I was the opponent for this and what started as a pretty promising game ended up as an odyssey of tedium. More or less what happened was that we each had two samurai and three groups of three ashigaru (one bow, one arquebus/teppo and one with spear).
My Samurai with their extra activations outdistanced the help by a fair bit. My boss fellow engaged one lot of enemy ashigaru and 'bounced' in the meantime my bow managed a fumble by rolling more xes than swords and shot themselves (gaining one blood drop - is this right?) my boss also manged to fumble a couple of times hurting himself and falling over.
On the other flank the enemy leader made short work of my other samurai (hit, missed the avoid roll and the strength roll as a success so a kill (again, is this right?).
In the middle desultorily skirmishing between the two groups of ashigaru pretty much went nowhere. Finally my boss was overwhelmed after killing the enemy samurai offsider and we expected my remaining ashigaru to be chopped down in short order but instead the combat dragged. Enemy samurai would 'bounce' from the three ashigaru using up their one potential action with a compulsory avoid from a hit but getting a kill was long, tedious work of just rolling a bunch of dice again and again with no real tactical decision making.
We finally gave it away when my last bowman was finally killed and just din't the appetite for another 45 minuets to play out the slow defeat of the spearmen.
We had plenty of questions about this, especially considering this is a pretty highly regarded game being awarded the Wargames Illustrated 'Game of the Year':
* Is this a typical playing experience or have we again managed to 'break' a ruleset?
* What is the advantage to fielding a single ashigaru over a group of three? The points cost is one less but getting three guys (and their advantages when at full strength) seems to pretty heavily outweigh the slight disadvantage of an increased frontage for movement and firing.
* Are fumbles too common or were we just unlucky?
In any event, we plan to give ToH another go and would really appreciate any pointers where we got it wrong.