I have NEVER done mass combat before tonight. I want to be clear on that. I dug out the rules on Mass Combat from the early Unearthed Arcana rules for 5e (back when they were doing the D&D Next thing). I took a look at it, and then I went and printed up the War Machine Rules from the Rules Cyclopedia.

I chose War Machine, because of a YouTube Video made by #BECMIBerserker.
I gave my players the information and they then filled in the information for their army. I let them decide how many archers they had of their 400 soldiers (All farmers), and the samurai leaders.

The only “Homebrew” changes I made was the players could use their Inspiration dice (at a x10) to affect the Battle Rate Rolls. I thought this was fair, as they were using an army of farmers to attack a castle with twice as many trained soldiers as they had farmers.

The team used every inspiration dice I had given over the last month. and they scraped by with 40 survivors including the party.

Below is a short summery of how the session worked.

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Tonight, Ko’ar and his team planned an assault on the Family Castle to dethrone his uncle. The tactics worked well:
First a force of korobokuru troops made a frontal attack on the castle, so that Zipaz and Aklair could Dimension Door behind the enemy lines. They created a Wall of Fire on the top of the castle wall, to take out the archers, and they threw oil on the ground, lighting it with a Firebolt.
Then a secondary force attacked the side of the castle, which had soldiers distracted by the fire and the sudden lack of archery support. Through a series of inspired attacks the Korobokuru army was able to take down the Rakasta army guarding the castle.

Immediately after they succeeded in taking out the army, the survivors (And several “dead” bodies) fell into a “Pit of Flame” spell cast by a skull headed, blue skinned warlock from the 3rd floor. Ko’ar missed him with a dart, but the rest was not so unlucky.
Zipaz and Alair again dimension doored to the 3rd floor and attacked him with magic. They hit. Max climbed up the side of the castle. and Fang paralyzed him with his wand. The warlock disappeared in due to a contingency-teleport spell combiniation.
Aklair and Zipaz searched the 3rd floor rooms and aklair discovered 2 potions. (They smelled nice and cleared his nostrils)
Max and Zip found nothing.
Zephyrus and Pan began healing and bandaging the wounded outside. They managed to save 48 of the 1150 victims of the battle.
Ko’ar stormed the castle and was met by servants that seemed excited to have him back. They informed him that his Uncle was below, in the basement, neart the treasury door.

Ko’ar and his team (Fang, Elisabeth, Galladin-Bear, and the 2 Surviving Samurai: Hidoroki & Tsuyasawa). There they confronted his Uncle, who laughed, and then his appearance faded, and it turned out he was an Oarded-Rakasta.
2 servants who were behind the team also revealed themselves as Oard.
Outside, about 1/2 of the Rakasta army, got up, revealing their Oard nature.