I continue to build my Samurai army. Well, the way things are going, I’ll end up with two armies. One exclusively based on the Fireforge models, the other a mixture of Warlord Games, Footsore’s Warring Clans, Perry miniatures and other odds and ends. To take a break from painting Fireforge, I decided to build a couple of units of the Footsore Ashigaru. I was lucky enough to acquire all of the packs available in the range (courtesy of the generosity of Mark Farr and Andy Hobday) and so painting these would also reduce my lead pile – two wins!

I used the three packs of Ashigaru with Yari and the Ashigaru Sergeant to make the first unit. As this still left me two men short of the twelve needed for a unit, I added in a couple of Warlord figures. I also decided to change the spears from the metal ones supplied to the plastic ones that come with the Warlord figures. I had plenty of these in the spares box. So why the extra work? Well the metal spears are extremely sharp and I would be stabbing myself throughout a game using them. The other issue with metal spears is that they are inflexible and are more likely to cause damage to other figures and themselves, whereas the plastic ones flex and there is less change of committing Hari-kari with them! The plastic spears also look better and will blend in with my other Ashigaru units.

For the unit armed with Yumi (bows) I used the four different packs of three that are in the range to make a full unit of twelve. There are some lovely poses in these packs. I really liked the pair handing out the extra arrows. I decided to leave off the majority of the flags (sashimo) as they would get in the way of the arrows and quivers. The bows supplied with the figures are nicely done. I am concerned that they will not stand up to the rigours of gaming but time will tell. I think as a general comment regarding the Warring Clans range, its my opinion that they are superbly modelled and cast but are inclined to be less robust than other figures out there. They would make lovely display figures but I am concerned about breakages when it come to gaming. As I have said, time will tell and they are too nice not to be included in my army!

I cleaned up and assembled the figures – very little filing was required, the casting were excellent in this respect – they were then ready for priming. Once the black primer had dried – I’m now a great fan of the new Colour Forge primers – I dried brushed the figures with Vallejo medium sea grey and I used Army painter tanned flesh for the faces and hands.

I then blocked in the rest of the colours. Pastel Blue for the shirts and lacing; Off White for the socks, waist band, rice bags, sashimo and neck covers; Leather brown for the satchels, water bottles and quivers; Old wood for the arrows and sashimo supports, New Wood and German Cam black brown for the bows. I mixed things up for the trousers. On the bowmen, I used Rose brown and Beige brown with yellow ochre for the standard bearer. For the other unit of spearmen, I was less adventurous and just used Burnt Red for the trousers and neck guards on the whole unit.

Once I had colour blocked everything, I gave the figures various ink washes – flesh wash on the flesh, soft tone on the leathers, woods and cloth, dark tone over the whites. When the inks were dried, I then re highlighted everything with the original colours, touched up any obvious errors and then painted a simple three dot pattern in white on the shirts. I considered adding a pattern to the trousers but decided against it as I felt that it would make the figures look a bit ‘busy’ and I was too lazy!

I followed my usual basing scheme, detailed elsewhere in my blog article and my units are ready for the battlefield. Look out for them in a forthcoming Never Mind The Naginatas battle report! Finally, I have yet to add the Mons (or clan identifier) to the flags. That’s partly because I have yet to make my mind up as to which clans to use. I already have quite a few Takeda troops but fancy some different banners for variety. I quite like the Mori mon as well as the Oda clan. I think that it will come down to where I can get the decals from as I don’t fancy painting them myself!

Happy modelling!

Starting a new army can be somewhat daunting. I can see the appeal of small skirmish games where only a dozen or so figures are required but even Never Mind The Bill Hooks requires about 120 figures and from a standing start that’s still quiet a commitment to painting. So when I decided to write an adaption to Never Mind the Bill Hooks for Samurai battles – Never Mind The Bushido, I quickly realised that the army was going to take some time to paint.

I did have a bit of a start. I had in the past been playing Test of Honour and so had a few painted figures with which to start the army. However, based on my initial army list from the first draft of the rules, I am going to need at least 131 figures. Well, I managed to create a Landsnkecht force of similar size so I just need to get on with it! As you will know if you have read my last blog article, I have started to upgrade my Test of Honour force and I now have 36 Warlord Games Ashigaru painted, as well as 18 of the new Fireforge Ashigaru ready for action. Add in 6 Warlord Ashigaru armed with teppo and a couple of Warlord Samurai and I have the makings of an army.

The next task was to paint some Samurai warriors. I would need at least 24 fighting troops in two units, as well as another seven based as leaders. I have decided to batch paint the Fireforge Samurai and started by painting a test model. As you can see from the top picture, I went for a simple colour scheme. For the Samurai, rather than dry brushing the armour to highlight it, as I did for the Ashigaru, I decided to leave the armour as a solid black and instead paint the stitching in a colour to add interest to the figure. I was also looking for a fast way to produce some reasonably painted figures that would look good as a unit. Perhaps I will spend a bit more time on the Samurai leaders but for now I need quantity!

Once I had figured out a basic scheme, I decided to paint them as a batch. Using of all colours, Vallejo Japanese uniform for the cloth. By producing these four, I now had a ‘Template’ for the next batch. This time I would go for eight to give me my first unit.

I chose light turquoise for the clothing on four figures and stone grey for the other batch. Everything else will be the same colours for the batch, with perhaps the stitching on the armour also varying between the four. I fancy Blue for the turquoise and red for the stone grey but I may change this when the paint hits the figure! This should result in a unit of Samurai that look similar but not identical as you would expect. It also means that I should get this first batch finished within a week or so. My target is to have the army completed by the end of February! I’ll keep you informed of progress in future blogs.

THE COMMERCIAL BIT

I hope that you all enjoy your hobby as much as I do – our web site will have much of what you need! Click here to see our shop.

ARCANE SCENERY

Christmas is nearly upon us, so a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year to all of my Friends, Customers, Facebook associates and any one else that that takes the time to read my blog!

To be fair, my blog is as much a self indulgence as it is anything else. I hope that it is of use to fellow hobbyists as I try to share my research and thoughts on the hobby. I think that there are some useful tips and techniques and perhaps reading how someone else goes about building a collection or army is useful. Even if this means you avoid my mistakes!

It certainly is useful for me! For one thing, it keeps me focused on a particular project and it is an invaluable record of how I have done things in the past. A good example is my most recent project. I have written an adaptation of the ‘Never Mind The Bill Hooks’ rules for Samurai warfare – ‘Never Mind the Bushido’. Before I unleash these rules onto the Never Mind The Bill Hooks community, I want to sanity check them and make sure that some of the new mechanics that I have introduced actually work in a gaming situation as opposed to in my imagination!

In order to play test the rules I need an army. The easy way would be to borrow one from the generous friends that have made this offer. However, that would leave me in a position of not being able to play my own rules, should they be successful. No, I have to bite the bullet, so to speak, and get painting!

I do have a helpful starting point. I was very much into the original ‘Test of Honour’ game and I had painted a large war band as well as some scenery (see pictures above) All I needed to do was to paint the additional figures to up grade my collection into units for NMTB. I will need about 120 figures and my first army list will look something like this:

24 Samurai Warriors ( possibly in 2 units)

24 Ashigaru armed with Yari ( spears to form a ‘pike block’)

24 Ashigaru armed with Yumi (bows)

12 Ashigaru armed with Naginata (bills)

12 Ashigaru in two bands of six armed with Teppo (guns) as ‘Skirmishers’

8 Mounted Samurai armed with Bows

8 Mounted Samurai armed with Naginata or Katana

At least 7 Samurai Leaders

The rules also have an option of Ninja being ‘bought’, so I’ll need six of these!

Which brings me back to my blog. I have 8 Ashigaru armed with bows already painted. To get my first unit of 12 all I need to do is to add another 4. So when it came to remembering just how I painted them originally and the colours used, all I had to do was to check back on my blog and all the information that I needed was there! It is worth noting that it was 2017 when I last painted these! Without my blog, I would have struggled to remember how to start again!

If you would like to see more articles about how I built my Japanese Samurai collection, including the scenery, click on the link below to my Samurai category in my blog. I suspect that the New Year will bring a few more articles on this subject!

SAMURAI BLOG ARTICLES

THE COMMERCIAL BIT

I hope that you all enjoy your hobby as much as I do – our web site will have much of what you need! Click here to see our shop.

ARCANE SCENERY

I’ve found my modelling time somewhat curtailed these last few weeks. I have been doing quite a lot of painting, just the wrong sort. We decided to re decorate the Hall, Stairs and Landing, the sort of project that I should have delegated to someone else! For a start it involved painting 11 doors and the respective frames, the woodwork on the stairs and the skirting boards. Add to that the ceilings and stripping the old wall paper off, making good the surfaces and then painting the walls ( just two coats…) and it’s fair to say that we had our work cut out. At my age and now that I am carrying a tad too much around the waist, going up ladders is never a good idea either. But I managed it and with a bit of innovation ( taping a brush to a stick!) I managed to reach all of the tall corners to cut in properly.

When it comes to painting woodwork, I’m old school, preferring to sand every thing down to get a decent key for the paint and then undercoating before applying the finishing top coat – Satin rather than gloss for me these days. I also prefer the oil based paints, which do come with their own distinctive smell that seems to linger but the finish is good and hard wearing. An innovation for me this time was to apply both the undercoat and the top coat using foam rollers. The finish was better than anything that I could have achieved with a brush and cut the painting time in half and the clean up time to practically zero ( you just dispose of the rollers when done).

I then took on the job of replacing the light fittings and the old thermostat for the central heating, which worked but was very discoloured and tatty. This turned out to be too much of a stretch for my DIY talents but fortunately, I didn’t electrocute myself or burn the house down. I did need rescuing by my neighbour and very good friend Barry, who is a trained electrician and managed to sort out the problems that I encountered.

When it came to the new flooring, I did get an expert in, although I did take up the old wooden stuff that I had laid many years ago. The last bit was to replace the hall stand with a new shoe locker from IKEA. Walking around that place is guaranteed to get your 10000 steps in! So after a final bit of construction, everything is more or less done. There’s a new carpet to be laid on the stairs and we are having a new banister fitted but both of these jobs are being done by professionals , so I’m off the hook!

All of which means that whilst I’ve done a fair bit of painting, not much of it was on my miniatures! I did manage to complete another two LOTR miniatures, Pippin and Merry. I’ve also started a new project. I am writing a set of rules that will adapt Never Mind The Bill Hooks to the Samurai era of Japanese warfare. I have started to build and paint a new Samurai army based around the Fireforge sets, which I have also reviewed for Wargames Illustrated. I wont repeat my review here – you will need to get hold of the January edition of WI to read that but here’s a couple of pictures of the fireforge models being assembled.

Finally, here’s a picture of the first painted Ashigaru – I always do a test figure or two, before I start the batch painting of the units. I’ve picked up a few things to correct. I’m not that happy with the flesh but will have a play with a slightly different approach on the next models.

I will need to paint at least 100 or so of the Fire Forge models to get just one army ready to play test my rules. So it will be early next year before I am ready to go. I guess that I could just use unpainted models or buy some ready painted but as you will note from my exploits in decorating, I am just hard wired to DIY!

THE COMMERCIAL BIT

I hope that you all enjoy your hobby as much as I do – our web site will have much of what you need! Click here to see our shop.

ARCANE SCENERY