Total War: SHOGUN 2 Date Clan Guide: North Conquest & No-Dachi

The Date clan sits in a rough corner of the Tohoku map in Total War: SHOGUN 2, and the entire campaign is a question of whether you can hold the north long enough to march on Kyoto before someone else takes the shogunate. This guide covers the start in Mutsu, the no-dachi army identity, the expansion routes into the central heartland, and the agent economy that holds a frontier realm together. Players who already know the Oda or Takeda openings will find the Date plays very differently because the bonuses are subtle, the neighbors are aggressive, and the geography forces a specific style of play.

The Date are not the easiest clan for a first run, but the campaign rewards patient players who can convert poor terrain and weak provinces into a disciplined no-dachi killing machine. Before we get into specifics, it helps to know where the Date sit on the broader clan tier list, which is where the general factions overview becomes useful for comparing bonuses across the playable roster.

Date Clan Starting Position and Bonuses

The Date begin in Mutsu, the largest prefecture on the northern edge of Honshu, with one full-stack army and a pair of agents. Surrounding neighbors include the Uesugi, the Nanjo, and minor clans holding the mountain passes that block movement south. According to the playable clans reference on Wikipedia, each opening forces a different economic and military style, and the Date profile is the classic northern castle-builder with strong infantry and a research edge.

The clan bonuses look modest on paper — a small research percentage, a recruitment swap, a revolt reduction — but they compound across a 60-turn campaign because each one removes a friction point the Date would otherwise hit in the first twenty turns. By turn 15 a typical Date run already has no-dachi ashigaru queued, the Castle Builders discount cutting the Mutsu town upgrade in half, and a research lead that lets you reach the yari-spear wall art before the Uesugi finish their first smithy upgrade, which is part of why the Date feel stronger in long play than they do in the first ten turns.

The combination of cheaper research and immediate access to no-dachi is what makes the Date feel like a "research rush" clan, similar in flavor to the Oda clan strategy that veterans rely on for early unit unlocks. The difference is that the Date have to survive the north first.

No-Dachi Army Composition and Build Order

No-dachi are heavy two-handed sword infantry, and on the battlefield they function as a counter to other infantry blocks and cavalry. They are not a Swiss army knife, so the army around them has to handle the roles they cannot: ranged fire, shock cavalry, and yari screening. Players coming from a Takeda cavalry build background will recognize the same layering problem, just with swords instead of horses at the core.

Early-Game Stack (Turns 1–15)

The first stack out of Mutsu is mostly ashigaru, because no-dachi costs are too high to recruit eight of them in turn one. The goal is to get a working army that wins battles while you build toward the real roster.

• 4–6 yari ashigaru for screening and holding chokepoints

• 2–4 bow ashigaru for ranged volleys and fire-arrow siege work

• 1–2 no-dachi if you can afford them, used to anchor the center line

• 1 general on foot for the army-wide morale buff

The bow ashigaru are doing the most important hidden work. They break enemy morale before the melee engages, which means your no-dachi do not have to grind through fresh full-strength blocks. This is the same principle that powers the Hattori clan pack and Otomo clan runs where gunpowder is the morale weapon, just with bows and yari instead of arquebuses.

Mid-Game Stack (Turns 16–40)

Once the research arts for no-dachi unlock and the castle chain upgrades, the army shifts to a real no-dachi core built around three priorities: a no-dachi samurai anvil that breaks morale through kills, a yari ashigaru screen to absorb cavalry counter-checks, and a small bow ashigaru contingent to soften priority targets before contact. A standard mid-game Date stack — recruited from a level-3 castle town with the armourer chain unlocked and the Date's -10% unit upkeep discount applied — looks like the table below, where every role exists to feed kills into the no-dachi frontline rather than fight independently.

The reason for the layered screen is that no-dachi are vulnerable while attacking, and if a cavalry unit gets into their rear during the swing animation, the whole block can shatter. A single unit of yari cavalry is usually enough to punish AI flanks because the campaign AI is timid about committing light cavalry once it has taken missile casualties.

Late-Game Stack (Turns 40+)

By the late game, no-dachi samurai become the centerpiece of doomstack-style armies, and most Date players consolidate to a pure 8–10 unit no-dachi core supported by one or two bow units for fire support. This is the moment where the Date bonuses finally pay off, because the unit is expensive but the research discounts mean you can afford to keep fielding them across three or four full stacks.

The Yari Wall matchup deserves a callout here, because it is the one fight that punishes no-dachi hardest. When facing another player or a strong AI Yari Wall build, switch at least two of your no-dachi units to naginata samurai or swap to matchlock-armed vassal units if you have them, since no-dachi lose the trade against braced yari in straight melee. The counter to that is the same counter any other faction uses: cavalry or matchlocks into the flank.

Expansion Routes from Mutsu

Mutsu is the gateway to Tohoku, but the goal of any Date campaign is to break out of the north and into the central provinces, which means crossing the mountains. There are two practical routes and one trap: the Dewa road west through Uzen to Echigo is the safest, while the Mutsu-Koshu Kaido south through Keno offers a faster but riskier approach because every tile south of Shimotsuke is contested by Ashikaga or Hojo stacks. The trap is the Shirakawa road — the AI will funnel reinforcements through it and any army you station in Mutsu without fortifying the pass will be ambushed by a full Levy within 2 turns.

The Western Route via Echigo

The western route runs through the Uesugi to Echigo, then down into Kanto. This is the safest path because Echigo and the surrounding provinces have higher base income and the Uesugi are usually busy defending against the Takeda and Hattori, which means the Date can pick fights on their own terms. The downside is that the Uesugi are a serious opponent, and a strong Uesugi player with a Buddhist monk build can stall the entire campaign for ten turns.

The Eastern Route via the Pacific Coast

The eastern route runs south along the Pacific coast through Hitachi and into Shimotsuke. This is the shortest path to Kanto, but it requires multiple amphibious landings because the coastal provinces are not road-connected, which slows movement and exposes your stacks during the sea-crossing animation. The advantage is that most AI players ignore the eastern coast until you are already past it, because the AI values road movement heavily.

The Direct Push Trap

The direct push south through central Tohoku and into the Shinano corridor looks attractive on the map but is a trap. The Nanjo and other minor clans in those passes will declare war the moment you approach, you will be fighting uphill against the AI's defensive bonuses, and the campaign will grind to a halt. The exception is if a Hattori clan guide player has already opened the central path for you, in which case you can grab provinces for free.

The table below compares the two practical routes a Date player can take to reach the Kanto plain, weighing the trade-off between speed, risk, and economic payoff across the western Echigo corridor and the eastern Pacific coast. Rather than recommending a single opening, it gives you the raw numbers — turns to Kanto, AI counter-pressure, and the income profile of the provinces you can realistically capture — so you can sequence the two-front campaign that veteran Date players use, mirroring the same push pattern you would read about in a Shogun 2 Oda clan strategy but executed from the northern frontier downward.

Most experienced Date players pick the eastern route for the first push and the western route for the second, which is the same two-front strategy that an Oda clan strategy uses to split enemies, except executed in reverse from the north.

Agent Economy and the Frontier Garrison Problem

Agent management is the single most underrated Date skill, and it is also what separates a campaign that survives year five from one that collapses to rebellions in year two. The north is a frontier with low happiness, slow income, and Buddhist Ikko Ikki agents wandering in from neighboring provinces. You need metsuke, ninja, and monks working constantly just to keep public order stable while your main army campaigns south.

Metsuke (Diplomats)

Metsuke are the public-order backbone. Stationing two metsuke in a recently conquered province with a "Suppress" stance will neutralize a rebellion for several turns, which is enough time for the next wave of construction to finish. The Date bonus to religious tolerance stacks well with metsuke suppression, so a province that would normally be a rebellion risk for the Ikko Ikki becomes manageable.

Ninja

Ninja do the dirty work: sabotage enemy recruitment, assassinate enemy generals, and scout deep into enemy territory. Date players should always have at least one ninja levelling up in Mutsu, because the early sabotage of a Nanjo castle can prevent a defensive army from spawning in the first place. This is the same principle that the Tokugawa ninja build revolves around, but the Date version is opportunistic rather than central to the strategy.

Monks (War Monks and Missionaries)

The Date start with Buddhist affiliation, so missionaries do not have the same breakthrough potential as in an Otomo or Hattori opening. Instead, the monk role is purely defensive: spread Buddhism in conquered Ikko Ikki territory to stabilize the province, and use war monks as garrison units in vulnerable castles. War monks are surprisingly cost-effective because they are cheap to recruit and beat most ashigaru in a straight fight.

A practical Date agent roster looks deceptively similar to other clans, but the priorities shift dramatically because the Date start with Buddhist affiliation and a defensive posture. With missionaries nerfed for breakthrough potential, a single monk agent converts Ikko Ikki provinces cheaply, while 2-3 metsuke and 1-2 ninja cover the typical Date economy of fewer northern provinces where rebellions cascade.

The reason the agent economy matters more for the Date than for a central clan like Oda is that the north has fewer provinces to absorb losses. If one central castle falls to a rebellion, you can usually retake it the next turn. If one northern castle falls, the next two are exposed, and the campaign can unravel in a chain.

Diplomacy, Trade, and the Long Game

Diplomacy is a long game for the Date because the neighbors are either enemies (Uesugi) or irrelevant (minor northern clans), and the only useful trade partners are across the mountains in central Honshu. The standard opening is to make peace with the Uesugi for 10 turns, use the window to build a second army, then re-declare war with the second army moving through Echigo while the first holds the front.

Trade is the bigger lever. The Date have a small number of ports, and getting a trade agreement with the Otomo clan or the Hattori clan pack can multiply Mutsu's income overnight. According to community data summarized in the Steam Community guides hub, most players consider trade income more important than taxation in the first 30 turns, which matches the Date playstyle because Mutsu's tax base is weak until the castle chain finishes upgrading.

Alliances are situational. The Date should ally with whoever is fighting the Uesugi, then break the alliance the moment it is strategically convenient, which is the same cold logic that a Takeda or Hattori opening demands. Alliances are tools, not friendships, and the AI does not remember broken treaties long enough to matter.

For players who want to see the Date in action, TripleZHacker's clan comparison video covers where the Date sit in the broader roster, and veteran campaign walkthroughs in the r/Shogun2 community often include a Date playthrough that demonstrates the agent timing in practice.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does the Date clan differ from a Hattori or Otomo clan guide playthrough?

The Date rely on a slow research rush and no-dachi infantry rather than the Hattori's ninja focus or the Otomo's gunpowder edge. Whereas the Hattori clan guide emphasizes covert play and the Otomo leans on matchlocks, the Date campaign is about surviving the northern frontier long enough to unlock the full no-dachi roster. The economic profile is closer to a defensive Uesugi run than to an aggressive Oda push.

Is the Date a good clan for beginners to Total War: SHOGUN 2?

The Date is intermediate, not beginner-friendly, because the opening in Mutsu has rough terrain, hostile neighbors, and a weak starting economy. Players who have completed one Oda clan strategy run will find the Date manageable, but a first-ever campaign is usually better spent on a more forgiving opening like the Chosokabe or Shimazu. The Date rewards players who already understand the army-comp math.

What is the best counter to a Yari Wall as the Date?

Swap at least two no-dachi units for naginata samurai, which beat yari ashigaru and yari samurai in a sustained melee, and use yari cavalry or a single matchlock-armed vassal unit to flank. The pure no-dachi counter to a Yari Wall is to bait the yari into charging by retreating, then counter-charging once the brace is broken, which is a high-skill play that most players should not rely on.

Should the Date pursue the Ikko Ikki religion or stay Buddhist?

Stay Buddhist for the first 30 turns, because the religious tolerance bonus only applies to Buddhist provinces. Switching to Ikko Ikki is a niche strategy that requires careful province management, and most campaign walkthroughs in the community recommend ignoring the religion switch entirely in favor of military expansion. The Ikko Ikki guide approach is more relevant for clans that start with the religion already, like the Ikko Ikki clan itself.

When should the Date march on Kyoto?

The Kyoto march usually triggers between turn 50 and turn 70, once you control 30+ provinces and have at least three full no-dachi stacks ready to defend the long supply line. Marching earlier with two stacks is a common mistake, because the Realm Divide mechanic forces every neutral clan to declare war, and an under-strength Date army will get chewed up by coalitions. The patience to delay the Kyoto push is what makes the Date campaign feel different from the aggressive Oda or Tokugawa ninja build playstyles that prioritize fast expansion.