

Wooden cannons are the only land unit in Fall of the Samurai that are fixed in place after the deployment phase and cannot be moved. Inaccurate and slow to reload, wooden cannons are a lackluster unit however, they are relatively cheap and can be trained at an earlier stage in the campaign than any other artillery. Confederate generals regularly used them to deceive their Northern opponents into thinking that their positions were highly fortified, often retreating and leaving the logs-as-guns to carry on the defence!

As tools of deception Quaker guns were extremely successful. Oddly, the most effective wooden guns created in the nineteenth century were the least lethal: they were actually incapable of killing anyone! In the American Civil War “Quaker guns” (Quakers would not kill, and neither would these guns) were made entirely of wood, as they were only logs carefully painted to look like iron and mounted on limbers to simulate artillery pieces. Wooden barrels, inevitably, split sooner or later in use, peppering the gun crew with lethal splinters added to their poor accuracy, it made them a desperate measure for any general. Wood leaves a good deal to be desired as a material for gun barrels, apart from the fact that it is exceptionally cheap. It does, however, do a reasonable amount of damage against buildings. The small numbers of crew mean that it is vulnerable in close combat, and the men suffer low morale through being expected to man such a dubious weapon.

Not many rounds can be safely fired from a wooden cannon before it must be considered useless or even lethal to its crew. They also have poor accuracy, if only because the barrel is warped every time the piece is fired. This makes them somewhat ramshackle in their operations, with a slow reload rate. Wooden cannons are, as the name suggests, made of wood. Wooden guns: apparently absurd, and yet deadly too. Wooden Cannons are a type of siege unit in Fall of the Samurai.
