Re-learning the hobby through Nipponese

[Arduhn]

Wow, this is amazing. I wanted to post in order to subscribe to the thread, but I will make the post worthwhile at least. I am glad that the perry miniatures are turning out well. A while ago I had the idea to do a samurai army out of those minis, but I wasn't sure how they would turn out, and how they would look with the slightly different scale, but seeing your stuff is making me seriously consider the army again. I am still not sure which list I would use though, but since it would only be for fun games, I might just make my own list. I like the terrain as well, it's very nice. Just a question about the kits, I don't know if anyone else asked this already, probably, but can you show how they look with a miniature next to them. The new one looks like it would be too small, but I am not sure. If that is the case, I would say put them on the table anyways, even if they just count as impassable cliffs, because it would help set the mood for a battle.

If I do the army, my list would probably be made with the unit design rules by Avian, and some basic stuff taken from the Empire or dogs of war list, like wizards and maybe some other characters. I will just tell my friends about it as it goes along so they will let me play with them, and it won't be a huge surprise. I don't know when I will start my army though, if I do. Just started an army...

[lilljonas]

Back home, no more summer work. Let's see if I can whip out some painted models the coming three weeks!

But first, let's close this summer's projects. First we have the knight:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/kneckt1.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/kneckt2.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/kneckt3.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/kneckt4.jpg

For a first try at larger scale, I think it turned out nice. There are a few things that could have gone better, like making a more intricate shield or better heraldics, but overall I'm satisfied. I like the metallic parts the most, especially his armour. It's not as visible on the photo's, but I really like how it looks up close. Knights are fun and interesting to paint, and make good solo pieces.

Next update: finally some camels on Warseer.

[Lord of Skulls]

You have good reason to be happy with it, it looks amazing:)

The metal looks very realistic, and I really like the simple design on the shield and the shading on it. Shading large flat surfaces can be quite tricky to get to look right, but yours do:)

Looking forward to more updates.

[lilljonas]

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/dromedar1.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/dromedar2.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/dromedar3.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/dromedar4.jpg

A bit rushed, since I didn't complete it. Some areas needs at least an additional coat. I ran into problem since the plastic was being difficult on me, so the paint easily fell off on contact. Also, I'm really unused to white undercoat. You might have noticed that I undercoated everything prior to this with black. On the dromedary and it's rider you'll see that it looks a bit like a plastic toy. Yes, that's what I get when I undercoat with white. I'm not patient enought to work out proper shadows, since I get much of it for free with a black undercoat.

ThomasMuntzer: thank you, and welcome aboard! I'll have to check for roofs and such in Tokyo in September, I didn't see any on my previous visits, but then I didn't really look. Railway modeling and such seems like a popular hobby in Japan, so then it's just a question of scale.

On the corrugated cardboard, yes, that's one of the ideas I've been playing with. It's probably the easiest and cheapest, but I kept looking for a solution that looks more like actual japanese tiles. They look the same at a distance, but if you check japanese tiled roofs really closely, you'll see that it looks quote different to the wavy effect you get with currogated cardboard. I'll see if I have some pictures to explain the difference.

And yes, hitting the 100yen-stores and other "random crap" places would probably pay off really well sooner or later.

Arduhn: thank you, and welcome aboard!

If just used for fun, I think both the Empire and the Bretonnia lists would work rather ok, if you want a balanced list without the hassle of creating your own. There's a few things here and there to avoid, but otherwise, medieval/early renaissance humans are pretty much the same.

As for the kits, sorry for not having any comparison pictures, but they are 1/350, which is pretty far from WFB, which is somewhere close to 1/48 or so. They would look really odd on a Warhammer battlefield. The gaming scale that is closest is Epic, with it's 6mm miniatures, which would give you an idea. The larger kits would probably look good with the somewhat rare 10mm scale, and not completely out of place with Warmaster. But for now they are serving as displays at my parents' place, but if I ever pick up 10mm or 15mm historicals...

Good luck with the army though, no matter if it gets done now or later on. Don't be afraid to post links to them if you start painting!

[Vattendroppe]

Just a thought, maybe you should've named the thread just "relearning the hobby" :p

[mistformsquirrel]

Always nice stuff lilljonas hehe <^_^>

[lilljonas]

So, I've been offline and I moved to Japan. School and the general stuff that comes with setting up a home kept me from both painting and updating. Now I finally got internet to my apartment, so here we go:

犬山城

I had to leave the foundation of my 28mm scale Inuyama Castle in Sweden, so it was only fair that the first thing to do here was to build it. But this time as a 1:200 plastic model, a Fujimi kit. Fujimi kits are not as good as Doyusha kits: they take much more artistic freedom, are less detailed, and they don't try to have some sort of reason to their scales. 1:200 is the biggest scale for a plastic kit castle I've seen, and interestingly enough puts it between Epic (1:285) and 15mm (1:120). It wouldn't be too difficult to use this castle as terrain in 15mm samurai battles, but then you'd have to base it more appropriately than what is provided by the kit. But I'll cover that later.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/inu1.jpg

The kit is simple, three sprues and a base. I have most of the necessary equipment, though I'm still wishing I could have brought all my stuff. Oh well.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/inu2.jpg

Mio wants to try out painting. This is her first model kit, but she's pretty used to drawing, so she's far better than I was the first time I tried. Still, it gives me a handy excuse for this castle not ending up as nice as my previous ones, that and the fact that the kit itself is not as good. But it's a good start.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/inu3.jpg

After an evening of painting, the actual castle is done. Notice that they didn't make the doors and woodwork for the uppermost level of the castle, and instead opted for transfers. Pretty shoddy IMHO.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/inu4.jpg

Here we leave reality completely. The base is more done to be a nice display than being anything close to reality, which you can even see on the box of the kit. It's actually located on the top of a cliff, not in a basin. For wargaming, a slightly more impressive base could be made.

To be continued...

[lilljonas]

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/inu6.jpg

Flocked and done. Again I took the easier way out to not make it too difficult for Mio, so instead of using wire to make my own trees, I went with those supplied in the kit. While they were far from excellent, they were actually better than Doyushas laughable trees, so it turned out decent I think.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/inu7.jpg
"To Camelot!"
"Camelot?"
"Camelot!"
"...it's only a model..."

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/inu8.jpg

The kit in all its glory. Now, off to be stuffed into the wardrobe! (we have limited room and Mio won't let me display models in the windows like back home. :()

Next: something far bigger and far less medieval makes an entrance. Stay tuned!

Vattendroppe: I know, I know. I should have named it "painting random projects loosely connected to Japan while taking long breaks now and then", but then I wouldn't get as many hits, you know?

mistformsquirrel: Thank you. Hopefully, I'll be able to not only produce nice things, but actually produce something from now on. Again, stay tuned! There might even be samurais sooner or later!

[spikedog]

Yay lilljonas is back and updating!

Congrats on being in Japan, I wish I was still there.... but hey ho. If you want at some point to get some Fantasy or 40K gaming in and don't fancy going to GW stores to play let me know and I can get you in touch with my gaming club there. They are a great bunch of people who know how to have a laugh while they play. Im not sure where you are located but they are just west of Tokyo, in fact I think it may be Kanagawa.

Anyway nice looking castle. The trees I think are not bad at all for kit trees but the base is a bit... hmmm...

じゃまたね！

[MF3000]

Indeed, this is a great blog that I've been dying to see some update on.

That's some nice big-scale minis, and the castle is superb. I think I like the castle so much because it gets me nostalgic about my own home... *tears*

sj

[lilljonas]

Battleship 金剛 (Kongo) or "Tora, tora, tora!"

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/kongo1.jpg

The Kongo class battleships started with a battlecruiser named Kongo built by the Brittish (Vickers) in 1912 on commission from the Imperial Navy Japanese. By then it was a beast that overshadowed anything in the Japanese Navy, and they used the ship to reverse engineer new ways of building ships. It was the first ship ever to field 14 inch cannons as main armament, and it was all kinds of awesome.

You should not be fooled by the building year, it was rebuilt twice to increase its power. First in '29, since Japan was not allowed to build more battleships, so they beefed the Kongo up with heavier armour and ability to send out airplanes. In '37 it was further rebuilt, and was reclassed as a battleship. It was far from the biggest battleship in WW2, but just putting this one together makes you realize just how ridiculously many guns those ships had.

Here's the vitals, stolen from Wikipedia:

Displacement: 36,600 tons
Length: 222 m (728 feet 4 inches)
Beam: 31 m (101 feet 8 inches)
Draught: 9.7 m (31 feet 9 inches)
Propulsion: steam turbines, 4 shafts
Speed: 30 knots (60 km/h)
Range: 10,000 nmi (20,000 km) at 14 knots (26 km/h) knots
Complement: 1360
Armament: Eight 14 inch (356 mm) guns, sixteen 6 inch (152 mm) guns, eight 5 inch DP, up to 118 × 25 mm AA

That's an awful lot of guns. Now, on to the kit:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/kongo2.jpg

The kit is a Hasegawa kit, in 1:700. That makes it approximitely 30 cm long. There's plenty of sprues, and half of them are just guns. I'm not kidding, the amount of anti-aircraft guns is just plain stupid, in an awesome way. It's not so difficult to put together, it's just time consuming with so many very small items. There's plenty of doubles, so you can break some things without ruining the kit.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/kongo3.jpg

The hull is laid down! Turrets are assembled with eight 356mm guns. They even have guns on the guns, that's pretty hardcore.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/kongo4.jpg

Command tower under assembly.

spikedog: Aw, too bad, one of the reasons for bothering to bring the guys over sea was to see if we could get to play a game or two. Are you gone for good, or are there any plans to come back? I'm in Kokubunji, pretty far west but still in the Tama area. Where's the GW, and do you know what kind of crowd they have? Foreigner-Japanese, beginner-veteran? Would I be kicked out if I brought an all-non-GW army? As noted before I haven't played in 10 years or so and I don't have a fully painted 2000 pts army, so I'm not really sure how to proceed. I might just paint and update this log, but it would be nice to play too. "but the base is a bit... hmmm..." was pretty much exactly my thoughts upon opening the kit, especially since I've been there, and it's not even remotely like that. But again, they are not as good as the Doyusha kits, but it was only 1000 yen, so there you go.

MF3000: Thank you. Eh, does that mean you lived in Inuyama Castle?! (the question is not completely as absurd as it sounds, as it's the only japanese castle still in private ownership, and it is actually closed some days now and then since the owners wants to be there. )

[MF3000]

LOL Nawwww reminds me of the ol' buildings I used to see in Korea - not Japan.

Although it would be damn osome to live in a castle and like... have so much money to own one that you can do other things... heh heh heh heh... heh...

sj

[Onimusha]

Hello Warseer, this is my first post ever on these forum but reading this log made me want to join. 3 years ago I wanted to start a similar project using perry's samurai range for warhammer empire and ordered a small army ( I guess about 750 points)from the perry miniatures webshop. Unfortunately for the models my interest in warhammer as a whole dissappeared because of the unbalanced magic system ( I don't like using only wizards as characters). I never painted any of them because I don't know excactly how and wanted to make them stand out against the rest of my painted minis.
Thank you very much for making this log, I will start to paint my miniatures next week after finishing my current project ( japanese goblins for Confrontation).
I already made some scenery myself and I have taken the pictures from the perry site as a guidance, I have finished the castle, the temple, a peasant house and a Torii. I will certainly follow this link further and hope to see a finished army one day;)

Oni

[lilljonas]

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/k1.jpg

It's almost done. The kit is not that difficult, the pagoda and the chimneys are put together separately, and then you just smack lots of guns and antennaes and such on it.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/k2.jpg

close up from front

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/k3.jpg

the central tower

Then it was just a matter of spraying it black and start to paint it. Mio did the groundwork on the Kongo while I painted the planes that came with it:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/flyg1.jpg

to be continued...

[lilljonas]

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/flyg2.jpg

Planes done. The transfers didn't work that well, they were a bit too big, so there's a lot of plastic showing. Also, the glossness is very evident on such a small item covered with so many transfers. If I did it again, I'd try to paint it myself instead.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/grnd2.jpg

It's grey, grey, grey. And some wood. Not that difficult.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/grnd1.jpg

The basic colours are done.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/grnd3.jpg

continued...

[lilljonas]

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/final01.jpg

The final results.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/final03.jpg

Sorry about the glossy background, I have to get something to take proper pictures on

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/final04.jpg

The central area from behind

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/final05.jpg

and from the front

continued...

[lilljonas]

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/final02.jpg

So, this was a fun project. The painting was a bit simplistic, I'd imagine painting a Star Destroyer should be slightly similar. But it was good for a beginner, and painting "outside the lines" was not a big deal. I'm not really into boats, but putting a battleship together really makes you understand the sheer volume and armament of these beasts. And the end result, even with a very basic paint work, is quite nice. However, I'm not that tempted to make a second boat after this: there's a limit too how much I enjoy painting Fortress Grey.

The photos are a bit fudgy due to the gloss background, so if anyone craves good photos, I might be able to get some after I have aquired a good background. The sheer lenght of the ship really makes a complete shot of the ship difficult, though.

onimusha: welcome aboard! I'll hopefully get back to painting miniatures after this one, so as to provide more inspiration. :) I'd love to see some pictures of your Confrontation goblins, I've been tempted to pick one or two up just to paint. And of course, any future painted Perry Miniatures. I'm always looking for nice colour schemes for my individual samurais, and seeing other painted samurai is a great way to learn. And terrain!

[Vattendroppe]

Whatever happened to that warhammer plog? :p Not that this isn't nice to follow, but it was some time since I saw something about that army, and it's so good-looking ^^

[spikedog]

spikedog: Aw, too bad, one of the reasons for bothering to bring the guys over sea was to see if we could get to play a game or two. Are you gone for good, or are there any plans to come back?

Sorry about that, my coming back to the UK was pretty rushed to be honest so I didn't even know myself until about a month before it happened. But never fear, I will be coming back at some point I am just not sure when it will be. It won't be for at least a year however.


I'm in Kokubunji, pretty far west but still in the Tama area. Where's the GW, and do you know what kind of crowd they have? Foreigner-Japanese, beginner-veteran? Would I be kicked out if I brought an all-non-GW army?

Well as I mentioned before there is my old gaming club that has quite a few members and they meet every other week or so. They are all English speakers but are from different places. (America, Canada, Ireland, England etc) They would have no problems with you or your army and in fact you are not too far from them. They meet in Yagawa which is at the top of the Nambu sen only a few stops from you. As I said if you want an email address for them just let me know. As for the GW's there were 3 when I left. One in Nakano, which I think may be your closest. One in Jinbocho and one in Ikebukuro.


As noted before I haven't played in 10 years or so and I don't have a fully painted 2000 pts army, so I'm not really sure how to proceed. I might just paint and update this log, but it would be nice to play too.

Well half of my group use unpainted models as everyone is busy doing other things most of the time so they don't get a lot of time to paint so no problems there and GW Japan doesn't mind you using unpainted either but they would have a problem with non-GW models. I got moaned at for using classic GW models that were OOP. I reccomend giving the club a try. Oh and also you don't have to play 2000 point games. You can play anything from 500+.

[lilljonas]

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/alfons1.jpg

The first half of the second pikemen/spearmen unit is coming together. Just a few touches left, and basing.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/alfons20.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/alfons30.jpg

12 of 24 planned pikemen, with command that will put them at 27.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/alfons40.jpg

I like how the shirts looks from above, it will make them very different from the other pikemen unit even if they wear mostly the same uniform.

After this, I will have three fieldable infantry melee units, so then I'll turn my attention to the horsemen.

Vattendroppe: here you go, back to the grunts.

spikedog: That sounds like a nice group of gamers, I must admit. And I could probably put together a 1000-1500 army that looks decent before Christmas. GW being in Nakano is good news, I transfer there every day, so picking up paints and stuff should be easy. I also found a modelling shop (Yellow Submarine) in Akihabara, and they have several ranges of paint and stuff.

[Dino]

Hurray:D! It's back. I love the progress you've made on youre army. Welcome back.

[MF3000]

OH yay, I love the troopers. I'm just wondering though, do you think maybe the pikes can be positioned a bit lower down on the man's hand? It seems like he's resting the whole thing by the tip of the pole, rather than mid way - unless of course this is the way they did things in Japan... then I'm on the wrong.

sj

[Vattendroppe]

OH yay, I love the troopers. I'm just wondering though, do you think maybe the pikes can be positioned a bit lower down on the man's hand? It seems like he's resting the whole thing by the tip of the pole, rather than mid way - unless of course this is the way they did things in Japan... then I'm on the wrong.

sj

In Japan every peasant got shoulders of steel, how could they otherwise survive the constant chopping from the samurais katanas? :O

Sry, couldn't resist.

[lilljonas]

I finally got through the midterms, so here are some infantry and the first hero in the army!

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/spears2.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/spears1.jpg

The twelve first soldiers in the second unit of pikemen are done. These pikes are so much worse than the ones that are pointed straight up, they fall of all the time and take up a lot more room for transport. Sure, I like the pose, but it is not practical at all. I should have gone with the arquebuses they are also provided with instead, but then I'd have too many handgunners and too few melee infantry.

The first hero to join our ranks are the Uesugi Kenshin miniature from the mounted commanders box. Uesugi was a powerful lord but also a buddhist monk. Wearing his shawl of monkhood during battle, the model fits the role of a warrior monk pretty excellent once you forget that he is fighting with a spear.

While the romantized view of warrior monks are pretty close to this:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/Yamabushi2.jpg

Most of then wore samurai armour, and I based much of my choise of colour on this picture of Uesugi Kenshin:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/kenshin01.jpg

more to come in a second...

[lilljonas]

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/monk2.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/monk1.jpg

I took a little more time than usual to make sure that the robe and the shawl looked decent. I really hate painting large areas since it often turn out really crappy, so I made sure to use quite a few layers.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/monk3.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/monk4.jpg

Choosing colours was really tricky. Common sence says that it is best to choose a limited set of colours for an army or a model to make it tight and not all over the place. Yet the samurai never really listened to that, and their dresses were often a rainbow of colours and designs. I think it kinda work this way, it could definitely be worse. The main regret is that I didn't realize how the choise of horse colour would affect things. It works well with the monk, I think, but it makes the stone statues kinda invisible I think.

Dino: thank you. Progress right now is pretty slow, but at least it is progress.

MF3000 & Vattendroppe: Well, the choice of pike positioning is truly down to ability to rank them up. If they would hold the pikes higher up, noone would fit in front of them, neither the extra ranks nor eventual opponents up front. So there was no other way to do it. On the other hand, that's pretty much how they are represented in art, both historical and contemporary. I've even seen them hold their pikes that far down when they are pointing them forwards and running across a field!

[mrtn]

Nice stuff kompis! :)
I see what you mean with the horse, it would probably look better if it was more white than grey.

[MF3000]

Those fellas are looking sharp man!

And I see what you mean about the pikes, smart thinking.

I love the priest by the way, and that photo is frikkin' osome. I must right click and save as.

sj

[Crazy Harborc]

Very well done. The army will be a good sight to see fighting it's way to victory.

Um....do you do dancing girls?:D

[kiwichild]

Neat I thought this plog had died off and bang it`s back with pleasent peasent pikemen (say 10x fast) and warrior monks. Your castle work is pushing my to try out some myself, any ideas for tracking down any of these:
Hemeji Joe
Kumamoto Joe
Matsue Joe
Hirado Joe
Haven`t started asking around at the local model shops so that`ll be the next option.

Cheers

[lilljonas]

Looking back at the Date Masamune miniature that I posted a while ago, I realized that I had done most of the work already. No need to let him wait.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/date3.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/date2-1.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/Date1-1.jpg

I have not decided yet if I am going to try to make some kind of pattern on him or leave him pretty plain. If I do, I'd do it on the "pants" and/or the inside of his helmet. I'll have to decide what to paint on his banner too. He'll be a Captain or something until I get more heroes done, and then he might be dumped down to Champion duty. Oh, and if anyone have a good idea for a colour for his horse, I'm all ears.

mrtn: Thanks, and yes, I pretty much hate painting horses, that's why the cavalry unit is assembling so incredibly slowly. But at the same time, I love the idea of a samurai army with much cavalry. Oh well...

MF3000: Thank you. Yes, that's the typical way of depicting warrior monks, especially the most famous of them all, Benkei. But more contemporary painters painted him as in this scroll of him hanging out with Yoshitsune:
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/Sohei_Yoshitsune_with_benkei-dd021.jpg

Crazy Harborc: Dancing... girls? I want to pick up some civilians later on, there's two nice sets from Perry Miniatures, one with villagers and one with town people. There's some girls there, but a frightening lack of dancing.

kiwichild: The Doyusha kits are very, very widely spread in Japan. I've seen them in everything from dedicated model kit stores to Toys R' Us and other toy stores. If they have any other model kits than Gundams, chances are they have Doyusha castles.

http://www.doyusha-model.com/list/listtop/list-pramo.html is a good place to check them out. Hobby Link Japan has most of the kits in their list, if you don't recognize the kanji: Hobby Link Japan (http://www.hlj.com/hljlist2/?Maker1=DYS&MacroType=InjKit&GenreCode=Jpc&Dis=2)

They have Himejijou in most of their different sets, since it's, well, Himejijou. Kumamotojou is listed as existing but out of stock for most versions on the HLJ-page, but the doyusha page only list it among the golden-plated versions. I have no idea what is up with that. No luck with the Matsue or Hirado castles. Matsuejou looks really nice, so it's pretty sad that there's no model of it. Fujimi also have a Kumamoto kit if you can't locate the Doyushi kit. As I said earlier, they are cheaper (1000 yen a pop) but are also... well, cheaper. You get what you pay for. Happy building, and don't be shy to post a picture or two when you are done!

[kiwichild]

Thank you very much, I`m planning on doing them up for my in-laws and hoping to hand them over next Obon (augustish), I`ll be using your thread as a sort of guide to doing them up, especially the scenic/forest/foliage bits. As soon as I get a sizable chunk of my GS cult done, I`ll take a break and do the `Joes`. Don`t worry about pics as I`ll probably be bugging you for advice at the same time.

Cheers mate
KC

[lilljonas]

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/datem.jpg

Date Masamune was one of few lords that did not join the Sekigahara campaign. He was living far up to the north in Sendai, which at that time was as far north as anyone but Ainu lived. This placed him a long way from where the final battles of the campaign stood. He was also very powerful and could avoid being threatened by any side of the conflict. Instead he waited until the end, so that he could join the winning side.

His well know characteristics included the huge Nike logo on his helmet, being one-eyed after losing his eye to small pox, and being one of several lords through history to sport the sun on his personal banner. This sun would later become the Japanese flag.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/datem2.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/datem3.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/datem4.jpg

This was my first attempt at tiger skin, so it's far from perfect. I also noticed that I missed quite a few details when painting it yesterday, due to the poor lighting available. I fixed some of it this morning, but it taught me a lesson on the advantages of having good light sources around when you paint.

I think I'll add a while circle to his banner later on. Other than that I'm happy with the level of details, he'll probably only be a champion after all. The colour scheme was all over the place, but I think it turned out ok in the end. He'll stick out, but won't stick out too much.

Oh, and he has a pistol! If I field him as Captain, I'd simply have to buy him one.

Next up is either Oda Nobunaga which would give me another hero, more knights to make the unit fieldable, more pikemen to make the second pike unit fieldable or samurai handgunners.

kiwichild: If it's just for Obon, don't worry too much. They are pretty simple kits, even for beginners, and the painting is pretty simple as you'll use a very small palette of colours. I'd be surprised if you can't finish one in a week of dedicated work. Good luck!

[kiwichild]

Cheers for the encouragement, guess it`s just a matter of getting the kits and hunkering down and building them. Any chance of a brief tutorial on your horses, I have 12 to do for my GS cult and yours look gooooooood!

[mrtn]

Looking good. :) I'm not sure, but it seems that the tiger skin is too yellow. It should probably be more orange and white. The horse has a weird expression, but that's the sculpt, not the painting.

[MF3000]

Japan wouldn't have had ... native Tigers would they? I thought they were found only in mainland Asia?

But yeah... I think it's a bit yellow - unless of course, that's what happens after some general's been riding on the pelt for quite sometime lol.

sj

[Crazy Harborc]

Looks like a warrior with an attitude....looking for a fight. Hey!! What did you say about me peasant!!!

So are there Orcs and Goblins them to fight?

[zealot!]

check out a game called hundred kingdoms... u might find some solid bits in there.

[kiwichild]

Japan wouldn't have had ... native Tigers would they? I thought they were found only in mainland Asia?

But yeah... I think it's a bit yellow - unless of course, that's what happens after some general's been riding on the pelt for quite sometime lol.

sj

Japan maintained trade with China and Korea throughout that period so getting tiger skins would have been difficult but definately possible. I guy of his rank might have recieved it as a gift or a tribute. Sort of like Squats in NZ they`re rare but occasionly you can find them.:D

[MF3000]

ROFL it's true with anything related to warhammer; NZ is sparsely populated with warhammer goodies!

I know that our Korean tigers are Siberian... so they would have Orange and black - but I know that in illustrations and especially children's books tigers are often depicted with yellow and black colours... which is a bit odd.

sj

[kiwichild]

True but most children`s books show Mickey Mouse with pants, haven`t seen a mouse with those yet. Yellow and black seems like a cheaper printing option (no red ink) I always thought an orange like the feather in your avatar would suit a tiger.

lilljonas: Perhaps a highlight of Tamiya Desert Yellow (XF-59), then maybe a thin wash of orange or red ink could solve the yellow problem.

[lilljonas]

Todays episode of Fun With Japanese History!: tiger skins and Japan.

Tigers in decoration and art was extremely popular in Japan during the feudal era. This was especially from screens and other imports from mainland China. Tiger skins were common for coating of scabbards for wealthy Japanese warlords. Oda Nobunaga was one of those toting this symbol of power (I've seen the sword in person at the museum inside Gifu castle).

http://www.ccds.charlotte.nc.us/History/Japan/02/shibano/nob.jpg
Oda Nobunaga, just chillin' with his tiger sword.

During the Japanese invasion of Korea in 1592 -1598 under the rule of Toyotomi, tiger hunting became immensely popular among the lords who invaded Korea. One famous depiction of Kato Kiyomasa is of him shooting a tiger in Korea. Since my army is aimed at 1600 when these lords have returned, there'd be plenty of tiger skins available in Japan, and many of them used them on saddles and such. That's why I chose it, and also to make the horse a bit special.

I agree that it looks a bit more like a wasp than a tiger. It was my first attempt at tiger skin, and after this popular support for a re-paint, I'll give it another try this weekend. More orange and white is the way to go, I think.

Also coming is (hopefully) a finished fieldable unit of knights, the next guy is halfways done and will bring them up to five.

mrtn: I agree with the colour thing, but I think the horse is allright. Perhaps it's better in person than on picture.

MF3000: I see why you were questioning my choise of tigers, but at least in this I did my homework. ;)

zealot!: I've never heard of it. Is it just a rule set, or are there miniatures too?

Crazy Harborc: The gobbos are on the other side of the globe right now. :( There's not that many to slay with honour here in Japan, but if my army is completed by the time I get back to Sweden...

kiwichild: Thank's for the tips, I only have chestnut ink available, I'll try to find one of those mythical GW-selling stores one day (I've looked for the one in Nakano TWICE without finding it. Japanese most often don't use streetnames and understandable adresses)

Sorry for a pictureless entry, and thank you for the feedback. I really hope to have a group shot ready for the weekend, and tomorrow is last day at school before Christmas vacation! Happy holidays, everyone!

[MF3000]

Oh no no no; I did have an inkling feeling that the Japanese lords did have some kind of 'way' to get their hands on tiger pelts via trade or through Korea but I wasn't really sure.

And sorry for the off-topic banter; and happy holidays to all!

sj

[lilljonas]

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/byz1.jpg
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/byz2.jpg

Today saw the fourth mounted samurai join the fray. The colour theme ended up with something slightly Byzantine or even Dark Elfish. At least he fills up the unit to make it five knights! But since I don't have that many heroes finished, I'll try to make one more so that I can field Masamune as a captain until he is relieved.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/group1.jpg

Here's the unit, fighting the unholy Bran Flakes. The chafing on the spears comes from the annoying fact that they keep on falling off, just like the samurai just won't stay glued to their horses. I expect a game with this army to include a mandatory 20 minute gluing session.

Also "finished" is the second banner:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/banner1.jpg

"Finished", since it lacks something actually on the banner, just like the rest of the army. I'll have to get to that some day.

MF3000: Don't worry, I completely understand what you meant, I just felt a chance to go on a history lesson rant, which is a chance that I can not miss. And banter is always welcome!

[txamil]

A love this army.

[mrtn]

The metal thing keeping the back leg of the horse up is ugly in that neon green colour. Maybe try to make it brown instead?

The rest is looking good. :)

[lilljonas]

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/command1.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/command2.jpg

The command group for the second pikemen forming up. I really like how they turned out, the skin had been painted for ages, so it was about time I got them done. Using more and more layers and diluting the paints with water is starting to pay off. Since my painting is getting faster, it is less of a drag than before to add that extra care.

Now I need more champions and musicians, but I don't need more banners. I have way too many banners (three or four more unpainted). Most daimyos comes with one or two banners, so I'll have to live with that situation getting worse. The greatswords have no musician right now, so I think I'll get another banner/musician blister anyway. I'll be able to field a unit of bannerwavers by the end of this project.

Oh, and they just added a bunch of new blisters at the Perrys homepage, including two new lords and pictures of the Red Devils cavalry! I'll definitely have to add some of them later on. I'm planning my next order, which will probably include musicians and the start of a cannon battery. Their cannon sucks, so I'm thinking of how to convert the ordinary Empire plastic cannon.

txamil: thank you! I'm planning to get a photo of the painted part of the army soon, since there'll be two more painted units and heroes and stuff.

mrtn; you are correct, of course. It's even worse than those pictures makes it look like, since it's pretty much pure bad moon yellow on the back. I was planning on painting it green, but covering it with brown might work too. I'll give it a try.

[kiwichild]

kiwichild: Thank's for the tips, I only have chestnut ink available, I'll try to find one of those mythical GW-selling stores one day (I've looked for the one in Nakano TWICE without finding it. Japanese most often don't use streetnames and understandable adresses)

A chestnut wash could work if you made it about a 50/50 ink and water mix, build it up slowly (think 6 coats) and replace the desert yellow highlight with Tamiya`s XF-15 Flat Flesh, it has more of an orange hue and the chestnut should bring that out more

Storewise, I know exactly what you mean, I spent 3 hours in Akihabara (Otaku Central, Tokyo) trying to find the mythical 3 GW selling stores, eventually found a historical figure shop and the kind owner drew me a map to the GW store in Ochanomisu (3 train stops away). After asking about a 100 people and having my wife (Japanese) call the shops to ask for directions, we only ever found one and they had stopped stocking GW paints 2 years ago. I haven`t got it with me right now, but I have the fax number and address for GW`S HQ shop in Tokyo if you`re still in Japan just let me know and I`ll dig it out. I talked to the manager there and explained that I have no GW source in Nagano, he just gave me a business card and told me to fax him with an order if I need anything. I figure it works for anyone in Japan and it saves buttloads on post&packaging from the US or UK.

[lilljonas]

So, I got snowed in in a house in Hokkaido this New Year. So instead of getting things painted (and writing on my essays) during the vacation, I made pretty much no progress. However, I read a few history books, got a lot of inspiration and felt happy when I got back to a batch of undercoated minis. I also finally decided how to organise the banners and such.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/command3.jpg

The champion for the second pike unit, and a rider equipped with a horo, a sort of cloth over a bamboo structure attached to the back. These were usually worn by bodyguards or important messagers, and I'll probably use them as musicians for my cavalry units. I'm not painting them right now, but I try to paint the skin areas on all undercoated minis at the same time. It doesn't take that much more longer to add a mini or two when painting so many. Also, when going back to those models, I get a nice boost in speed since the first part is already done, helpful for painting morale if nothing else.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/musket1.jpg

Arquebus Samurai. They'll probably fielded as a throwaway detachment, but then I got them more for the nice models than for their usefulness. I like the loaders the most, and the painting is coming along mighty fine. If I don't mess up they might become some of the best painted this far.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/musket2.jpg

Oh, and I bought some Tamiya paints. I really wanted to like them, since I can buy them just five minutes away from my house and they cost like one third of GW paints. But:

-they smell. A lot. I could live with this, but it's not nice.
-they are very watery. While some like to not have to add water to the thick GW paints before painting, I like having the choise of starting with a thick paint, such as when drybrushing. These paints would suck for drybrushing.
-they are gloss. It's like I've added a layer of gloss varnish over the area painted.
-they are not consistant. Layers are not even, contrary to its watery consistancy it doesn't flow well, and sometimes it just cake while I paint and then it'll crumble and look just awful.

So no, I don't like them for miniature painting. However, I'll use the Flat Brown for my bases, since my Scorched Earth is almost out.

kiwichild: You might have found The Yellow Submarine. It's a model kit store not that far from the station. I think they had Vallejo paints the time I stumbled in there, so that would be a good target if I don't find a store with GW paints.

[ZeroTwentythree]

If you are going to repaint the tiger skin, I'd recommend more stripes as well. They look a little sparse. Use google to get some photos of tigers and imitate those.

As far as the spears falling off, what sort of glue are you using? Are you gluing them after they are primed & painted, or before. I've had the best luck with 2-part epoxy and gluing bare metal to metal. Super glue seems too brittle to me.

I don't think the purple figure looks Byzantine or Dark Elf. I like him. I like the look of the dappled horse as well!



So, I got snowed in in a house in Hokkaido this New Year.

Ooh, I'd really love to visit Hokkaido. It looks beautiful, and one of my favorite buildings is there (Tadao Ando's "Church on the Water")

[Vattendroppe]

About the tamiya paints, they're not waterbased, are they? I'm not sure if it's the same settings of paints that I have spread around everywhere in my parents house, but if it is, they should become quite nice thickness on if you let them dry for a while =P On the downside is that you would have to use thinner to water them out...

And aren't there a range of matt colours also?

I'm not sure or anything, but it might always help :) Especially it can be nice since you can buy them at a shop so near!

[Hashut]

Best blog in the forum. FACT.

Any chance of a full army shot?

[Hashut]

By the way,

You've inspired me. I was Going to make an Araby army out of the Harad models, but looking through the Perry minis has made me want to do Cathay, using their Chosun Koreans. Any advice on model choices, sites to look at or books to read regard Ming Dynasty Chinese military?

[kiwichild]

Oh, and I bought some Tamiya paints. I really wanted to like them, since I can buy them just five minutes away from my house and they cost like one third of GW paints. But:

-they smell. A lot. I could live with this, but it's not nice.
-they are very watery. While some like to not have to add water to the thick GW paints before painting, I like having the choise of starting with a thick paint, such as when drybrushing. These paints would suck for drybrushing.
-they are gloss. It's like I've added a layer of gloss varnish over the area painted.
-they are not consistant. Layers are not even, contrary to its watery consistancy it doesn't flow well, and sometimes it just cake while I paint and then it'll crumble and look just awful.

So no, I don't like them for miniature painting. However, I'll use the Flat Brown for my bases, since my Scorched Earth is almost out.


The tamiya flat paint range should have a XF before the number, anything with an X before the number is real glossy. Example X-3 Royal Blue will hurt your eyes it`s that glossy, but XF-18 Medium Blue dries to a nice flat finish.
I had similar problems with the paints clumping, caking and not sticking to the basecoat, try and get your hands on a bottle of Acrylic Paint Thinner X-20A, it comes in a 250ml plastic square bottle. If you add about 1.5ml to each pot of paint it clears up the consistancy problem and makes the paints flow much better. I find stirring the paint pot with a toothpick as about every 30 minutes while you are painting spreads the pigment evenly.
Check out some of the pics in my Genestealer cult log (in my signature) alll the models use tamiya paints. At first the change from GW to Tamiya was a major pain in the `ketsu` and took me a few months to get used to them.

[lilljonas]

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/nymusket1.jpg

The arquebus samurai are finished. I'm especially sorry today for my poor photographs, since they really look good IRL. I went for a slightly uniform feeling by painting the armours black and giving them the same banners. I chose a light colour for the banners since the black armour, while really nice if you look at them one at a time up close (as when painting), kind of blend together when you see them all at once.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/nymusket2.jpg

The samurais in various angles.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/nymusket3.jpg

But my favourite is this loader.

This is pretty much how I plan on doing banners. Samurai armies, while including a lot of heraldry, was also a bit chaotic. Usually the armies were made of one or more local lords, who all sported their own internal order. While the main armies were marked out with the mon, or family symbol, separate units were often singled out through banners only carrying different colours, most often black, white, blue, red or yellow, the five lucky colours.

So basically, I plan to give parent units back banners (sashimono) and banner bearers sporting a mon, while the detachments will only be marked out with colour banners. This should keep it simple to see who is what.

To my amazement, this means that the only unpainted models left are 12 pikemen, 6 riders, a champion, a mounted hero and a bunch of command units that I'm not planning to use anytime soon. A new order will be made, but the bulk of the army is pretty much done now. I also bought material to make movement trays, so once it stops raining and I've bought a ruler, I'll make a bunch of them.

ZeroTwentythree: I use GW superglue. Let's just say that I glue them before spraying, after spraying, while painting, after painting, and pretty much anytime anyone as much as look at them. *sigh*

And Hokkaido was great, even if I didn't get to go many places and see that much. At least I got to see some snow!

Vattendroppe & Kiwichild: Thanks for all the imput on Tamiya paints. The only things not in Japanese on them is the name of the colour and "acrylic", so I just assumed that they were waterbased since all model acrylics and artist acrylics I've ever used were. But yeah, not being waterbased would pretty much explain all my troubles with them. Having to use a specific thinner is one thing, but not being able to mix with my old paints pretty much seals the deal. After all, "in a couple of months" I'll probably be back in civilized lands.

Hashut: Thank you, I'm glad you like it. A full army shot would not be a bad idea, as things are starting to fall in place now. I want to finish the second pikemen unit first, but since that's 12 uniformed ashigaru it should not take too long.

As for a Ming army, it sounds great! The new Perry line looks nice, though it is very small. When it comes to historical miniatures, http://theminiaturespage.com/ is pretty much the go-to place. The message board doesn't look as fancy as Warseer, but I've always got good answers when asking things there (mostly japanese terrain building). Both Chinese and Mongolian armies are really tempting! Historical miniature companies always make crappy webpages, so be warned. I'm not sure about Ming China, but Old glory has a range of Han Chinese in the 1 dollar/miniature cost range:

http://www.oldgloryminiatures.com/products.asp?cat=131

Be sure to take some pictures of you paint a Chinese army, I'd love to see it!

(hey, mounted repeating crossbowmen... there's a warhammer army for that!)

For inspiration when it comes to military history and miniatures, Osprey is where it's at. Go here: http://www.ospreypublishing.com/ and search for "chinese". They have books covering 1500 BC to 1949 AD. They are also widely used by miniature painters, so they often cater to them with good overall descriptions on military order, painting schemes and pretty colour paintings. I use my Osprey books a ton for this army.

[Hashut]

Thanks mate.

I've done a bit more reading and decided to do a Korean army from the time of the Japanese invasion, they seem quite interesting. I emailed the Perrys and they're doing some cavalry and monks at the moment, and heavy infantry are a possibility, which should give enough variety.

Unfortunately there isn't too much literature on Korean armies of the time, but I'll manage. I think I'll be using the Empire list too, with Kislevite allies for the cavalry.

I'm placing an order in the next few days for a unit of the guerillas, which I'll be using as Free Company. Like you, I am getting back into the hobby through these guys, so hopefully my painting is alright.

[tancrede]

Very nice minis, man !!
Now, I start a japanese/nipponese army for warhammer battle and/or warhammer ancient battle, and it's your fault ! :D

[lilljonas]

Any chance of a brief tutorial on your horses, I have 12 to do for my GS cult and yours look gooooooood!

My horse painting is pretty basic, but I'll give a short walkthrough. I've learnt most I know from an article here (http://www.specialist-games.com/mordheim/articles.asp). The GW site is pretty strange. To find an article regarding painting horses, you must go to the specialist site, then look at Mordheim, look for the articles section (which is 95% new teams and scenarios) and find the "Paint Horses" article halfways down the page. But it's worth it, as it covers some basic points about horse anatomy and colours.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/horo1-1.jpg

First point is to choose a colour. This one is going to be grey. So I mix Chaos Black with a small amount of Fortress Grey. There are probably better greys for horses out there, but it's the only grey I have. Just take a colour you want and make a dark version of it.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/horo2.jpg

I slowly go from dark to light by adding more and more grey, until I have a last layer of pure Fortress Grey. If I had painted it brown, I might have gone from Schorched Earth to Snakebite Leather or even Bubonic Brown. Just stop when you think it is light enough. The lightning at the picture sucks, so it is really a few nuances lighter than it seems from the photo. After taking the picture I decided to do a last highlight with 80% Fortress Grey and 20% Skull White.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/horo3.jpg

The light areas on the legs and around the nose is first painted light grey, and then highlighted with pure Skull White. You can add some fleshy paint in the mix around the nouse, different horses just look different. Black hair is drybrushed with light grey and finally a tad of white. "Blonde" hair is easy to get with Bubonic Brown. There are many versions of patterns at the face and legs, so feel free to experiment.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/horo4.jpg

Finally I added some spots, like I did to one of the earlier horses. I wanted it to stand out a little. I was not completely happy with how it turned out, but I did it to encourage experimentation. Horses comes in all kinds of weird colours and patterns, the internet is great to look for inspiration.

Hashut: Ooh, that would be the perfect enemies of a 1600 Japanese army! I love Perry Miniatures since the company is small enough for them to actually answer consumer questions and sometimes even requests. It sounds great that they have further plans for the Korean line than just a few basic troopers. Looking forward to see how your army turns out.

tancrede: Well, what can I say? While I secretly mourn the inevitable title of "the Japanese painting log that doesn't look as good as Tancrede's", the prospect of seeing what you can squeeze out of these lovely sculps is a really great one. The variety of the Samurai line has grown a lot since I started this log, so there's an incredible amount of things to choose from now. A mounted army would even be possible, if you are not tired of that after your Bretonnians. And the choise of commanders is somewhere close to ten different lords or something. Any hints at which direction you are planning to go?

[tancrede]

It's not a competition for me, but I fall in love with japanese culture and traditions ages ago.
Your painting skills are really good, and your army will certainly look very fine on a battlefield. I hope I can use my own skills on the Perry's sculpts, because it will certainly be a great change to paint on realistic 25mm minis (nearly 99% of my minis comes from the GW ranges... and they are not very realistic, isn't it ?;)).

For my army, take a look at my log. I've posted an army list. I think I will have a foot army, with tons of ashigarus, a small amount of elite samurais and some "exotic" units such as ninjas or half-humans from japanese legends (such as the nezumis or tengus).

[Hashut]

Hashut: Ooh, that would be the perfect enemies of a 1600 Japanese army! I love Perry Miniatures since the company is small enough for them to actually answer consumer questions and sometimes even requests. It sounds great that they have further plans for the Korean line than just a few basic troopers. Looking forward to see how your army turns out.



I can't wait for my minis! But they seem to be taking forever! :cries:


I suppose you can't expect them to get from the UK to Australia overnight though.

BTW lilljonas, what did you do for bases? I don't really want to fork out for the square bases pack, since I won't ever use the monster or 25mm ones. Shipping from the US to here for $5USD worth of square bases is $22USD so that's a bit much too... :(

[lilljonas]

So I took a break in my studies today to arrange the entire army, and it took quite some time. Too bad I have nothing suitable to put it on.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/armyshot1.jpg

These are the painted units this far

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/armyshot2.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/armyshot3.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/armyshot4.jpg

more to come...

[lilljonas]

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/armyshot5.jpg

The first pikeman unit, with a mounted leader.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/armyshot6.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/armyshot7.jpg

The painted units, vs...

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/armyshot8.jpg

..the unpainted. This is the first time I can say that I have more miniatures painted to tabletop standard than unpainted for an army. Left unpainted are a whole bunch of cavalry (11 of them) and 12 pikemen. I also have a bunch of banners, but every foot unit have banners right now. I have other plans for them...

I also made a short calculation, and without tooling up characters, my painted army comes out at around 1000 pts, which can be increased to about 1500 pts (without items) if I include the unpainted ones. How do people fit these huge Empire armies with all their detachments (I only have two this far!) on the table?

Putting them all on the table at once also points out that the army is a bit... colourless as it is. I really have to get going on painting the banners, as I guess it will make it stand out a bit more. I'm not sure if going for one unit with raised pikes and one with "leaning" ones was the right decision, either. What do you guys think?

tancrede: Sounds smashing. I've been eyeing the samurai goblins and ogres of Confrontation myself, it might be a nice break of pace in the future to paint something a bit more fantasy themed.

Hashut: I have been cannibalizing old bases. Since I've bought both the 4th and 5th WHFB starting boxes and co-bought BfSP with a friend (and took the gobbos), I had a gazillion bases that I didn't use. Old plastic HE archers? No thank you. For the riders, I just bought a package of horsie bases from GW, it included some 25 bases or so, quite more than enough.

You can probably swap for cheap bases or buy them, check e-bay and bartertown. Or you can make them out of MDF or something, that's how most historical gamers seem to do it.

[Hashut]

NICE!

Yeah, I'm on Bartertown atm, trying to sort out a trade.

I think the army will look much better when the banners are something other than all white. Get painting!


I'm not sure if going for one unit with raised pikes and one with "leaning" ones was the right decision, either. What do you guys think?

I guess you'll just have to get more for variety :D

When my Korean army gets done, I'd love to have a game against you. Unfortunately I live in Australia, so it's highly unlikely.

[mrtn]

The army is looking great! I feared it would look fragmented with all those colours, but the bases seems to tie it together.

I think you should keep white in your banner, as that would tie them together with the small back-banners.

[Glorfindel]

The army look absolutely fantastic, really unbelievably cool. I would love to play against an army painted and assembled like that. It's an army you don't see every day for sure!

[FatOlaf]

Just read all of your PLOG, really good work. I used to have a small Nippon army back in the 80's when GW did them and would love to see them come back one day..
Meanwhile I will subscribe to your excellent thread.
Was a bit scared when you painted the battleship but glad to see you came back on track..;)

So any plans to fight a game whilst you are in Japan, dont let the 10 year gap put you off, I started playing WFB again last year after an 18 years gap, so I know how you feel. Have you contacted that club Spikedog told you about?

[lilljonas]

I finished my essays and finals, so now I have a whopping two months spring vacation. I know, the Japanese university system is whacked up. But alas, it also happened to be that Perry Miniatures have a three weeks break, starting from the first of February. I guess they are busy with their new plastic ACW era miniatures. Anyway, I sent away an order just prior to that, so it will hopefully be sent. Otherwise you'll only see me paint knights and pikemen for a month.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/musician2.jpg

I'm trying to finish this rider with a horo. These contraptions of bamboo and cloth was used for important samurai such as bodyguards and messengers, and the cloth filled up with air when they rode around.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/musician1.jpg

I'm trying more and more to get into freehand painting for designs on clothes and such, but it's not really coming along very well. As you can see it is presently limited to "dots in rather straight lines" on the saddle and "dots that look more like stripes" on his shirt. But I'll keep trying, we all have to start somewhere. The horo will probably be painted with while and red stripes, and the character for five, as it was used by Tokugawa forces on their horo. Gamewise, I'll probably use it as a musician rather than a standard bearer, due to there being no musician model available and people seem to agree that standard bearers for knightly orders is pretty much crap.

EDIT: I get this huge "GW painted pistoliers" vibe from him, must be the yellow/brown shirt and the black breastplate.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/quasimodo.jpg

Here is grumpy Mr. Quasimodo, a wretched and bitter old man who also happen to be a ashigaru command squad member (i.e. champion). He probably kicked a dog when he left his house this morning. He's about halfway finished.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/manholecover.jpg

Japan is full of inspiration, and I just need to walk around the neighborhood to become frustrated that I have no place to stock terrain, because recreating some of the awesome houses around here would kick ass. But not only that. Look at this fire post cover from Koganei, the area just west of my house. They could have made a simple manhole cover that said "please don't park here". But no, we got an angry dude with a big banner kind of thing and cherry blossoms all over the place. Coloured, of course.

Anyhow, my order? I ordered two blisters, one with more musicians and banners, not because 8 or so banners wasn't enough, but I'm really short on musicians. The other one I'll speak about a little later, I need to take a few pictures first. True to the spirit and name of this project, it will introduce me to another part of the hobby. Conversions.

Hashut: I checked your new thread out, and I'm happy to see it lift off! And hey, Japan is closer to Australia than Sweden, at least. Now paint some Koreans!

mrtn; yes, the bases helps, and I am pretty certain that making movement trays will help even more. That is one the to do-list for February and March. I have the material, I am just fiddling around with unit sizes and number of ranks, so I'm reading up a bit on different forums and sites about Empire tactics. Any ideas are welcome from you readers.

I'll keep some white in all my major banners, but I'll probably add coloured fields to them to make them stand out.

Glorfindel: Thank you! And yes, the amount of work vs amount of gaming this far (100% vs 0%) means that reading up on historical books and going to exhibitions have been some of the major highlights of building the army. This would not be the same if I was doing a Dark Elf army, I guess.

FatOlaf: We all need a break now and then, and the Kongo will serve me well when I'm trying out varnishes later on.

No, I haven't heard from Spikedog for a while, but then I honestly haven't asked lately either. Considering the huge amount of spare time I'll have the following two months, it would be good to get a game rolling before then. I've just been anxious to start something before I have something looking like an army, but now that I have that, I guess that excuse is shot down. I guess you know how I feel if you've gone through the same thing. But yes, if I just made some movement trays, I should have a somewhat functional 1500p Empire Army.

[lilljonas]

Today was, surprisingly enough, a snowy day in Tokyo. I have run out of spray too, so I turned to building some movement trays instead.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/bas1.jpg

I found these at 100yen (about a dollar) for a set of two. While good cardboard for basing is difficult to find in Sweden, these boards, around 35x35cm, are awesome. They are really meant to be over-sized congratulation cards. The cardboard is hard and thick enough to not warp or mess up and it is very, very cheap and easy to find.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/bas2.jpg

Next step was to measure with based miniatures and draw some lines with a ruler.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/bas3.jpg

I was planning to do the sloping part with green stuff, but since I was off to such a cheap start, I might as well try to make the bases as cheap as possible. Matches are cheap. I just carved off one of the edges to make them triangular. Then I applied plenty of wood glue to even things out instead of using green stuff. Some sort of plaster would probably work even better, but would be a bit messy. And it was snowing outside.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/bas4.jpg

Awaiting painting. I'll pick up some spray and finish them when the weather gets better. This far, I have made 1x6, 2x6, 4x5, 5x5 and two with 6x5 with room for a mounted leader. That covers more than half the army as it stands right now. I'll do more to give room for playing around with formations later.

[FatOlaf]

Nice trays, once you get them painted I want to see you battle. Will be a great sight.
Keep up the good work..

[lilljonas]

It was snowing today too, so even if I have a whole bunch of movement trays done, they are still unpainted. Some progress was done though:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/musician1-1.jpg

lollipop attack!

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/musician2-1.jpg

The character for 5, "go", was used on his horo as this was the symbol used by Tokugawa's bodyguards and messengers on their horo.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/quasimodo-1.jpg

Quasimodo was given some nice striped pants and gold trimmings on his helmet, and became just slightly less broody.

FatOlaf: Thanks, I'll try to get that sorted out sooner rather than later. :)

[lilljonas]

On to the next project. You know them, you love them (or fear them): cannons.

Cannons were not often used in Japan, even during sieges, and they were never an important part of Japanese pre-modern warfare. However, there were several occasion were they were used, and one of them happened to be the battle of Sekigahara, where at least one assault was broken by a battery of cannons.

So, I'd like to include one or two in my army. Partly because I think that it would be a nice centerpiece, and partly because I'm afraid of big nasty things that could create troubles for my big blocks of infantry. So 50-50 fluffy-ness and gamey-ness. However, a large battery is right out the window, and so is the helblaster. This is not planned to be a too shooty army.

I ordered the Perry Miniatures cannon.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/sam48b-1.jpg

The crew looks nice and since they are four, I can easily add two standby miniatures and end up with two sets of crewmen. The mantlets are a cool addition. And the cannon is crap. No really, look at it. Quite some centerpiece, if you can see it over the static grass.

OK, so what they did was that they made a saker, a small cannon used by European forces in the early 17th century. It was pretty small and therefore convenient for both naval and land battles. And the miniature sucks.

Since I'm making a 1600 army, I'm entering the era when domestically made Japanese cannons were produced. Some looked like (and were) big handguns:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/IMG_5434.jpg
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/IMG_5433.jpg

and others were more like western-like:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/Osakac1o.jpg

to be continued shortly due to picture limit

[lilljonas]

With this big array of cannons, I settled for this image as a source of inspiration:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/canon.jpg

(sorry for the lack of quality, I have no scanner)

A simple design, yet pretty non-European in its looks. But what to use? The Empire cannon set is not really that far off:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/Emp_artilleryCan_lg.jpg

Annoyingly enough, when you look at the sprue you can see that it includes almost everything to make TWO cannons, except for three pieces. Now, that would be too perfect for me as I'd be sitting with two crews.

Making the Empire cannon into a Nipponese cannon should be pretty straightforward, just filing away a lot of the extra detail and perhaps find something else for the wheels. However, if I am to make it into a mortar and a cannon, I'll have to work a bit harder and create something for the second artillery piece to be standing on. But fluffwise, mortars are a-OK too:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/Nirayama_Cannon_10.jpg

This is what is going around in my mind right now, if anyone has some idea that would help me, I'm keen to hear it. Unless something drastic comes up, I'll go hunting for a GW store this or next week.

Until next update!

[MF3000]

Nice inspiration, I've been trying to come up with an 'Asian' cannon as well, for a Cathayan/Araby army though, not Nippon. However, I've based my research on oriental cannons in general... errr anyways, I've narrowed down 'few' viable applicants for a conversion job.

I remember one dude, who made a bulbous mortar out of a door knob, but that was HUGE, so maybe find a smaller knob of some sort, and use that as a starting point. Why a door knob? Since they already have that bulbous shape to'em!

Ogre Leadbelchers happen to carry a short mortar/cannon ... but it's covered in leather and spikes (which won't be that bad actually, oriental cannons tended to come in segments of different textures and patterns).

And... back to door knobs and things, there were few other bits and pieces at the local Bunnings Hardware store that were bulbous and... mortar like...

But I can't remember what they were lol.

sj

[kendoka]

Nice thread, made me rework my samurai army.
I have started to repaint my painted ones (around 400) and painting new ones.

Examples:
http://hem.spray.se/kendoka/samurai/images/samu1.jpg
http://hem.spray.se/kendoka/samurai/images/samu2.jpg
http://hem.spray.se/kendoka/samurai/images/samu3.jpg

[kendoka]

http://hem.spray.se/kendoka/samurai/images/samu4.jpg
http://hem.spray.se/kendoka/samurai/images/samu5.jpg
http://hem.spray.se/kendoka/samurai/images/samu7.jpg

[kendoka]

Keep up the good work.


As for the mortar:
>I remember one dude, who made a bulbous mortar out of a door knob...

I made one from the flushing knob from an old toilet (I found it in my pocket when I woke up from a wet night out - guess I flushed to hard and decided to keep the "souvenir").

BTW
I recently registered the domain www.samurai-miniatures.com
and will soon upload stuff there.
Would be nice to feature your samurai army on the site.

[Crazy Harborc]

Several years ago, a couple of local indies sold some/most of a companies items for Japanese medieval wargaming. It is faded from stores I know of. The man who was traveling around putting on demo games doesn't anymore.

Still and all........the photos make me long to try. I just may nose around for fellow indie gamers still into Nipponese period wargaming.....Umm......IF they have the armies to try it out with.:D

[Meraklis]

well I think that your best bet for finding a suitable asian looking cannon would be the perry range! they have a samurai cannon of some sort if I remember well! You could also check out Old Glory's site for some cheap artillery!

Keep working on those magnificent bushi!

[lilljonas]

I have very little to report. While this is partly because of my computer breaking down and partly because of the shipment from PM not arriving, the absolutely biggest reason is the awesome timesink called FUMBBL, a java based version of BloodBowl combined with 30 000 coaches worldwide. I've been playing a ton of games these last two weeks, and my samurai have barely been touched.

What I have done is basecoated the remaining troops, which turned out really crappy. The basecoat became all gloss and weird, and sometimes even with small bubbles remaining after drying. I'm trying to repair it with a second coating of black by hand. We'll see how it turn out in the end.

I also finished four movement trays, who I'll take pictures of if I can get my computer working better. If not, pictures will have to wait until I can buy a replacement.

That, and I don't fall for the temptation of buying a bunch of stuff from here:
28mmbuildings (http://www.johnjenkinsdesigns.com/28mmBuildings.htm)

MF3000: the Japanese mortars I have pictures are, well, simply extremely short cannons. We're talking approx. 50 cm long IRL. Not large bulbous contraptions. But it is a nice idea.

kendoka: nice work! It is interesting to see some different lines of samurai painted up for comparison. Especially when some manufacturers *cough* Old Glory *cough* has such incredibly crappy pictures on their online stores that you can barely make out how the miniatures look like. I've seen some pretty nicely painted versions of The Assault Group samurai too, to the point of me wanting to buy some. They are incredibly out of period for this army too, since they are more suitable for a Gempei War army.

I'd be happy to contribute to such a site. After all, a 20+ forum thread is not very easily navigated for anyone, even for me.

Crazy Harborc: actually, this is a pretty good time to start a samurai army. WH players might not be aware, but historical gamers call this the golden age of miniature gaming. Internet has enabled a ton of new companies and the launch of a huge amount of new historical lines, and the quality of sculpts are just improving. Where there were previously just a handful of samurai lines (Dixon was the first I saw, and that line is pretty damn old), now you can not only choose between different makes and price ranges but also from several different historical periods. Onin Wars? Mongol Invasions? Gempei Wars? Sengoku period daimyo armies? The unification wars? You can now find decent miniatures to make all these themed armies.

Meraklis: I actually bought the Perry Miniature cannon for the crewmen, but I don't like that cannon at all. All other samurai lines I know of are a bit earlier historically, and therefor features little in the way of firearms, no less cannons.

Thanks for the hint of Old Glory, their standalone cannons are pretty cheap indeed! I didn't find a good match in my initial browsing, but I'll look a second time to see if there's something that could suit for converting. If not, I might settle for converting an Empire cannon. After all, then I can do a nice base diorama without being too concerned with the cannon breaking in transport, which metal pieces are prone to do.

[lilljonas]

Not much being done lately, but here's the second half of the second pikemen unit.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurajer1004.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurajer1001.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurajer1002.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurajer1003.jpg

Some details were skipped as these are just rank and file troopers, but you might notice that I tried to paint eyes for the first time. It didn't go that well, but it was nice to start trying.

You can also see my first movement trays. I'm not completely satisfied with how they look, but they sure are convenient! They are also stupidly cheap to make, which is a bonus. More of these will be churned out until I have enough for the entire army.

I've received the cannon blister and some more banners and musicians, and these will be the next project once I have decided how to base it.

[Althanan]

He's baaaaaack ;)

Glad to see you around here again, lilljonas-san, and I'm also glad to see that you haven't given up on this project yet :) This look awesome, as usual.

[mrtn]

I agree with Althanan. :)

[tancrede]

Nice to see this thread alive again !
I hope to see more of your pics soon, 'cause I love your army !

[lilljonas]

Slow progress, but at least some. Here's the first piece of artillery:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/kanon1.jpg

I wanted to try out something easy first. The cannon kit comes with everything you need for a cannon and a mortar, except for extra wheels and half the chassis. As a bonus, mortars, especially early ones, were not really wheeled around on a chassis, but rather mounted on a sturdy wooden frame stuck on the ground. So with a few pieces of wood, I'd have two artillery pieces for the price of one!

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/kanon2.jpg

The mortar without crew. I'm planning on sticking some bushes on the ground to make it more interesting. The reason for the large base is that I want it to be the same size as the cannon, which will require a lot more room than the mortar. A 80x120 mm base sounded reasonable. I built it out of the same thick congratulation cards that I made the movement trays of.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/koenji002.jpg

With crew. I actually started to make some ammunition out of green stuff. Then, when I was looking for small stones in my backyard I found some strange white pods/seeds that were the perfect size, and far rounder than my crappy green stuff balls! You'll always find neat things where you least expect it.

Now I just have to spray it and make some strips out of green stuff to keep the mortar itself attached to the frame. I think the frame looks just a little bit too frail, but I could not find slightly larger wooden sticks to work with, so it will have to do for now.

Althanan: oh, I'll never give up, especially now that it is so close to being a fieldable army. However, I might not advance that very fast all the time.

mrtn: thank you!

tancrede: thanks! It's really fun to start building other stuff than just infantry and cavalry. This is making me rethink my stance on more fantasy style entries.... I wonder what I could make with a dragon.... ;)

[Crazy Harborc]

The artillery and crew are looking good so far. I look forward to more photos of them/it.

I have always wanted to see a artillery crewman leaning over to look into the barrel of the morter or cannon........Is it gonna go BOOM now?:D

[MF3000]

The pod/seeds seem small for the big barrel size.

But it looks osome.

sj

[Vattendroppe]

I'd say that the cannonballs look to small for the barrel. Though I have no great knowledge in how the japanese cannons work...

[lilljonas]

A little faster than last update:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/cannon2.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/cannon1.jpg

Work in progress. I'm worried that everything is too brown, maybe I should have kept the muddy terrain in mind and gone with something more interesting for the bucket and the mortar chassis. We'll see when the crewmen are done, they might lighten it up a bit. Static grass and a bush or two will liven it up later anyway.

I haven't decided on the mortar colour yet, while black is pretty realistic, it's not the most exciting of colour. Perhaps making it copper/brass would be nice?

I took photos of the crew too, but the light was completely unfair. Actually the skin tones on these are among the best I've done this far in the army.

Crazy Harborc: haha, that's the only reason why O&G should have kept the organ cannon. Now imagine that scene, and add snotlings... perfect!

MF3000: thanks. Actually, they are noticeably larger than the cannonballs that are on the sprue and in the hands of the plastic loader. While the balls may look small, early cannons were more like really large handguns, and the ammunition size could be deceptively small, at least those I've seen at museums. The faults here are that 1) the GW cannons are very oversized and 2) the barrels are too thin, where in reality the caliber size would be smaller for such a large mortar or cannon. As an example, see my post at the start of this page for a more realistic view of mortar dimensions, early cannons really didn't look that awesome.. It still looks better than the PM cannon IMHO, even if my version gives off a strong LEGO cannon vibe.

Vattendroppe: see above. ;)

[lilljonas]

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/nykanon1.jpg
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/nykanon2.jpg
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/nykanon4.jpg

Even outside on a sunny day, the lighting lets me down a little. Oh well. The mortar is finished, or at least at a stage where a few tune-ups will do. I did not have any other copper colour available except for beaten copper, which is very, very dark. So I went gradually from that to a lighter shade by mixing it with Shining Gold. It sort of works, but I am still thinking if it would be better to get a proper copper. It's way better than leaving it black though, IMHO. When painting the piece I thought it was boring with all those brown colours all over it, but when I had applied the static grass it looked much better.

I am still thinking of making some kind of metal band thingy to put over the holes in the chassis where the mortar rests. Putting a cannon on a base the same size will probably work, so they should both look reasonable together.

I thought it would look a bit silly that the individual bases are some 1.5 mm taller than the rest of the base, but it actually works pretty well. It makes them stick out a bit more, and I like it.

That said, down one special choice, and one step close to a finished army! It turned out to be a pretty easy project that mostly included a bunch of sandpapering and cutting, really something that anyone could pull off it they have basic modeling skills. I would really recommend this to anyone who bought the cannon and mortar set, so that they can field both at the same time.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/nykanon3.jpg

I really like the crewmen sculpts a lot, and I am happy that I managed some skin tones that were better than my previous versions. "Cannons are loud and scary!"-guy is my favourite.

For next update I have a pair of knights that I'll finish any day now. I will be heading home from Japan in a little more than a month, so I am thinking about not building the cannon until then to make transport easier. We'll see.

[Fenix Felder]

wow such a nice collectin youhave very goodwork sir!! so characterful , would you care showing the wood pieces you used for the base of the mortar,looks awesome! keep em coming!!

[mrtn]

Nice. Do you know how you're gonna transport it all? I could recommend the KR Multicase.

[lilljonas]

Cavalry! You can always use more cavalry!

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/knights1.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/knights2.jpg

I'm pretty happy with how these turned out, I just had to paint the riders since the horses were painted almost a year ago. This brings me up to nine riders painted in total, including heroes. Should be enough for a small knightly orders unit, but I still have a bunch of unpainted ones.

Fenix Felder: Thank you! As for the wood pieces, it's just long sticks of wood, about 2mm x 4mm that I found at a local store for cheap. The design was partly improvised. First I made the basic shape you can see on the first picture, glued to the ground. Then I built up the sides, carved a few slopes where the actual gun rests and then added four supports.

mrtn: I brought the army here in a Sabol ArmyTransport, which worked wonders since I could bring it as cabin luggage instead of worrying about it getting crushed. There's still some room in it, even if especially the pikemen are eating up more and more space. If I make more big stuff, I might consider a secondary transport for them.

[MF3000]

*gasp* they look brilliant as usual! Great job sir!

sj

[mattieice]

<phew> i just got done checking out this entire thread today and i'm looking forward to checking out your progress in the future lilljonas. my summer project is to paint my 1000 point wood elf army so this is good motivation for me! thanks and good luck.

[tancrede]

Nice cav, man. I especially like the left one.
Could you give me the recipe, please ?

[mrtn]

They're nice, and I too prefer the left one.
:)

[lilljonas]

After finishing up the move, settling in, getting a job and starting school, I managed to squeeze in some painting. I'm completely fed up with painting cavalry now, but with only three unpainted ones remaining, I can switch to some infantry again.

Here's some cavalry with swords. You have no idea how much more I like them than the earlier cavalry. This is due to 1) them not having fiddly, weak spears that fall off if I touch them, and 2) I got a pin vice and pinned the riders to the horse, preventing them from falling off all the time. So now I'm busy pinning horsemen whenever they fall off the saddle.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/riders2.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/riders1.jpg

I wanted them to be a bit more colourful than my previous samurai, and I'm pretty happy with the results. I also found a 25-28mm transfer supplier who carries a great looking set of Tokugawa transfers, so when they arrive I'll finally be able to do something about all my white banners.

MF3000: Why, thank you!

mattieice: Thank you, and I hope you got a lot of those Elves painted.

tancrede: The red is a very basic one. Black undercoat, scab red, blood red and blazing orange. I paint them in one go, gradually mixing in more of the lighter shades until I've gone through all of them, usually five or so layers.

mrtn: Thank you, and I hope you'll like my new riders too. :)

[TheBedla]

Nice to see you back, I kept spying on you some time ago, and methinks I'll revert to it. Your thread is worth following just for the aesthetics :)

[Arduhn]

Sweet! Glad to see you are back in the saddle. ;)

[tancrede]

Happy to see your back with new stuff.
Nice minis, as always, and I hope to see more soon !:D

[Layne in Spayne]

Going to 'colour-in' those banners?

[lilljonas]

Painting on my samurai has been slow lately. Check my signature for an excuse why. ;)

However, I am adamant that my new army does not mean that I have no more love for my old one, just that they'll have to learn how to share the love. And to prove that, I have painted up Oda Nobunaga. Or at least it is a model of him, but with all that "being dead for more than a few years" thing going on ate Sekigahara, he's a lesser general. With the abundance of clans present at the battle, I don't see that as a problem.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/nobunaga1.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/nobunaga2.jpg

Sorry if the lighting is crappy, which is a waste since I think it is one of the best ones this far. My plan was for him to stand out in the crowd so to say with all that white and blue. Oh, and I tried the grey foundation paint for the first time, and I'll be damned if it wasn't the most handy thing for white! That horse took minutes to do, compared to the multitude of layers I have done on banners and everything this far. Now was that not a waste? :mad: I don't feel a pressing need to try the others, but for white it is a lifesaver.

TheBedla: Thanks, and since I haven't actually fielded them yet, that's pretty much why they are assembled too.

Arduhn: Thanks!

tancrede: Thanks! While I am eying all those Celts, I also have a cannon to assemble and paint.

Going to 'colour-in' those banners? : I actually haven't decided yet. I ordered a bunch of transfers, but they have not arrived yet. I'll decide when I can see how it would work. They are ordered from Australia, but even counting that, it is starting to be a bit late...

[lilljonas]

With my new army going, there has been little painting done on my samurai for a while. The other reason for the lack of progress was that I was waiting for the transfers that I ordered. Sure, they came all the way from Australia, but 5 weeks is pretty long for a sheet of transfers IMO. But after all the waiting, how are the results?

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/transfers001a-1.jpg

Standard bearer

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/transfers002a.jpg

Swordmen

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/transfers003a.jpg

First rank attack!


Overall I think they are really spiffy. The only bad thing, except for the slow shipping, is that there are actually quite few mon or heraldric designs on the transfer sheet. Instead there are a ton of banners with just writings on them, something that I think looks good on individual champions and such, but I am not so interested in putting them on whole units. The design I chose for the banners on the swordmen will actually only last for some 8-9 troopers. So I'll order some more, and we'll see around Christmas how the entire unit turns out. :)

Until then I plan on revisit some units, putting transfers on banners, touching up the paint jobs, finishing the bases and generally just making them ready for action.

[tancrede]

Nice banners. It will unit all your army, despite the different armor colors.
But for sure, 5 weeks are really too much !!! :eek:
Another solution for you is to buy some decal paper and print your own transfert on it...

Otherwise, try Perry's transfert sheets, or Imperial Forge (ebay store)... You'll certainly find something useful.

[Arduhn]

You can also perhaps find transfer or decal paper in art or hobby stores. I picked some up, it's quite pricy, and I haven't used it yet, so I can't tell you how well it works, but I will probably test it out and let you know. If it works well, great, you can just print designs of your own from the computer.

The mons you have look amazing by the way!

[lilljonas]

tancrede: I actually bought transfer paper, but I'm far too lazy to find a printer that is good enough (I sure don't have one) and get the decals printed. :o But most of all the transfers are designed for Perry's range so they are all scaled to suit perfectly with the sizes of the different banners, down to the blister number from PM. Very convenient. And yes, those transfers are from Imperial Forge, still took me since September 23rd!

I didn't go with Perry's transfers, since they don't carry the clans that I'm doing.

Arduhn: Yeah, the Tokugawa mon, three hollyhock leaves, is one of my favourites. Detailed enough to draw the eye, but still symmetric and simple enough to work on a meter's distance. Since the Tokugawa clan ruled Japan for more than 250 years, you'll see them all over the place, especially in Tokyo.

[tancrede]

Ok. Now I know : I must not command decal transfert at Imperial Forge !! By the time they arrive at home, I will have painted all the mon !! :D
Nice use of the Tokugawa mon. Will all the sashimonos stay white ?

[Stuffburger]

Just spent an abhorrently long time reading through the whole thread- Time well spent, too. One of the more interesting and motivating things I've read in a long while.

Thanks and good work!

[mrtn]

Looking damn good, mate.
:)

[lilljonas]

It seems like a few blokes at the club are going to start with Fantasy again (nothing but 40K the last month and a half afaik), I really have a reason to get some of the models that I haven't finished done. First out will be the cannon.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/cannon1-1.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/cannon2-1.jpg

I wanted the cannon to be much rounder and smoother than the Renaissance style original with all those patterns and trims. The bad thing is that smooth surfaces and sharp corners are very tricky to do with green stuff. However, I did my best, and I still like the results better than the original cannon.

I plan on adding some bits of rock to the base to make it look suitable next to the mortar. I also realized that I forgot to add any kind of arms to the poor guy manning the mortar! I will not make the same mistake, and the cannon base will have three spears lying around, for those close up encounters. It's a good thing I have a few dozen in my bit box by now... :rolleyes:

Since the crew members are not enough (4 in the cannon blister) I will have a standard bearer on each base, acting as a crew member. You can never have too many banners in a samurai army!

Here (http://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8736) is some more motivation I found this week. I really should try to add a little more colour to the army...

tancrede; hahaha, well, given that I'm closing in on my second year of painting this army, how bad is a month of waiting for transfers? Anyways, I'm undecided on the colours of the banners. I have never seen any Tokugawa banners, both in contemporary and in modern pictures, that use other colours than black, white and red, usually in different striped designs or with diagonal divisions in fields. However, having some units with coloured banners will probably look really good. I'm pretty impressed with the yellow banners from that link, and I'm planning on at least one unit of Ii cavalry, so then I'll get some red. I'm also planning on having my detachments painted with coloured banners but without any mon, which I think would make them easy to distinguish.

Stuffburger: Thank you! The thread is becoming a bit long by now, isn't it? :)

mrtn: Thank you, it really feels like the army is about to start to come together now.

[tancrede]

For sure, the Ii clan samurais (known as "Red Devils") are a very good choice, and a really impressive army when displayed on the battlefield.
However, your army's looking great !

[mistformsquirrel]

loving that standard bearer liljonas!

Any time I need a lil pick-me-up in the modelling department I can come to this log and be wowed hehe

[lilljonas]

Do I feel guilty now, abandoning my thread for so long. :cries:

Oh well, actually I've been painting a bunch of samurai things, I have just been to busy doing other things to post about them. Right now we are experimenting a bit with a samurai-flavour Mordheim campaign at the club, so I've been thinking about making more terrain. Finishing off the castle would be nice, and I have some ideas how to progress with that, but first I need terrain in bulk to fill out a Mordheim table. So I wanted to find out how fast I could crank out small village houses without them looking like crap, and it turned out that it didn't take that much time at all.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/P3250035.jpg

First of all I used foamcore instead of cardboard as I did for my first house. It is much easier to cut than cardboard. Then came the biggest part of the job which was to cut all those strips of cardboard out of a cereal box. I added some tools that I made out of tootpicks and green stuff and some chopped wood made out of balsa to give the piece a bit more atmosphere.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/P3240030.jpg

The roof was made as a bath towel thatched roof instead of the very time ineffective drinking straw roof of old. It took a fraction of the time and looks far better. To break it up a bit and make it more interesting I added support beams that I've seen on some really old Japanese houses made out of flower support sticks. The plaster walls were painted with watered down wood glue and then sprinkled with very fine sand. The same procedure went for the MDF board base, but with a bit coarser sand.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/P3280036.jpg

Here is the house after a very speedy drybrush job. It took less than an hour in total after a day or so waiting for the Gesso primer to dry, then covering it again to try to get to all the fibers on the roof, then again, and again...

All in all it is a very basic house that works very well for bulking out a village. It's not jawdropping, but the time saved on pumping out a couple of these can be used for a more impressive bigger project like a merchant's house or a temple. I think the roof didn't turn out steep enough, as Japanese thatched roofs often are very steep. But it was a good first attempt and I'll use what I learned from my first experience with thatched roofs for my next buildings.

As a bonus the roof is removable even if I didn't model an interior, which will be a help in Mordheim games. I learned that from the trial games we had, as the previously made barracks were pretty worthless. No one could enter it!

[lilljonas]

Other things I have been making when not snared in the evils of 15mm historicals or battletech robots:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/reddevils.jpg

These are my WIP Red Devils, added after my first game as I realized that knights are just so awesome in an Empire army.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/cannon.jpg

Work is progressing on the cannon, even if there's still a bit to go for both the crew and the actual cannon.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/oath002a.jpg

A dozen dedicated archers to help add some skirmish flavour. There's some details left on some of them, but they are ready to hit the tabletop.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/oath001a.jpg

Ten bucks to charity in a thrift shop gave me this old IKEA display. It's not in perfect shape, but it will protect the poor samurai from dust. I realized how many I've painted up by now since I could barely fit all the painted figs in the display. The solution that is obvious for any wargamer is not to buy fewer samurai, but to buy another display!

The biggest change though is that I built a basic lighting box out of styrofoam sheets and learned a bit about my camera, so hopefully my photo's won't be as horribly underexposed from now as they used to be. Hopefully, that is.

[kiwichild]

Display cabinets just make all the painting worthwhile, I got one....filled it to the brime and then bought another one. Only problem is my painting pace stalled and now I have a display cabinet with one shelf filled staring back at me.:cries: That being said get a decent block of painting finished before you splurge out on another cabinet.

I haven't checked in on your wee plog in awhile and paging through it today was great fun!:D I think those transfers have worked really well on the banners, don't be afraid to slap some of those kanji transfers on though. My impression is that they would have taken more time and effort on the part of the writer to make into banners and therefore would hold a pretty high place in the view of the units carrying them. Maybe you could try your hand at doing some yourself, you put some funny ones in too!:evilgrin: Most people won't pick out that the retainers banner says "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of eldaberries."

Great update liljonas!

[tancrede]

Yes, great update, man.
Hope to see your Red Devils finished soon, 'cause it's one of the coolest samurai unit !

[Arduhn]

Hooray! Glad to have some updates. I am finally going to get some samurai myself this summer. Just another couple weeks of uni and 1 exam to go.

PS. I have been watching Ran and Kagemusha, and playing Shogun: Total War to get myself hyped up for samurai. Has anyone else seen the new Korean stuff on the Perry-Miniatures site? It looks pretty good, though it's not samurai.

[spikedog]

Yay the Nippon army is back!

New stuff looks great, I especially like that building. Looking forward to seeing more progress with this army.

[donuter]

OMG.one of the best logs to date. Wheres the castle?

[lilljonas]

kiwichild: I agree, seeing your models instead of having them stuffed away is really good for keeping the motivation up. And making silly kanji banners would be fun, even though my regular calligraphy is horrible so I can only imagine how bad they would turn out painted on a miniature! :)

tancrede: Thanks, I'm even thinking of adding a colour coordinated dismounted Ii force to support them, but that will wait until I have some other things done. I really should finish them off since I have done most of the basic stuff.

Arduhn: that sounds great, I'd be happy to see what you paint up! The Choson Koreans are really great. Since we have started to mess around with Mordheim I'm thinking of having a very unhistorical "for fun" warband added that would be a Korean scout force. Partly because it would be cool, and party because I would have an excuse to buy and paint some up! In a "not Japan, Nippon"-counts-as-Empire list the miniatures would work well to fill in the gaps as swordsmen and helblasters. And of course they are a natural enemy to a historical samurai army due to the Imjim war. That is another reason I have been eying these really nice miniatures.

spikedog: good news: I have tomorrow off from work, so I'll be making more of these huts. I'll keep you all posted once they are done.

donuter: The castle is actually sitting on my couch right now. The reason that I am going back to the smaller houses are both to get some terrain out ASAP, but also to figure out some techniques that are required for the castle. Especially the roof, but also perhaps revisiting the stone foundation and some other stuff. Also I'm waiting for more balsa wood, which I'll get in a week or two. Hopefully I'll be able to get working on it soon. It's still going to have a modelled interior, it's still going to have removable floors, it's still going to be completely awesome. ;)

[Arduhn]

Good ideas, I think the Choson Koreans would make beautiful gap filler units indeed. I really like the sword and shield guys (Heavy Infantry). Also a good idea to try things out on smaller pieces of terrain rather than attempting it on the bigger castle, which looks amazing, and you definitely wouldn't want to ruin it (not that you would, but practice makes perfect).

I was also thinking someone dedicated enough could make a Cathayan army with those Choson Koreans. I wonder how it would look if some of the Khand troops from LOTR were mixed in too. They are probably pretty close in scale, maybe even closer than either is to WHFB scale. Are there any pictures of the rocket for the Choson? What if it's just as bad as the cannon from the Samurai line?

[lilljonas]

Arduhn: If you are quick you can find the images of the greens in the "on the workbench" range. Curiously the Shin Ki Jeon (multiple rocket launcher) thumbnail redirect you to some Napoleonics image, but you get the idea from the thumbnail. The Hwa Go (multibarrel artillery) thumbnail works though. It really bums me that they have been so slow on putting up images of the Choson line and even haven't put up any images at all for some of the miniatures. I really can't understand why several online makers still haven't realized that a lot of hobbyist (myself included) would never buy a model without at least seeing a decent picture first.

[Arduhn]

Oh yes, now I remeber, I did see those greens. They look pretty nice too. I totally agree on the no pictures = no buying policy. It's bad enough that on the internet you can't pick something up and look at it closely, turn it around, etc. Perry-Miniatures is pretty good for putting up pictures most of the time though, and from what I have seen, and heard, the Samurai stuff isn't disappointing. And now back to writing my 2 papers, both of which are due thursday. :o

[lilljonas]

Work is continuing on the village.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/P4010049.jpg

This is a slightly larger farmers house, possibly belonging to an ashigaru family or a very low tier samurai. While better off than most farmers, they still had to pursue farming to survive because their stipends were too low to support them, and unlike the richer samurai they had to do the backbreaking farming work themselves.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/P4010048.jpg

From the front. I based the house on an actual picture of an old farming house, which is where I got the idea for the pillars outside the house. I really like how they turned out. But hey, that door isn't just a piece of cardboard, does that mean...

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/P4010050.jpg

Oh yes, time to kick the houses up a notch with real interiors. It wasn't as much extra work as I feared, and once the packed dirt floor and the elevated living area was done I could not stop myself from building a little oven out of modeling clay to make a cooking area. I'll probably make some utensils and other stuff to make it look a bit more inhabited, but that will wait until after the painting.

[jimbobodoll]

One of my favourite painting and modelling threads on Warseer. Thanks so much for sharing lilljonas!

[KidDiscordia]

Very nice looking stuff! It has made me go and dig out the 4 Crab Clan Samurai I bought years ago and never got around to painting.

I am curious as to how you did the thatch roof using a towel. Could you explain that a little more?

[feeder]

Very nice work. I have been following this thread on and off for long time now, I too would like to know how you did the thatched roofs.

[Papa Dan]

Wonderfull to see this one updated again, very very inspiring indeed! I have really left GW-games but something like this might bring me back. Tack!

[spikedog]

Oh man, you just stepped those houses up to the next tier with that inside modelling. Outstanding work, can't wait to see it painted!

[lilljonas]

Work is progressing in my busting little village. First, I did the first three layers of drybrushing on the house:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/P4020054.jpg

I also did some work on the fireplace, making it a bit smoother. I'm thinking of adding a broom and some chests once I've painted the interior to make it feel a bit more alive.

While waiting for the layers to dry I did some experimental work on walls. Unfortunately I invented an extremely convoluted way of making them. "15cm of walls takes as much time to make as a small hut" kind of convoluted. Mostly it's the two problems of making good looking stone foundations and Japanese style tiles.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/P4020055.jpg

Modeling clay and flower sticks was my solution to these problems. I think it will look ok once painted, but it took several hours of work just to make that short section. I was even so busy that I forgot some pasta on the stove and burned them.

Anyway, here's the other side of it.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/P4020056.jpg

Now I'm actually considering returning to the castle foundation and redoing it by hand with modeling clay. :cries:

jimbobodoll: Thanks! It is really the feedback that keeps me going.

KidDiscordia: I never got around to pick up the L5R samurai, maybe I should be keeping an eye on e-bay...

As for the thatched roof, it's actually a lot simpler than it might look. First you make the shape of the roof out of cardboard. Then you cut out strips of the towel, making sure that the fibers are all lying down in the same direction, that direction being towards the ground. Start from the bottom of the roof and lay them so that the bottom of each strip is above the top of the last one. Work your way to the top. Then you drench it in watered down wood glue a couple of times, wait for a day or so and you're done.

I'll make a more detailed tutorial next time I make a house, which would hopefully be next week or so.

feeder: Thank you, and I'll revisit the roof in a while. The second roof is quite different than the first and actually much simpler, since it's all just one layer from the top down on one side and two on the other. I love it because it is so much easier than my attempts at solving the mystery of the Japanese tiles!

Papa Dan: Thanks, and my vice is that I can never stop promoting historicals. Especially now that they often cost about half or even less than buying plastic GW miniatures. Which, I think, is insane.

spikedog: Thanks, and I hope that this update was a small peek at things to come.

There's actually a small stables being built at the club too, but that one made by another guy who just started collecting samurai. I'll try to get a photo next time.

[lilljonas]

Today I got some more drybrushing done on the farmer house:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/P4040057.jpg

Now what's mostly left is going back on the darker wood and cleaning it up after all the lighter layers.

I also got a shipment of balsa wood today, so I revisited something that I haven't touched in almost two years:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/P4040058.jpg

I did some more after this photo, so the mainframe of the second floor is mostly done, and I finished the window bars on the first floor. I also ripped out some shoddy cardboard work that I was not satisfied with.

Making the second floor with foamcore instead of cutting out individual planks was soooo much easier and spare me a couple of hours of work. I also did some experiment with tatami floors that I'm curious of how it will turn out. Basically I will not try to get actual texture like before, and instead just pressed border lines into the foamcore with a pen. Then I'll paint it up and see how it looks. Too bad I have glued cloth to the very foundation on the first floor, I'll see if I can go back and rip it off. This is truly a learning experience and I'm coming up with new, better solutions as I go, which is nice but also frustrating looking back at shoddy earlier work. :p

[lilljonas]

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/P4040002.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/P4040004.jpg
(I noticed that the roof is a bit wrong here, but that's because I put it on sloppily for this photo, not because it is supposed to be like that)

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/P4050005.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/P4050006.jpg

There's still some work to do. I'll add some static grass to the base and clean it up a bit, and maybe clean up the wood a bit more. I'm also thinking of making some small details to make it feel more like a house where people live, but for now it is ready to hit the tabletop.

[JFSebastien]

*Sigh*
The greatest army i never made.
At least someones making the army of my dreams. One day, when i have money.....

...till then: 'All your Samurai are belong to us'

Keep 'em coming Lilljonas, your doing the Perry's proud.

[Arduhn]

Great stuff, keep it coming. It would be cool to see a picture with the whole village and army together, especially if you painted up some of the villager models.

[lilljonas]

Enjoying spring weather in the park is nice and all, but you can't spend an entire day doing it. So instead I took the time to build a little something to break up the houses: a sentry tower.

Simple ladder-like towers were common in Japanese villages and cities, and the main use was for firefighters to keep vigil over over town so that they could quickly see smoke or flames. Since most houses were built out of wood and paper with thatched roofs the Japanese were understandably interested in putting out fires as soon as possible. But in times of trouble, it could just as well give early alarm to encroaching bandits or enemy armies.

Usually they were practically just a ladder sticking right up, with supports at the lower part to keep it sturdy in windy weather. The agility the firefighters built up when climbing and balancing on the ladder created a sort of traditional Japanese acrobatics that are still being performed at festivals today. Here's an example of it:

http://oldphotosjapan.com/images/499.jpg

However, to be not only decorative but also a practical piece of gaming terrain I would need to add a floor at the top. I also decided to make a small bell for the sentry to raise the alarm with, and once I had made the bell I also made a small roof to put above it. I've seen these miniature roofs used to protect alarm bells, shop signs and such from rain, and I like the extra little detail of it. I would have preferred to use a real metal bell, I since I didn't have any and don't know where I could find one, I went for making it out of Green Stuff instead.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4050008.jpg

You can see one of these sentry ladders/towers in Yojimbo, when Toshirô Mifune climbs up one of them to watch the two gangs attack each other. It also has a bell and everything, so there! :)

JFSebastien: nice to hear you like it! And yes, it is a thankful army in that it is very easy to find inspiration in books, movies, games or just seeing buildings or pictures of buildings and going "damn, I'd like to build that!

Arduhn: Will do. Actually I bought some villagers from Museum Miniatures at their last sale, but I haven't started painting them yet. Having a small village to show them off in would be a good reason to finally paint them.

[swifty2]

This is a really nice log mate, you've got some great minis, i'm only part way through right now but I can't wait to read the rest,

[Arduhn]

Cool stuff, the tall, rickety watch-tower reminds me of Princess Mononoke, hehe. Can't wait to see your populated village.

[Crazy Harborc]

That building would look good on just about any table top, just about any period of battle.

Gee....it makes me wish for a tabletop full of great buildings like yours.CALL in an airstrike!! Kill, kill, kill.....burn, burn, burn.:D

Good clean fun, to be shared with fellow gamers and friends.:D

[Pistols At Dawn]

Like everyone else liljonas I'd just like to say a hearty well done, all the minis and terrain in this plog are fantastic and inspiring. So inspiring in fact that I've just made an order with Perry for some of my own! Something I've been planning on doing, ever since I first saw this thread actually (also watched Hidden Fortress last night which helps).

Can you give some general tips on how to approach painting Samurai? I was thinking of drybrushing over black for the lacework detail, then layering up the armour dark to light (For your footsloggers do you highlight or just layer over one layer over black?)

[lilljonas]

I promised to show how I made the thatched roof, so I took some picture today while working on what is actually the seventh (!) little building being raised in our bustling Japanese town at the club.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4150064.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4150065.jpg

This is the building itself, I have more detailed step-by-step pictures but the roof alone will take up several posts, so I won't put it up unless anyone specifically asks for it.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4150066.jpg

For the little porch, I wanted a separate tile roof. Because, you know, making a L-shaped roof alone would be too simple or something. I started out by measuring a lot, and then using trial and error to make a cardboard skeleton roof. The first try was a failure, so don't be disheartened if it doesn't turn out perfect the first time.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4150068.jpg

Then I put on a second layer of corrugated cardboard with some balsa sticks to cover the gaps. This roof is separate from the real roof to follow, and is attached to the house and not removable.

to be continued soon...

[lilljonas]

After that we get to the actual thatched roof.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4150069.jpg

This is actually by far the worst part, especially if you have a slightly complicated shape to your roof like on this building. By using measurement and even ordinary paper to get the right shape of the roof, and build that out of cardboard. Here I have used masking tape to keep it together. A complicated roof shape with many angles can be difficult to measure and cut, and the cardboard construction will be flimsy and bothersome. But grit your teeth and hang in there, because the rest is a piece of cake.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4150070.jpg

Find a towel that no-one cares about too much. A good one will have rather long fibers that are easy to lay down in a single direction. A bath towel will be enough for quite a few normal sized houses, so sacrificing one of your old towels that you should probably have replaced by now anyway is a good solution.

Now cut it in ribbons! For this roof the ribbons were about an inch and a half or so (3-4 cm). Make sure that you cut in the right direction in regards to the fibers. If you put down the towel with the fibers vertically, cut horisontally.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4150071.jpg

Cut the ribbon to the right size, and glue it on the roof starting at the bottom. Make sure to put a lot of glue at the corners where the ribbons meet. You can easily just push down on it and rub it a bit to make the seam almost invisible.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4150072.jpg

Eventually we've made it all the way around!

[lilljonas]

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4150073.jpg

Continue with the next layer, and make it cover the first layer.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4150074.jpg

Just keep it up, each layer is smaller and takes less time to glue down! Oh, and use a ton of glue while doing this, the glue will help the roof become more rigid.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4150075.jpg

The bigger the roof, the bigger risk of it begging to sag. In this case I added some support with a flower pot stick, glue and masking tape. Also, while flipped over I added a layer of towel ribbon at the bottom of the roof along the edge. This will make the carton part invisible from every direction, but also give the roof a bit more body and thereby making it look more like an actual thatched roof.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4150079.jpg

Once your layers are at the top of the roof, use a strip of towel folded over the tip of the roof to cover all the gaps. In this case I also added some wooden supports lying across the top of the roof. Different variants of wooden supports, sticks and rocks were used to keep the roof secure in the case of a storm, and you can use the large number of pictures of thatched roofs on the internet as inspiration to give your roofs a little bit more character.

[lilljonas]

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4150080.jpg

And here it is. It doesn't look like much now, but painting will make a huge difference. First you should brush it all down with a layer or three of watered down glue. While doing this, make sure that you "comb" the fibers down so that they all point towards the ground. Then paint it black, and use progressively lighter layers of brown to drybrush it until you are satisfied.

The whole thing can be done in an even more simple way by just cutting out a big piece for each part of the roof, and then use one piece at the top to cover the gaps. If you look at the previous house it will be pretty simple to figure out how I did it for that one.

Other than that, the look-out tower ended up like this:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4130063.jpg

and my fifth house (third with interior) is going to be a smaller house looking like this:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4130062.jpg

Painting nights have pretty much turned into building nights these last weeks, so not much progress on any miniatures though.

swifty2: Nice to hear, I hope you liked the second half too!

Arduhn: Yes, actually movies and books are turning out to be an awesome source of new things to build. Right now I'm looking for good ideas of a well for the town, which is a nifty excuse to watch lots of historical Japanese movies.

Crazy Harborc: Yes, as work progresses even the 40K players at the club are starting to talk about borrowing our houses. Soon we might have Orks and Eldar running around in Buddhist temples, and I don't think they'll bother to take of their shoes inside...

Pistols At Dawn: Nice to hear, I'd love to see how they turn out! As for the painting, me and the other fellow painting samurai right now at the club are doing it in radically different ways. He starts out by giving a black primed samurai a light drybrush of grey, which picks out the details so that they are easier to see when he paints, and also gives any black armour and the lacing a quick highlight. Then he goes into it as normal.

Me, I start out with the black, and then go "inside out" by starting with the flesh and then painting clothes, then armour and finally details like sheaths and ammo pouches and whatnot. Mostly I paint every area on footsloggers with one base colour (using the black as a sort of free shadow), and then paint on a lighter colour for highlight. Washes can be used to pretty good effects on samurai due to the miniature being all covered in textures.

I think your strategy of drybrushing to get the (incredibly annoying) lacing done and then painting the armour is a good idea. You can sit and individually pick of every lace in an intricate fashion all day, but it won't get an army on the table in reasonable time. It helps to keep pretty strong colour themes with two or three primary colours per miniature, and then do all the fine little details like socks and sandals and belts in one colour that you paint in bulk, a dozen miniatures or so at a time.

[tancrede]

Nice houses, and thanks for the tutorial.
I will have some buildings to make for my own nipponese army, so your pics will be very useful ! :D

[tcraigen]

stunning collection, I love your buildings rather inspiring I like the support beams and collums inside even. Top Notch

[The Red Scourge]

Nice work. You really prove the point that you should always have a towel at hand ;)

[lilljonas]

So while the last house is waiting for the primer to dry, I set out to finish off building the next one.

I added some rocks made out of modelling clay for easier access to the porch. Then the usual detailing with wooden paneling etc. The small square in the middle of the room will be a fireplace.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4190003.jpg

The foundation of the roof is done with cardboard. I added some firewood made out of sticks from the local park on the outside for some extra atmosphere.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4190002.jpg

A simple thatched roof is added.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4190004.jpg

And it's done. Now I just need to wait for the glue to dry, and then it's priming time.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4190005.jpg

tancrede: I find that once I got started, making these small huts are surprisingly easy and I can knock one off in one night of building. Definitely worth it to have terrain to play on that matches your army.

tcraigen: Thanks, I'll try even harder to add details since it really is what separates "meh" terrain from "omg!" terrain.

The Red Scourge: You should always have a towel at hand... so I can steal it and make terrain out of it!

[donuter]

My god, not only the army, but the empire too. Though hast a alot of stamina to stick it out like this...

[Malorian]

Wow, this is really over the top.

Great job, and please move to Canada so you can make me some terrain ;)

[mrtn]

You've been busy! I'm looking forward to seeing painted houses.

:)

[Arduhn]

Wow, this is really over the top.

Great job, and please move to Canada so you can make me some terrain ;)

I second that motion, come to Canada! Hehe, I never thought of using towels for thatch, but it looks great. I will have to try that out some time.

[bob_the_small]

Nice work on the houses, they are really good! I love the towel idea too!

[lilljonas]

It's been a busy month making terrain, but as a result we now have a tiny little town.

WIP (I'm going to add something in the back of the house, plus more details

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4200010-1.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4200009.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4200007.jpg

A well in good condition:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4270013.jpg

[lilljonas]

Stables (I didn't make it, but I painted it. Needs some more work)

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4270016.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4270015.jpg

Some guys at the club are talking about starting goblin and skaven ninja warbands, so I made a suitably suspicious well for them to sully forth from:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4270012.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4270011.jpg

[lilljonas]

Peasant house painting in progress, finished off enough to put it on the table:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4270014.jpg

Current state of village, sorry for the blurry pic:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4270017.jpg

[lilljonas]

Next up I wanted to try out carving out rock out of floor isolation styrofoam for a future project, so I made a quick and dirty outpost kind of house to see how difficult it could be.

Answer: it takes some training to get semi-realistic rocks out of styrofoam. Oh well, I'll try to cover up some of the more awkward parts with lots of greenery and stuff and it should be ok. At least I had this after a busy evening of building at the club

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4290021.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4290019.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4290020.jpg

[mrtn]

Nice work mate. You should paint the banana in the last pic, though, it's going brown...

[Welf VIII.]

After having viewed your project a number of times and always being pleased with what I saw I just want to say one thing: Thank you very much!

[Gargobot]

Just read through your log, and I gotta say some pretty inspriring stuff in here! Your nipponese army is awesome, as is your terrain.
Are these minis in the back telling us your starting a Lizardmen army too?
Anyway keep it up!

[Dino]

Neat stuff. Can't wait to see the whole village.

By the way are those your or somebody elses lizards in the back peasent house and stables?

[Crazy Harborc]

Is it too late to add the firecrackers to the buildings in that village?:D I admit I am lazy. Well, that and I need to have a work table that will allow me to to do terrain/building projects. As of now I "must" clear off my gaming table and take a break from weekly gaming on the table.

THAT said coming to this thread and drooling over my keyboard while starring at the latest posted photos IS fun.:)

[Arduhn]

Cool stuff, as always. For some reason that big building reminds me of the scene in The Last Samurai where Tom Cruise's character tracks mud into the house. Where I'm from we always take our shoes off at the door, so I find it interesting when people call it Japanese style. I guess I always thought that's what everyone did, but now I know that's not the case.

[lilljonas]

I've been away for a while, visiting Tokyo. I must say that the terrific model displays at the Edo Tokyo Museum is about as helpful for inspiration for this project as things ever get. Nnow I'm back home and started fidgeting with my terrain with the helpful addition of some great stuff I bought from Antenociti's Workshop (http://www.barrule.com/workshop/), a great terrain store since they also have a bunch of articles on how to actually use the stuff they sell. Worth a check.

So here's the painted version of the watchtower:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P5160275.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P5160276.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P5160277.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P5160278.jpg

Some things that turned out handy:

Sticky Glue. I had never heard of this, but it is really awesome for flocking. Unlike flocking with wood glue you paint on the blueish glue, and then let it sit for a while. Once it is semi-dry, it becomes extraordinarily sticky. Really good for keeping static grass in place.

Tufts: now this is pure cheating. Tufts of multi-colored grass glued to a plastic film. Just pry those suckers off and put them down on the terrain, and it makes it look a lot more interesting.

In addition the club gave me some old GW trees that was left over from a previous terrain project, and together with some Woodland Scenics foliage it helped a lot into adding some nature to the piece. There's still some parts I'm not satisfied with, like the roof that now looks simplistic and hastily put together compared to the level of detail of the rest of the piece. But other than that I like it, and I can make a new roof in the future if I feel like it.

mrtn: brown bananas becomes banana cake. Yummy yummy!

Welf VIII.: Thank you yourself! I hope I can keep on putting interesting things here.

Gargobot & Dino: No, those belong to a player who is also fielding ninja goblins in our Mordheim campaign. They are really nice and I'll probably put some pictures up here once he's painted them all.

Crazy Harborc: I feel your pain. Terrainmaking was slowly taking over my small student's apartment until I started to migrate my equipment over to the club. Now all my painting stuff is there, but alas, there's no lighting box there so now I'm stuck between going back to less quality pictures or dragging all my stuff back home to take photos. But I'll come up with something.

Arduhn: as a Swede I can agree that I found nothing strange with having to take my shoes off in Japan, rather the opposite (don't your floor get ridiculously dirty and your feet sweaty and smelly if you walk around in shoes all day?). What I found strange was people expecting me to wear slippers indoors, especially when there were no slippers large enough for more than 75% of my feet.

[lilljonas]

While waiting for paint layers to dry yesterday, I got some other stuff done too.

Mantlets made out of popcicle sticks to use as barricades:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P5160279.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P5160280.jpg

I also realized that it was a long time since I sat down and just painted a miniature to the full of my abilities, not just batch painting units. So I took one of the excellent Rackham Japan-style ogres and got to work. I'm pretty sure I'm done with the skin, now working on the tattoos:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P5160281.jpg

Those things have so many details I have no clue of when I'll be done! :)

[mrtn]

Nice update. :)

[bob_the_small]

Great work, those barracades look great, and the ogres tattoos are cool too... :)

[Dino]

Very neat stuff. Really like the ogre. Are you gonna get any more of those guys and start a japanese themed ogre kingdom army?

[tancrede]

Cool stuff, as always, man !

[unwanted]

*boards train to Lund with thieving in mind*

Very nice, I'm amazed at the talent displayed in all parts of this project!

[lilljonas]

Project Terrain continues. Just in time for most of my bowmen being killed in our Mordheim Campaign, I finished the mantlets. Now I'll hopefully have something to hide behind when the enemy takes pot shots at me.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P5180283.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P5180284.jpg

Really simple to make and easy to paint. I might even make more in the future, if we feel a need for more barricades.

mrtn: Thank you, it was a big one allright!

bob_the_small: Thanks, it's hard not to underestimate just how much details those Rackham models have. It's really a case of the minature doing half the work for the painter.

Dino: Sadly, the price and the fact that there's only three different sculpts means that there'll be no army of them. However, I do have all three of them and I'm thinking of maybe making one of the unofficial Ogre Manhunter Mordheim warbands out of them.

tancrede: Thanks, now that I'm gunning for 10-12 miniatures warbands it might be possible for me to put enough effort into each one to get slightly closer to your nice quality painting. ;)

unwanted: Thanks, and unfortunately the lack of brain processes of my warband leader (he got Stupidity on an injury roll) means that he probably would not notice. :cries:

[ragados]

Wow, that was epic, took me 3 days just to read through what's already here! I shall try and start a blog on my Nuln army. Keep up the good work.

[tancrede]

tancrede: Thanks, now that I'm gunning for 10-12 miniatures warbands it might be possible for me to put enough effort into each one to get slightly closer to your nice quality painting.
I hope to see them soon !
And thanks for the compliment !

[Despoiler]

wow... simpily wow... just spent a good hour or so reading throught the whole log.

i love the buildings especially the watch tower. theres something really characterful about it. also love the level of detail with them as well. nice to see that you push yourself to do bigger and better things.

the samurai look really good makes me want to start an army, although im already in the middle of so many armies i think its going to be a dream for a while.

keep up the work now..

[lilljonas]

I've been busy at work lately, but I managed to make a small notice board. The aim was to make something small enough to place in between houses in our Mordheim games to give some extra cover, and also to make something a little bit more obviously Japanese to give some more atmosphere to the board. For this piece I also wanted to start learning how to make believable cloth for banners etc. Let me just say that googling "modeling" and "cloth" was hardly useful. So first attempts: just plain and simple paper. Not awe inspiring, but works at a distance. If anyone know of a great way to do good cloth, I'm all ears.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P5250285.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P5250286.jpg

I also got a pleasant surprise this Monday when the samurai I ordered from The Assault Group turned up. They are nice, but different. I'm not planning on mixing them in as they are obviously both differently proportioned and have 12th century armour, but they'll work just fine for Mordheim.

ragados: Sounds nice, just avoid getting too many cannons and handguns or you won't make that many friends with your Nuln army! ;)

tancrede: I'll do my best, but I warn you: I just tried out Rock Band... and it's a bit too much awesome for the good of this project.

Despoiler: Yes, new army syndrome. I got the same thing when I was painting the Ogre in the club last week, and a guy ask me "so... are you making a whole army of those?". Luckily it just took a second or two for me to realize just how much work and money that would require!

[ragados]

ragados: Sounds nice, just avoid getting too many cannons and handguns or you won't make that many friends with your Nuln army! ;)


Too late! :D
I have some 80 gunners, 3 Cannon & 2 Mortar On the flip side I have no priests or flagellants oh and I am a terrible general (0 for 3 at this point in time!).
Powder was the main reason for choosing Nuln and I am more painter than gamer, it is more important to me to get a good looking reasonably accurate army. Hopefully I can start on it in about a week.

[mrtn]

Nice notice boards, but why are they stuck in stone instead of earth?
;)

[lilljonas]

Nice notice boards, but why are they stuck in stone instead of earth?
;)

Well, to be honest: so that they don't fall over. :D The insulation foam gives a stability that keeps them from just breaking off when handling them, and also helped keeping them in place while the glue was drying. For more realism I could have gone with making a small mound with the foam instead to help propping them up, but just gluing the narrow end of balsa strips to MDF board without extra support is not advisable.

And if a warrior is strong enough to pull the legendary sign post from the stone, he might be the destined head of the local district's Bureau of Public Relations: ruler of accountants and lower tier administrators alike.

[Crazy Harborc]

I do like the signboards. I think they will add "class" to the village.

Um....but, but, but.......there are no subtitles on the signboards.:D

[lilljonas]

Keeping busy at work, I had little time to get on with the terrain or the miniatures. However I recently got a package from The Assault Group, and started to put together the warrior monks I had ordered. This time I'm even going with round bases (*woooo!*), as I think it looks nifty for skirmish games.

These are still painting in progress, but I wanted to post the results I've got over the weekend. Some are armed with polearms:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P6080289.jpg

and some come with bows, and a more well armed fellow:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P6080290.jpg

For those who are wondering about scale and sizes, here's a picture of some GW miniatures, some Perry Miniatures that I use for the rest of my warband, and these TAG miniatures.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P6080292.jpg

Close enough to not stick out, IMHO. TAG are a little bit bulkier, just like GW.

And with a band of warrior monks on the horizon...

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P6080288.jpg

...I just had to start building a temple for them to protect. I expect this to be a big project, so we'll see when (if?) I'll finish it. For now I'll try to build two more gates, raise a wall around it and finish the courtyard. Then I'll build a temple on the raised platform.

Crazy Harborc: I could paint up a translator for you?

[Mott]

Ahhh I just painted my first Perry samurai today and it must be fate that I found your log!

You did a fantastic job, these suckers are hard to paint!

[lilljonas]

Work on the temple grounds, but not the actual temple itself, is under way:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/armed%20temple%20forces/P6150293.jpg

The warrior monks themselves are mostly finished, I'm just going to put some static grass on the bases and maybe go over some details again. After painting them I have mixed feelings about it. First of all I was not satisfied with any of the colours for the robes that I tried out, so in the end I sort of just hurried along to get them finished. Also the feet are absolutely atrocious, instead of sandals or anything else you would expect, they are sculpted with weird moccasins that look like misshaped clump feet, and they really don't paint up very well. In addition, some of the faces are just bad, one which looks more like a lich than a human. On the other hand, some of them turned out really well, so I guess it evens out a bit. Strangely enough the polearm monks turned out much better than the bowmen, why I don't know.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/armed%20temple%20forces/P6180297.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/armed%20temple%20forces/P6180296.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/armed%20temple%20forces/P6180294.jpg

Mott: what did you get? And yes, samurai are definitely among the most tricky miniatures you can choose to paint IMHO. So many details and so weird paint schemes!

[bob_the_small]

That temple looks like a good start!

[tancrede]

Nice update !!
I like your monks, and the temple looks very promising. Good work, man !

[wiggles]

Fantastic log! Read through it all in one go. Your work just kept betting btter every page I clicked. Keep it up.

[Arduhn]

What's the website for assault group? I suppose I could google it, I just wanna see the model range, I'm wondering if they do horse archer samurai.

[Modhail]

It's as easy as www.theassaultgroup.co.uk ...

and yes, they do. (http://www.theassaultgroup.co.uk/store/product.php?productid=658&cat=56&page=3) More than one pack, even. (http://www.theassaultgroup.co.uk/store/product.php?productid=641&cat=56&page=1)

Next time, just google though. "One does not gain strength from borrowing the neighbour's ox, nor wisdom from the neighbour's books." ;)

[Arduhn]

lol, ya, I did google it right after that and checked it out. They're not bad. I prefer the Perry stuff, and I wish they had horse archers, but the assault group stuff is definitely not bad, and it appears to mix well.

[lilljonas]

I really haven't had much time to paint lately, but today I managed to squeeze in some painting and transfer work. I try not to buy new minis until I've painted roughly the same amount. So this time I cheat by finishing off almost finished models as an excuse to buy tiny army men.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P7150311.jpg

The cannon was painted, but the mantlet wasn't finished and I was lacking two crewmen.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P7150310.jpg

So I drafted two standard bearers. Perhaps I'll leave them guarding the cannons, waving their rags in defiance as a "send your war machine hunters HERE!". Perhaps I'll replace them with other miniatures later and then I'll score two painted standard bearers to use in my other units.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P7150312.jpg

The battery, lined up. I must say I'm happy how the press ganged crew members turned out.

bob_the_small: Thanks, too bad I don't seem to get much time to work on it lately.

tancrede: Thanks, I added some flock to the base of the monks and they look a notch better now.

wiggles: Geez, it's quite a few pages to read through by now. I'm impressed you made it through! ;)

Arduhn: The biggest difference between Perry's and TAG is not the size, but the equipment. TAG is slightly bulkier, but they go fine together IMHO. However their armour and weaponry is clearly much earlier than Perry's, which explains the lack of horse archers who were pretty much extinct on a battlefield by the late 16th century. If you don't mind the mix of periods they mix great, but if you are a stickler to history it would be like mixing medieval knights with landsknechts. It's all about what you want to get out of it. Funnily enough, the reason I bought from TAG was to get some samurai archers for my Japanese Mordheim campaign, so they do fill a niche.

[mrtn]

If you don't mind the mix of periods they mix great, but if you are a stickler to history it would be like mixing medieval knights with landsknechts. Well, if it works for GW. ;)

Nice artillery. :)

[Arduhn]

Ya, I am hoping to find a comprehensive set of stuff from all periods to use as a Nippon army. If I were doing a historical Japanese list, then I would be a stickler for historical accuracy, but since it's Warhammer rather than actual history, I don't mind a mix of time periods, in the same way that The Empire mixes several different time periods of the Holy Roman Empire, and some fantasy added to the mix.

Your stuff looks great, as usual. I want to finish my Empire army, and probably my Dark Elves as well, then I will probably start collecting some samurai of my own. :)

[Dino]

Nice work man. Very cool cannon and mortar. Will we be seeing a helstorm soon?

[Qvistus]

Those monks are awesome, they turned out really nice!

I am really impressed by your progress Lilljonas, both in skill and in miniatures painted! Now if only I could find the time to paint as much as you do. Maybe starting one of these threads could help me find the right motivation... hmm

[lilljonas]

Variation is said to be the spice of life, so I think it's about time we checked out some other sources for miniatures for a Nippon army.

First out is a bunch of miniatures from Museum Miniatures that I have had lying around since the start of the year. They are not nearly as good as PM for actual soldiers IMHO, but instead they have items that are not covered by PM's range. They are slightly taller, but I don't think it is too noticeable. I picked up some unarmed retainers and some female civilians, and now I finally got around to priming the retainers.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P7200313.jpg

eM-4 miniatures has a very small line of samurai, of which half of them you can only buy pre-painted. Well, turns out that all the ones I wanted are supplied unpainted so I picked them up. They are slightly smaller than PM's miniatures, but the quality of the sculpts was surprisingly good. I was a bit unsure since they sell a lot of miniatures that I think look bad, but these were really nice.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P7200314.jpg

Size comparison. The eM-4's are sligthly small, and the MM are slightly big. I'll see how they compare once painted. The comparison here is not completely fair since the eM-4 miniatures are made for slottabases, while the others have 1-2 mm tall bases included in the miniature which makes them look even taller.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P7200315.jpg

Other than that, I got a big package in my mail box today. I ordered a bunch of Perry's Choson Koreans, including this little nasty piece of artillery:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P7200317.jpg

The rest of the order will be a surprise, and you'll see it when I post it.

mrtn: well yeah, that is pretty much the step I'm taking right now, adding Korean troops to the army for games of Fantasy. So I can have rocket launchers and shields and dragon flags and...

Arduhn: that should turn out fine.

Dino: I'm planning to use the artillery from this update as an interchangable helstorm or helblaster, since it could be pretty much either or.

Qvistus: If you have a single narcissistic bone in your body, feedback will help a bit with motivation. Also it's fun to put up pictures and see what people think about it, and you might get quite a few helpful ideas, links and other stuff. I think you should try it out.

[Arduhn]

Sweet! I like that Korean artillery piece, can't wait to see it painted. Some of those Korean models look great. I hope you throw a couple more in there. The heavy infantry with shields look amazing.

[lilljonas]

Sweet! I like that Korean artillery piece, can't wait to see it painted. Some of those Korean models look great. I hope you throw a couple more in there. The heavy infantry with shields look amazing.

I pretty much picked up the heavy infantry with shields and some other troops, and then look around to find an excuse for buying them. But don't tell anybody.

(and yes they are AWESOME in person, especially the ones with shields and spears)

[Arduhn]

:o Do you have pictures of those? There aren't any on the website yet...unless there are some in the workbench section.

Edit: ooh, those are nice!

[donuter]

I wait in atticipation. Really nice. that rocket thing on Medival total war two is evil, especiay on a bridge. Smokey death

[lilljonas]

Well, that picture of the retainers was not a very good way to showcase them, so here's a picture of today's progress that will hopefully be a little bit easier to see.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P7210318.jpg

Donuter: there were rocket launchers in M:TW 2? I had no idea, I just tried out some of the western factions.

[donuter]

the golden horde have em. its a patch (non offical i think)

[Sumo Duck]

Terrific! I love the Nipponese or Japanese or whatever! Have you seen Orcboy's Nippon Ogres? Wicked cool. Im thinking of starting a Nippon-Japan themed army and i might use some of these Perry Minis. What rules are you using? I know some people just use Empire or Bret but have you made some new rules or anything? Im writing a Nippon Army Book myself. Ill probably post it soon. Anyway, love the minis and paintjob. Brilliant.
-Sumo Duck

[lilljonas]

With all the Perry Miniatures in this thread, I finally got the time to paint up some miniatures of other makers this week. I had to dismantle my lighting box, so I apologize for the quality of the pictures.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P9030426.jpg

First out we have the retainers, who are almost done. There's still a bit of detail work left.

Then I bought some miniatures from em-4. I must say that a lot of their stuff on the home page made me doubtful, but they were cheap so I ordered some. After getting them I must say that I was surprised by the quality of the sculpts and the metal. I started with a "female adventurer", and with all that kimono I decided to try some freehand painting. I completely suck at it, and the first attempt was so bad that I re-painted the entire kimono after seeing how it turned out. This version is not as bad, but unfortunately the bad photo makes her look a little bit more like a middle aged transvestite than she does in person. Oh well.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P9030423.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P9030424.jpg

[lilljonas]

Terrific! I love the Nipponese or Japanese or whatever! Have you seen Orcboy's Nippon Ogres? Wicked cool. Im thinking of starting a Nippon-Japan themed army and i might use some of these Perry Minis. What rules are you using? I know some people just use Empire or Bret but have you made some new rules or anything? Im writing a Nippon Army Book myself. Ill probably post it soon. Anyway, love the minis and paintjob. Brilliant.
-Sumo Duck

For WHFB, I find just using Empire rules works the best, and with the ever increasing Korean range from PM I'll soon be able to field some of the more "out there" Empire units such as pistoliers and helblasters. Pretty much everything I want to field in a Nipponese army except pikes exists in the Empire army, and for that there's Dogs of War.

I have also bought the Killer Katana 2 rules, but haven't tried the system. I'm hoping that the future sourcebooks for samurai warfare for Warhammer Ancient Battles and the planned Renaissance Field of Glory rules will turn out fine, but that's probably a few years away so I wouldn't plan anything based on them.

[Steam_Giant]

Great free hand on the kimono !! Id be interested in seeing more of those Em4 miniatures painted.

[ragados]

Lilljonas, I'm a huge fan of this blog, having contemplated getting into Meiji era wargaming but not finding anyone else interested. I just found this site and thought it might be of use:
http://www.minisandscenery.com/asian_scenery.html

[lilljonas]

I've been away doing research abroad for the whole autumn, but now I'm back with my hobby stuff. So I took the time to paint up this em-4 samurai, Mr. Fancy Pants:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/PB170350-1.jpg
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/PB170351-1.jpg

[mrtn]

He's alive!
Maybe crop your pics a bit? These last ones are mostly white background... He's looking good, though. :)

[BeatTheBeat]

Looked at this log the first time about when you first made it, and now I've had the pleasure to rediscover it... Been reading the whole damn thing through! :D Really, really good work, and almost inspires me to make my Skaven into a samurai-style Eshin clan... Damn you! You're making way too beautiful japanese stuff! Especially love your recent Ogre, really fitting. Oh, and your marvellous terrain.

Keep up the great work! This time around I'm subscribed...

Cheers,

BTB

[Durek]

wow, nice work.

PM sent.

[lilljonas]

Painting has been slow, but here's some more em-4 miniatures. http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/PB260358.jpg

I have no idea if I'll ever use the ninja, but it could be useful for some skirmish action some day. The samurai would be a nice champion for the samurai swordsmen unit due to the different and archaic armour style and different posture.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/PB260357.jpg

I need to get a new light box because these pictures comes out really bad. Bases are not done yet since I have the static grass at the club.

But here's the real reason why my miniature painting is slow right now:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/PB260359.jpg

A T-34/76 model '41 in 1:35. I just finished assembly and started painting it. Wroooom!

[Crazy Harborc]

My money.....is on the T-34.;) Now, if those two dudes play
knock, knock.....and get an answer.:D

[BeatTheBeat]

Just wanted to say that you eventually, actually made me change my Skaven army theme to clan eshin sub-clan, japanese samurai style. Thanks for the added work load that is making 50 rice hats for my clanrats and 20 back banners for my stormvermin... ;)

Cheers,

BTB

[Daniel36]

That girl and Fancy Pants totally remind me of the Azumi movies. Which is funny, because I kind of wanted to have a set of miniatures that would resemble the characters... Might have to look into it.

Nice paintwork by the way! Colourful yet not too colourful.

[lilljonas]

I might as well show why I'm not painting samurai right now:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/battleship%20kongo/PC050360.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/battleship%20kongo/PC050361.jpg

I don't have an airbrush so I had to go with stippling and actual washes to do the whitewash on it instead of fancy airbrush techniques. But I think it turned out OK. Next up will be my first serious attempts at using pigments for rust, mud and soot. Wish me luck!

[donuter]

very nice. I am one for the russians i'm not gonna lie

[Crazy Harborc]

Oh, the tank is just.....lovely.:D

Sayyyeee......You could have worked on the tank while on breaks from painting samurai.;)

[Loki73]

WoW! I have a deep and personal affection for all things Samurai. This is truly amazing!

[lilljonas]

I got my army back from a friend who borrowed it from a tourney, so I took the time to take a group shot. It's starting to approach a horde-like size. I'm thinking about making it a little bit more colourful, as it is now it sort of become the same dark mass that real samurai armies looked like.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/PC080366.jpg

[tancrede]

Thanks for the army pic, it's a really cool looking army.

[Bladelord]

Your army's that big? I didn't figure. It's so full of wonderfulness, anyway, and you've achieved a splendid host. Some little more colour could be good, but it's fine as is. :)

[lilljonas]

What is better than tiny metal toy soldiers? Even tinier metal toy soldiers! The 6mm madness begins...

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/6mm/P1270414.jpg

[donuter]

Oh dear god. And to think i played shogun total war but the other day

[Crazy Harborc]

Oh good grief!......You know you might go blind if you do that/do those long enough!! Better watch out young man! "They" will come for you some dark night.:shifty:

Oh goodie, I've used the shifty smilie for the first time.;)

[Armond]

Nice choice on the Korean artillery. I am thinking of getting on board and making a warhammer fantasy army utilizing that particular range of models. Of course they would follow the Empire rulebook.

Nice job!

[BeatTheBeat]

Great work on that warmaster giant!

Oh, wait. ;)

[Dakkapantz]

Bloody incredible!!! I love this army, and you have tempted me to buy a couple to paint and see what their like! I'm just wondering, are the long pikes made out of metal? And are they like the old GW pikes that bend like crazy and are impossible to keep straight, or are they made out of a different material? And to finish off my barrage of questions, what are you using these fellows as? Dogs of war? Empire? And how have they been playing, or have you not played any games with them yet?:D

Beautiful army, Can't wait to see more!

Cheers

Peyton

[lilljonas]

Here's my "proof of concept" first stab at 6mm samurai. I went with basing them for DBA or FoG, but they should work for Killer Katanas 2 too. A funny thing to note is that Shogun: Total War was based on Killer Katanas, and these small miniatures sure resembles the tiny sprites of the early Total War games. I could have squeezed in 16 samurai on each base, but I think even 14 looks very crowded for a 15mm depth base. Might have even less per base on less hardcore units.

Almost done with my 6mm samurai, I only have to finish the bases. I can't decide whether to try with ordinary static grass or if I should order something smaller for them. Since it is sort of a proof of concept thing I went with two different colours, but both of them from the Takeda armies:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/6mm/P2100417.jpg

Red guys, representing units of Amari Torayasu.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/6mm/P2100418.jpg

Green guys, representing units of Takeda Katsuyori, the sorry man who lost against Nobunaga at Nagashino.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/6mm/P2100419.jpg

All of them. I must say that they look pretty good, and this is just 6 bases of them. There were about 12 guys left after basing that I'll save for retainers to put on cavalry bases, since Japanese cavalry fought in mixed formations of both riders and foot soldiers.

donuter: They do look suspiciously like Shogun: TW sprites.

Crazy Harborc: Actually they were pretty easy to paint, most of it is just to put down a dot of paint, and them move on to the next model. The difficult part was having 96 of them...

Armond: Cool, can't wait to seem them. Actually, looking back at it I think going with more koreans would be a good choice. All those sashimono and pikes just fall off too easily, every time I pack the army up there's a couple of new weapons falling off. Oh, if I had only went with korean swordsmen instead!

BeatTheBeat: Haha, actually Warmaster miniatures would be giants compared to these, as they are almost half the size.

Dakkapantz: The pikes are steel pikes bought from Perry Miniatures, you can get a box of 80 from them so it should last you plenty of time. The advantage is of course that steel pikes don't ever bend. The disadvantage is that instead of bending, they will just quite easily pop off no matter how you glue them if they are subject to force.

I play them as the softest Empire army ever seen. And as such they have only won against a similarly super-soft Skaven army made up of clanrats. Thing is an Empire army made up of blocks of infantry is not that strong, especially without all the nice toys of the Empire army list. If I was doing this army as an actual Empire army I would first of all make up some pistoliers, more artillery, a War Altar and figure out how to make a Japanese steam tank. I've been thinking of painting up some pistoliers actually, but there's always other projects and things to do.

[Fredmans]

Fantastic tiny samurai. May I ask what company they are from?

/Fredmans

[lilljonas]

Fantastic tiny samurai. May I ask what company they are from?

/Fredmans

They are from Baccus, a company that makes some of the best 6mm miniatures I've seen:

https://www.baccus6mm.com/

The site seems to be down at the moment though, but it was online just yesterday.

[BeatTheBeat]

Haha, actually Warmaster miniatures would be giants compared to these, as they are almost half the size.


They are that small? Makes your painting even more unbelievable! Great work on these :)

Cheers,
BTB

[Meraklis]

looking at your plog is always a pleasure for my eyes! Keep the good work going!
What is coming next?

Have you considered making a Mikoshi as a War Altar? It would look really good :D Check out the Osprey book Japanese Warrior Monks for inspiration :) There is one nice illustration of Japanese monks carrying a mikoshi through the crowded streets of a city

[lilljonas]

I'm trying to decrease the amount of unpainted lead at home, so I dug out some of the remaining civilian miniatures I got from Museum Miniatures a few years ago:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4150539.jpg

Since MM makes pretty big miniatures these are pretty damn tall ladies compared to my Perry's, but it's ok. They could be useful if I ever decide to do some kind of skirmish scenario for a con or something.

The 6mm stuff is going well, as I received some 250 samurai in my mail this week. This will include 200 more infantry and cavalry and generals. But before that I finished painting the bases and did the first "camp" for the DBA army version, which is a daimyo with assembled generals and such:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/6mm/P4150538.jpg

I still have to finish these bases, but I don't have any static grass at home.

I've also been tinkering a bit with this 54 mm samurai, now it is mostly down to doing some details.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P4150545.jpg

Meraklis: I've been considering a mikoshi, but I haven't thought out a good way to do it. I saw a kit in Japan, but it was HUGE, and I'd still be left with the question of how to do the carrying crew.

[Crazy Harborc]

YOU have been busy. I've been following this thread for awhile. It does spark an "interest" in the period. Trick is, I need to find opponents. Not into solo gaming.;)

[shortlegs]

Been following this thread for some time. Just amazing.. Inspired me to buy several boxes of Perry's samurai stuff..

Just curious, are you sticking to purely hisotrical themes, or will you be including some fantasy/magical stuff into the army, like onis, shugenjas, oriental dragons and the such?

[logan054]

really great looking army you have mate, 54mm samurai looks great, love the scenery you have been workinf on, shame i hadnt seen this log before :(

[it's coming this way!]

I just want to say that I've always been in awe of this army-- very inspirational!

[mousekiller]

This army has really progressed a great deal since I last checked in mate, and it even increased AND decreased in size... lol.

Great work on all three sizes so far.

[lilljonas]

I finished some more infantry,and attempted my first cavalry. I was happily surprised that painting horses in 6mm is actually a piece of cake and fun compared to painting them in 15mm or 28mm. The bases are unpainted, but I'll get to that later.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/6mm/P5050001.jpg

Generals riding alongside infantry for the 4 bd option in DBA. For other games I'll just use them as normal samurai.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/6mm/P5050002.jpg

Generals with cavalry for the 3 cav general option in DBA. I ordered extra banners to be able to just chuck in a lot of them with my generals, as samurai generals would usually have one or two personal banners carried with them.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/6mm/P5050003.jpg

Some cavalry. I mixed them with infantry as samurai cavalry weren't really "pure" cavalry regiments as in much of western warfare, but rather mounted samurai with a throng of foot retainers running along to protect their mounted superiors.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/6mm/P5050004.jpg

More cavalry

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/6mm/P5050005.jpg

A view of the green samurai army

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/6mm/P5050006.jpg

A complete tally of the current army size.

Next up I'm thinking of adding ashigaru bowmen and ashigaru infantry. Also a second camp, I guess.

[Keravin]

Just been through the whole plog and loved it. Great army and the terrain just topped it off. Any more work on the temple?

[Bladelord]

That's a lot of backbanners! Good eye for detail on the mounted samurai and screening retainers. And bonus points for making army camps. Will you add some short grass (trim it down with nail scissors then) to the bases? I think it'd help to make the impression of the army most realistic.

Swedish: 6mm-armén ser enastående ljuvlig ut. Toppenmålning! :)

[lilljonas]

So I finally finished my 54mm samurai. I've had it around for more than a year now, so it feels good to be done with it. I was thinking about doing something more intricate for the base, but settled for a more quick and easy base in the end. Pretty decent for my second 54mm miniature IMHO. Some details gets lost in the photo, but it gives a general idea of how it looks.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P5100001.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P5100002.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P5100003.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P5100005.jpg

Keravin; just a tiny bit. My fiancée moved in with me two months ago, which has lead to the expected decrease in time at the club which is where I do all my terrain stuff.

N0th1ng c4n b34t 3lv3s: Tack. :) I plan to put grass on the bases, I just have to find some shorter static grass or just go with turf. I haven't decided yet. But I'm not leaving them all brown, no.

[mrtn]

Looking good.

[stazba]

Wow.. Just wow. I finished reading through all 490! posts, and all I can say is you have both dedication and skill.

Keep up the good work, and thanks for sharing! I will be keeping my eye on this plog.

[lilljonas]

Ok, so maybe it's time to get back to some 28mm. I got some Koreans for two reasons: one, to make the army a little bit more colourful, and two, because they actually have shields and as such are much better State Troopers for an Empire army. Here's my first shot at them, the glossy look will be more normal once I get some matt varnish on, and the bases are not finished yet. I'm still debating whether a chaotic mix of colours is the best way to do it, but at least they look fun for now.


http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P6040079.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P6040080.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P6040081.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P6040082.jpg

Last but not least, a Helblaster volley gun! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM2NcPwsngU
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/samurai/P6040083.jpg

[Bladelord]

A mighty fine samurai you've got there. You could field him as a Dogs of War giant. Put him on a square base! ;)

I've been interested in seeing the Perries' koreans used for Fantasy quiet a while now. They really look tasty, all full with details and decorations. And those you've ppainted up are nice, of course. Especially the shields' painting help to give them an authentic look. If you want to nitpick, just say they're northeast Cathayan mercenaries.

[Idle Scholar]

Those Koreans look excellent. I really like the tower shields.

[mrtn]

Very nice update. :)

[lilljonas]

I painted some more 6mm stuff. The yellow ones are Hosokawa, who played an important role for the Takeda at the 4th battle of Kawanakajima, and the purple are Tokugawa, who are my first adversaries to the Takeda painted this far. Ashigaru spearmen and archers, which means that I'm now two spear bases away from two complete DBA armies.

Lining them up they sort of start to look like an army.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/6mm/P6180081.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/6mm/P6180080.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/6mm/P6180083.jpg

I also started on a second camp, this one a little more ambitious than the first one:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/6mm/P6180077.jpg

[LarryLimerick]

Just read through the thread and I must say that it is all very impressive! The army looks very good in the picture on page 24! Keep up the good work!

[lilljonas]

Trial of making camps out of isolation foam. The idea is to sort of represent the fact that generals during this period liked to plant their command centers at a mountain or hill overseeing the battlefield. Here's Tokugawa camping out in the woods with some dudes:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/6mm/P6220080.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/6mm/P6220079.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w114/lilljonas/6mm/P6220081.jpg

It's a quick job as you might notice that I didn't even hide the bases or anything, but I think it turned out pretty ok. With some more effort put into it I think I could really make it something.

[mrtn]

Interesting idea, quite cool.

[Toshiro]

Really amazing work :)