Sunday Samurai Stock Taking

Last weekend's game got me delving into the Big Box of Unpainted Samurai, and seeing that although I've got significant reinforcements for the Lord of Tea, the Rebels are still awfully outnumbered. 

So I started checking the Perry,  Kingsford, and AW Miniatures webstores. I also discovered the Footsore Japanese figures, but they are stupidly expensive at around $9 a figure! I did a lot of math and sample shopping carts and checking of currency exchange rates over the week. Kingsford are really nice, and Canadian, but packs of 4 for Cdn$18.99 makes them about twice as expensive as Perry. AW have some groovy palanquins, one of which would make a nifty objective for a scenario, but I'd have to convert angry villagers into ronin/ikko-ikki types. Perry have what I want, and the prices aren't terrible. I'd be able to buy about twice as much for 25% less compared to Kingsford. I'm still kicking the tires on a possible Perry order.

In the meantime I started assembling. I had a bunch of stuff that I'd bought second hand from a chap at Hot Lead about 10 years ago, so there were four duplicate Samurai waving katanas. A couple of broken scabbards and a miscast sword too. Encouraged by my figure modifying with the Warlord plastics, I got out my trusty Dremel to replace katanas with yaris.

For this era the rank and file Samurai would be primarily fighting with yaris, so more Samurai waving katanas about isn't what I wanted. Yari armed samurai on foot is what is really lacking  in the Lord of Tea's sonae. Rather than buy a pack of samurai with yaris I thought I'd just try and make a couple. Fortunately I've got quite a stash of extra feudal Japanese weapons.

And if I messed up, oh well, I bought the figure for $2 10 years ago. I'd just buy a proper pack from the Perrys.

Conversion on left.

Conversion on right. Removed the distinctive deer antlers as well. Used an antler to replace the broken scabbard. Gave him the less used naginata to work with the overhand grip.

Replaced sword with yari on the mounted samurai as well.

All assembled! Just waiting for glue to set before priming

This flurry of activity has resulted in 3 mounted samurai (1 with yari, two with katana), 6 samurai on foot (four with yaris/naginata, 2 with katanas), 9 ashigaru with yaris and 9 ashigaru with teppo. 

While I was getting some 19th century sailors out to give to Mikey last night, I also discovered a bag of Pulp Figures Yangzte River Pirates. They were left overs form Dan's Back of Beyond stuff, and I guess he didn't find them suitable for converting into bandit types. Shaven heads, bare torsos, pants, open hands on three of the five. The footwear on a couple are wrong, but I'll hide that with grass. So give them yaris instead of the curved swords they come with and they're now another group of ikko-ikki.

While rooting about I realized that I had not one, but two, holy men among the primed but unpainted Perry civilians. These painted very quickly on Friday evening. I used contrast paint for the blue robe. 

I also painted some wooden disks as themed Deployment Points. The script on the left is a Buddhist chant.

Just some civilians and extra bits left now!

Empty!