more likely. Eight of his famous 'Twenty-Four Generals' were killed in this battle, including Baba Nobuharu (馬場信春), Yamagata Masakage (山県昌景), and Naito Masatoyo (内藤昌豊).

The Effects
The Battle of Nagashino could very well be considered a turning point in Japanese history. Although they had participated in battles, the emerging arquebusier were seen as largely unimportant due to the unreliable type of guns of the time (For example, the arquebuses tended to have a drastic recoil, they took a long time to load unless using the 'continuous fire' (countermarch) strategy (where one line would shoot and reload while the next line shot), when wet the guns were near useless, and the weapons tended to get overheated or parts would break off because of clogged gunpowder resulting in explosions of metal and wood in the face of the gunners themselves). After the Battle of Nagashino, arquebuses became a standard military asset in Japanese warfare. Though still rather faulty, the arquebus had proven that it could be very useful.

The defeat of the famous Takeda cavalry also signified a change in the general style of warfare, away from the more 'chivalric' cavalry combats and a melee-weapon infantry to a less personal, more industrialised warfare depending on advanced equipment and new tactics as much as on personal valor.

Dispute
The cavalry charge as shown in film and literature might not have happened at all. The literature that described the charges was not written until the 1700s, 200 years after the event, and was most likely romanticized for the benefit of the Tokugawa Shogunate. The wartime record indicated that the Oda and Tokugawa forces had employed tactics such as concentrated attacks on Takeda's generals and heavy field fortification.

Further evidence that Japanese armed forces lacked an able cavalry force appeared in the subsequent war in Korea in the 1590s, as the Ming Chinese cavalry was unmatched in almost every engagement.

On the other hand, the largest proportion of nearly every samurai army of this period was dedicated to ashigaru armed with yari (pikes). This would suggest that cavalry was indeed a very potent force in samurai warfare which needed to be defended against, as demonstrated at the Battle of Mikatagahara, where a Takeda cavalry charge easily overran Tokugawa's unprepared forces. Also, the alleged 'actual' tactics of concentrated attacks on Takeda generals and heavy field fortification correspond with the wooden stockades and reported casualties in the standard account.