Sengoku Japanese: Ready for Big Battles

A big week in the progress for my Japanese armies as I completed the last of the models required for the big battles. These have pretty much all been from the Fireforge Games range of models with the very occasional metal miniature added in. I started these back in August so it's been a decent length of time I've been painting these up and I'm still enjoying getting paint on them.

So off the bench this week are the artillery pieces for each side, using Fireforge chaps as crew and a 3d print I found.

We also have the last of the cavalry for the Shimazu clan forces including three mounted commanders. I've made one up with a head and arms from the Sohei box to make up a mounted monk commander. I'm not sure the armies really needed any extra colour, but I've done it anyway!

So that's the bulk of the painting done now, 300+ plastic Samurai, Ashigaru, and Monks ready to fight a big battle. Never Mind the Naginata's hasn't been released yet but Billhooks the rules they are based off will fill the gap until they are.

The Shimazu forces:

Both Clans:

The Mori Clan:

I still have about 30 metal miniatures I picked up to paint and some terrain so it will be a while before this project is complete.

Old School Cool

We had our first look at the Never Mind the Billhooks rules this week when Stu brought over his venerable Dixon Samurai for an outing.

They required a quick dust as most of them hadn't seen action for many a year but the Dixon miniatures are full of character so even being over 30 years old didn't detract from the spectacle.

We managed to grope our way through a few turns and probably got some rules wrong, I especially want to go through the morale rules again, but overall I think we got the gist of the game. 

Armies are divided up into wards each of which is led by a commander who has a card put into the activation deck. As their card is drawn they can order the units under their command to act, either moving (sometimes into combat) shooting, or rallying.

By the time lunch came around the home team had the advantage due to some brittle morale on the visiting teams side.