I create this log for several reasons: to motivate me through the ardous task of painting a horde, to get feedback and tips if someone reads it, and to be able to track my own progress. I played a ton of GW games as a teenager, but that is mostly about ten years ago. Recently a friend from those days talked me into sharing a Battle for Skulls Pass box, and here I am, ready to try to get back into the hobby. Alas, my painting skills have deteriorated and grown feeble, my old miniatures are damaged and none of the armies really attracts me enough to carry me through painting an entire army. Though I'm fully planning to get my O&G sorted out (with BfSP, it's at least 1500 pts), It's not enough.
I'm going Nippon on yo ass. With 80% of my old painted miniatures being greenskins, painting humies is a great challenge. With some previous stays in Japan and various japanology studies (anthropology and history), I'm ready to tackle them. My supplier of choice will be Perry Miniatures. Their sculpts are the most detailed, their range is the biggest and they look better next to GW products since the twins themselves made some of GWs best sculpts, especially for Empire. They are also priced within my budget. While I do love my cute Dixon samurai, they are much smaller (25mm) and a friend was sort of accurate when he labelled them "ewok samurai", so that's a no-no. But they are still cute and far easier to paint than Perries, so I might take a few pictures of those too and paint them for the sheer pleasure. And I'm not going to convert an entire army from GW products. Come on! I've sort of forgot how to paint, so I ain't going to go into the deep end of the pool at once. I might make som nipponese terrain later, to fulfill my fancy to building stuff and inventing. A castle would be the perfect way to crown the achievement once done, but that is far into the future.
Painting, colour schemes and army builds are influenced by several books, mostly all those lovely Osprey books, but also some books I picked up in Japan, mostly catalogs from museums and history books. My choise of army to portrait pretty much stems from living in the birth town of Tokugawa Ieyasu, Okazaki. That's why the army will focus on the eastern army at Sekigahara, but I might add turncoat clans (likely) and perhaps some western forces if the army grows too big and my guys need someone to stare at on the shelves. The rules are Empire, with DoW units. A late samurai army is all about spearmen, pikemen, handgunners and some shock cavalry. That's Empire in a nutshell. Hordish Empire with almost no artillery, so it will hopefully be entertaining to play against. Large units of spearmen and a thousand banners. I hope it will look nice when finished.
My oh my, that's a lot of pikes! 80, to be exact. The miniatures arrive in cardboard boxes, not blisters.
My immediate goals: paint two units to get used to painting and figure out what colours works. Try out home-made transfers. Yes, I'm going to try to make transfers for the heraldry (mon). My freehand painting sucks, I tried to make squares on the first ones...
...and I sighed. I tried to make some weird version with paper...
...and it's very obvious up close. I just received some inkjet waterslide transfers and transfer solution, so I'm anxious to see how that turns out. Could be neat, and I'd like to share that learning experience too if someone gets tempted to give it a shot. Stay tuned.
Spears vs. pikes. The leftover spears will be useful for scenery or whatever. While the pikes lack detail, they seems to be extremely sturdy and also about the right lenght (4.8 m)
I can't prime my newly arrived pikemen today since Sweden is a cold raining hellhole of slush and I can only spray outside. I blame the crappy lighting on all my photos on the fact that "natural light" as a phenomenon doesn't exist here during winter. The sunrays are too afraid of the cold weather and the rain. Hopefully I'll be able to prime tomorrow. Next step will be to get all my current nipponese painted, and that's
18 swordsmen samurai (hello greatswords!), 12 are painted
18 pikemen ashigaru (hello DoW?), not primed
2 banners (out of 4)
Since the transport from Nottingham takes a while, I might order the next unit really soon. I'm thinking of musicians, some additional pikemen to sort that unit out, and some handgunners. I don't feel secure enough with painting common soldiers, so going for cavalry will have to wait a while. I have until summer to get most of this done, so some discipline will be needed.
So, I'll wrap up my first in what will probably be a long series of long-winded posts. Thank you for reading!
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Originally Posted by Mad Doc Grotsnik
Yes, Mephistofoles log inspired me to make my own log, and showed me how good the spearmen could look in units. Keep me posted on those Arabyans, so I can come by and whine for camels.
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