Samurai SITREP

A few different things going on with my "Sharp Katanas" project this past week. 

A blog reader very kindly sent me his never been played copy of Dux Britannarium. I'm not keen on the fixed force sizes, or tactical options being limited to a hand of cards, but it has some interesting ideas to mine nonetheless. 

I should probably try it straight up with my Middle Earth figures. Or the fan-made Dux Arda variations. 

Cards aren't even unwrapped!

Now that I'm done the bandits, I'm trying to get the regular troops built to roughly equal numbers. Getting paint on figures I had already primed 9 years ago will roughly balance the sides, and give me something to play with. 

A while back Pasha Dan gave me a sprue of Warlord Games plastic ashigaru missile troops that he'd gotten free with a copy of Wargames Illustrated. 

I figured I'd try making some commanders and ammunition carriers for the archers and matchlock squads. 

Oof. The separate legs seem a bit much. And some of the torsos come in two halves.

At least there are pegs so you don't inadvertently select 2 left feet

Two piece torso? Really dude? Note large arrow quiver for ammunition carrier.

The details are very soft compared with modern plastics and figures are also missing the waist sash to thrust their swords through. The observant among you will notice an important detail: no base!

The ammunition carrier doesn't look too bad. But the teppo no gashira (commander of a musket squad) just looks.... odd. The way he's waving his staff just seems awkward. 

Since Wargames Factory designed the sprue to be part of a box with multiple sprues, there is only one pair of arms for holding the straps on a heavy ammunition pack. Poo.

Part of my mind says "just bin them!" The other part says "faff around and see if you can get anything useful out of them, what have you got to lose?" Maybe I'll play around and see if I can cut some other arms to have them holding pack straps. 

Back when I started this, I had megalomaniac dreams of a second contingent for my Daimyo. Same mon, just different colours. 

So I did a basic 100 point Ronin buntai of 1 samurai, 2 ashigaru with yari, 1 bow and 1 teppo with lovely red armour and coordinating yellow clothes and sashimono. 

Now they rather stick out. And I'm not thrilled with the yellow sashimono either. 

I hate the idea of stripping and repainting them. I also rather like the red lacquered armour. I am going to repaint the sashimono to match the others and reinforce them with a few more figures to make a personal guard for my Daimyo and his great banners. 

Bandit Teppos

Some Perry Ikko-Ikki with teppos are added to my bandit/ronin/wako/Ikko-ikki force, bringing their strength to 33. I'm going to have to crack on with painting more troops for my Daimyo to even things up! Of course I last added to that army about 9 years ago. See them here.

Pretty simple. I've gone back to my brown undercoat with these fellows and things went much faster! For one of them I experimented with Windsor & Newton "Deep red" ink over the brown undercoat to get a red lacquered effect.

Resurrected Ronin

The full group

This Labour Day weekend I have finally finished some Black Hat ronin figures I bought about 8 years ago, when we are all excited about Ronin and things Feudal Japan. These are nice figures, but a recent check on their website indicates that they are now sadly out of production or have been sold to someone else.

I got 6 done five years ago when I was doing some lead pile reducing and finished my Samurai supply convoy. 

First 6, with a few of the peasants with bamboo spears done at the same time 

The remaining nine I returned to this past week and with them all being very individual I decided to just paint each figure one at a time. This went much faster, and was more enjoyable, than I thought it would be.

I had obviously gotten frustrated with what I was doing, which is probably why they got abandoned, and upon returning to them I had a few genuine "WTF?" moments as I wondered what my decision making process was at the time. They were base coated mostly in black and then some attempt at flesh had been blodged on, which was unfortunate.  

Oof! these are a mess...

One night's work

But I dug in, fixed a few things, tidied up the flesh with multiple coats of base, ink wash and then highlights.

After that the elaborately laced amour was relatively simple. Just a light dry brush over the ridges of the laces to pick them out against the black armour plates.

After a couple more sessions

The biggest problem was trying to not make them all too samey. I had to keep stopping myself from making everyone red.

Old and new paint jobs with nodachis. Although maybe the chap in heavy armour center left is just holding a katana in a two-handed grip?

Bowman without armour and red shirt was painted 6 years ago.

But here they are; ronin, wako pirates, Ikko Ikki, or sanzoku bandits (depending upon whether they are fighting for pay, from a boat, for an ideal and social revolution, or for themselves). Three with katanas, three with bows, three with fearsome nodachis, and six with yari or naginata. But they're ready to cause some trouble.

Old paint job on left, new paint job on right

Katana fodder. 12 peasants with bamboo spears looking suitably nervous.

I have six Perry Ikko Ikki with teppo lined up next, along with a couple of unknown manufacture, second-hand samurai on horses to round out the force.

Sharp Katanas

Finding the Kurosawa movie Ran on Prime last week prompted me to revisit my abandoned Samurai while I wait to buy more Quar.

This got me thinking about rules, and what I want from a Samurai themed game. Ronin is a fine game, with lots of tactical nuance in the hand to hand, but perhaps too gritty for forces larger than 6 to 8 figures.

Lion Rampant is maybe too big, without enough focus on heroic actions by mighty warriors.

I want a sweet spot in the middle somewhere. I also want variable sizes of groups of foot soldiers. Fixed unit sizes as in the Rampant games won't work for my collection.

I also want something reasonably simple, and solo friendly. I like card driven activation for solo play. So maybe try some tweaks on the hand to hand in Sharp Practice?

I'm also lazy and cheap. So buying the Too Fat Lardies rules Dux Britannarium, just so I can play the Samurai adaptation Seven Spears, is a non-starter.

Test of Honour with it's bespoke dice and tokens is also out for reasons of cheapness. As Cyndi Lauper said "Girls just wanna have fun. " I'm not looking to sell these, they just need to be solo playable, have heroic actions, bunches of troops so it feels more like a battle, and not be so complicated that it leaves Mikey and his monks befuddled. 

Shouldn't be too hard, right?

SitRep

My gaming mojo has been lacking this winter. The ONLY games I've gotten in were the games in Barrie with The Mad Padre. Not even anything solo. I haven't done much painting either.

Much of my hobby time has been taken up with Hot Lead, which has NINETY-TWO gaming events scheduled, which is a record.
I was worried that the Middle Earth SBG tournament not happening would leave a big hole, but GMs have stepped up and Saturday morning and afternoon are full! The evenings are pretty good too. I'd better not hear any moaning about nothing to play or I'll give them a stick and send them outside to do some LARPing.  As mentioned earlier I also spent three nights culling my leadpile.

Another couple of nights were spent assembling a model jet engine that had been sitting about the Squadron offices for a while before I took command. As Training Officer it seemed within my purview to finally get this useful training aid ready for the classroom.

Not a very well made kit. I eventually had to use my Dremel Tool to get a good connection so it would work.

I did get my Middle Empire Romans finished at last! The last 20 took a couple of sessions. These two senior officers needed a bit of free hand on their small shields.

48 infantry, 18 archers and 12 cavalry plus supernumaries. Now they just need to be played with.

While waiting for the glue and flock to dry on the Romans, I got out some Samurai that I had abandoned 5 years ago. Maybe inspired by Sarissa Precision's new samurai castle. Maybe not. Either way I'd like some kind of samurai games to be possible.

Now, I just need rules....

This is all part of my overall objective to restart abandoned armies and projects. To that end I purchased Contact Front from God's Eye Games for my Afghanistan games.

It is set at the platoon plus attachments level of game, which is where I want to be. Most modern rules have too much detail and can't handle more than a section.  Initial reading is promising, but I'll have to mash up stats from their free download Danish and Australian army lists to make a Canadian list. I'm starting to clear off my second table for some solo learning games.

I also splashed out and ordered a few things from Bad Squiddo. Mainly interested in her new scenic items, but I got some Dark Age women while I was there and a pack of bunnies too.

Because bunnies....

A few will end up in my vegetable gardens.

Overtime at work and Mrs. Rabbitman and I taking ballroom dancing lessons is also cutting into my time. We've been together for 36 years and I've never danced with her before. Lack of time and money, shift work, feeling awkward and self-conscious, or just parenting, have always gotten in the way, so it's quite good to finally dance with her. My swing dancing needs a lot of work but it's good to get off the couch on a Sunday afternoon. And her smile while we're dancing is just brilliant.