Sengoku Japanese: Teppo Ashigaru

Whilst a nasty cold has reduced my hobby energy by a large margin this week I did start the week off strong with the completion of some musket (teppo) armed Ashigaru and some painted bases to put them on.

I've got a couple of sets of banners to differentiate the two sides in combat so here we have one Mori and one Shimazu unit of skirmishing Ashigaru. As with the bow armed counterparts I've kept the armour simple so they can be intermixed and swapped around if required.

The bases are my own design and came off the 3D printer without issue, so I will be able to create movement trays for all the units as I go along.

I also have a tray for the archers I completed earlier, so I have twenty each of the ranged options so far. Many more to go though!

 

0200: Mine Clearance

I've been giving some thought to a combined 0200 & V for Victory campaign and amongst the ideas forming was a scenario that centred around clearing mines for an VfV assault game. 

This meant two things, I needed lots of mine field markers, and to think up some rules for minefield clearance. 

I found some STL files online and had a busy week printing them all out ready for the game on Friday, I didn't have time to get them painted so we had to play with some grey for once.

For this test game we used a Smarts test to 'spot' if the minefield was real or fake and then a Brawn test to clear it if it was indeed real.

As it happened the SAS got rumbled quite early on so hadn't managed to clear any minefields before the firing started but as they had quite a few spotted men in the centre of the table this did serve to draw the defenders away from the edger so some clearing was able to take place there.

We will be tweaking the rules to allow the attackers to randomly clear between 1 - 3 markers with a successful clear as it was a little slow for them, but otherwise the rules seemed ok.

The markers have now had a quick paint-job.

Sengoku Japanese: Yumi Ashigaru

 Since completing the first set of test models the other week I've been working to flesh out my first full unit of infantry. As I got a box each of the Ashigaru and Samurai shooters I started with the more straight forwards peasant infantry.

In line with my aim of keeping these chaps to a fairly simple scheme these are mostly in black armour with the odd red/brown variant thrown in and the under clothes of simple earthy tones.

Whilst building up the next batch to paint I noticed that each sprue (of 4 in the box) had 9 sets of legs and 6 bodies as well as 24 of each set of weapon arms. This means it would be possible to make an extra 12 men per box if I can get some bodies. I'm having a look around for 3D files as it feels like this would be an excellent job for 3D printing.

In other gaming news we visited our chums in the South Oxfordshire wargames club over the weekend for their Deadzone tournament. Despite some rough handling in game 2 I managed to wrack up 3 wins and came in third, adding to my trophy collection!

Sengoku Japanese: First models

Having built a few test Fireforge Games miniatures last week I've been taking some time to try and work out how I'm going to paint them up and how I want to organise the troops for Never Mind the Naginatas. As I'm going to base each model individually then I don't really need to worry about organising them for Test of Honour as I should have plenty of options

Yumi left, Teppo right

Half the troops on each side are going to be Ashigaru so I'm going to be painting them up with a fairly uniform paint scheme for the major components. Armour will be black with white lacing for the most part and I will vary the colour of the clothes underneath but aim to keep mostly with neutral / earthy tones. I think troops armed with ranged weapons wouldn't normally have a sashimono but I wanted to try out the transfers I bought from Battle Flag. These need to go onto a white background so I added the transfer and then painted the colour onto the sashimono afterwards.

The bases are 25mm Renedra plastic squares as I thought I would struggle to get the models onto 20mm's, they are quite chunky. I've topped that off with some Vallejo mud effect and some tufts from my collection.

Once the project is complete I should have two armies each consisting of lots of infantry and a couple of cavalry units:

2 Samurai blocks = 20 Yari + 20 Yumi

3 Ashigaru block = 30 Yari + 30 Yumi

1 Monk = 10 Naginata + 10 Yumi

2 Cavalry units = 12 Cavalry

Various leaders mounted and on foot from leaders box.

Left over infantry will be armed with Teppo for skirmishing gun troops.

For the Samurai I will be making them a bit more colourful and varied with my initial two sporting reddish-brown and pure red armour. I plan to also include dark blue and black to the mix as well. Their cloth clothing items will also be more varied and for the red armoured chap I've used a nail-art tool to make some dots of white to further enhance the look.

I've got transfers for both the Mori (red) and Shimazu (green) clans so I can use the sashimono to pick out unit leaders/generals and then the rest can just be a mixture of colours as I feel fit at the time.

So I've only got about 250 models left to paint, should be done in no time!

An Eastern Adventure

Since watching Shogun last year (if you've not watched it then make it a top priority) the embers of playing a wargame set in Japan have been smouldering away with me looking around for a game system to use. I had wanted to do something a bit more mass-battle than Test of Honour / Ronin and if Studio Tomahawk had released a Samurai universe book, that would have been perfect. I then came across Never Mind the Billhooks which is due to have a new book out next year with a Japanese conversion, Never Mind the Naginatas. The rules are for around 100 models a side with blocks of units being moved around and seem tailored towards more of a fun game than a strict simulation, which is what we prefer.

This was then coupled with announcement from Fireforge Games of a Kickstarter for warrior monks, as they already have a good range of other troops I then had the means to match the motivation.

Whilst I wait for the Kickstarter to complete and be produced I had a couple of boxes of ranged troops picked up from a show and located the buildings I backed last year on Kickstarter. I've also been having a look around for 3D files I can print off to add some flavour to the table.

The Fireforge models have plenty of detail on them so I've made up one of each type I currently have to try out painting techniques and colour schemes. Wish me luck!

We've also been building up towards a Deadzone event so my Nameless hit the table on Friday to kick sand in the eyes of the Forgefathers. It was a convincing win in the end to the followers of the Old Gods.

Silver Bayonet: Johnny Turk Finale

The last of the models for this mini-project are some Bashi-Bazouk cavalry, I've painted these up in the same scheme as the foot versions so they can be used to represent the same person mounted or dismounted.

That concludes all the models I've got for the squad in Silver Bayonet and should give plenty of options for building a balanced force.

Next up a four more Halo models to complete all of those that I have.