been lurking, decided to register ;)

[NotQuiteANewbie]

"Samurai Warlords" was being run by Bill Paspaliaris if I remember right. (I remember I messed up inputting order codes on my 2nd turn and ended up looting all the temples instead of praying at them to improve what the conquered populace though of me.)

I also think I tried "Stars of the Dark Well" from Mindgate for maybe 3 turns or so.

I don't remember Samurai Warlords, but I do recall seeing ads for Stars of the Dark Well.

What do you recall about that game?

If you mean Samurai Warlords, it was a pretty much standard treatment of the Warring States period from 1560 - 1600+ or so, culminating in the Tokugawa shogunate. If anybody is familiar with the old KOEI Nintendo / Super Nintendo games "Nobunaga's Ambition" or "Lord of Darkness" it was pretty close to those.

You had a daimyo (one of the historical province lords) and a number of subordinate officers to lead your troops. You had to pay your officers to maintain their loyalty. You had to keep the peasants from revolting in order to have enough rice/ gold production to keep recruiting soldiers.

The goal I believe was to control X number of provinces, and hold the capital province of Kyoto for a certain number of turns. Whoever accomplished that would be declared Shogun. I think you had to have a certain amount of "Imperial Favor" from what the Emperor thought of you as well.

I joined the game about 1 turn late after it had already started. I had Tokugawa Ieyasu (who historically did become Shogun). I strained my economy to the breaking point and raised every soldier I could on my first turn, then stormed into an adjacent province in the direction of the capital. It fell easily.

On my second turn I raised more troops (including from the newly conquered province), and had intended to pacify the population and increase my Imperial Favor by donating / praying at the temples. I stormed into the next province on the road to Kyoto, and it too fell.

Of course when i got my next turn report I found I had entered the wrong order codes and LOOTED the temples instead of donating to them. This resulted in the populace and the Emperor thinking less of me instead of more. No disaster, but it would need some work to correct the situation.

I informed the GM on my next turn about my error, but never heard back at all. No next turn. I hope I didn't cause him to abort the game at that point. (Either from my errors, or how quickly I was building an unstoppable juggernaut army. Of course other human players could have been doing the same thing.)

Another couple of turns and I would have probably been in the capital province. Not sure if I ever came close to another human player at all.

What I remember most was the HUGE map of Japan with all the province borders. It had to be around 18" by 36" inches if I remember right. Of course my memory might be exaggerating a bit, but it was quite large.