Kingsford Samurai, and even some SELWG

For my 28mm samurai skirmish project, I’ve finally settled on Kingsford Miniatures. I did try some other manufacturers first, but in the end Kingsford’s figures were the ones I fell for.

Kingsford Miniatures are very nice indeed, as you’ll see by clicking on the above picture to see them in more detail.   (If you look carefully, you’ll also see a Kensei geisha in there).

The Kingsford figures are on the slightly larger end of 28mm, which is something I like.  They are nicely sculpted – for example, the lacing in the armour is crisp and clear.  The faces are characterful and very Japanese in looks.  The animation of the figures is nice without being overdone.

 The fact that these exquisite figures are sculpted by acknowledged samurai expert ‘Evalario’, and so will no doubt be entirely accurate,  makes them even more appealing.

So far, all I’ve done is to glue them to heavy iron washers, which make perfect single figure bases. I used slightly larger washers for the horses and also for the bannermen (who would otherwise topple over with their large heavy metal banners).

Weapons and banners are cast separately, and so have to be glued in the figures’ hands.  I haven’t actually glued any of these onto the figures as yet. 

But any further progress on these figures is going to be delayed for a couple of months. This is because I’m heading off at the end of  next week to visit the far side of the world – England, Scotland, France and the Netherlands!!!

Whilst it is a family trip, I do hope to squeeze in some wargaming and modelling visits:  the National Army Museum in London, Pendon Model Railway in Oxfordshire; Culloden battlefield in Scotland, and Les Invalides in Paris.

I may even be able to make it to my first ever UK wargames show, SELWG. However, as this occurs on my last weekend in England, my family may have other ideas. So I’ll just have to wait and see if I can score the day away…

My stereotypical Japanese terrain for ‘Ronin’

If you’re going to do samurai skirmish gaming, you might as well go the whole hog so far as stereotypical Japanese terrain is concerned. I think I’ve pushed all the buttons: cherry blossoms, humpbacked red footbridges, sturdy torii ornamental gates, and a pointy-roofed shrine. click on the above photo to get the full-size effect and be transported into my little impression of Japan.

By the way, and for those interested, that is a 28mm Kingsford Miniatures samurai in the foreground – but unpainted, as yet.  They do a lovely range of absolutely exquisite  figures.

Here is a view of the three kits of Japanese structures I’ve assembled this last weekend – the torii gate, the bridge, and a small house or shrine. I threw them together into a little diorama for this photo session, using a river section and my cherry-blossom trees.

The bamboo edging of my temporary diorama was purely serendipitous. I needed a board to carry my buildings out into the garden for the photography session, and just happened to find an old broken bamboo-framed mirror frame close at hand.  It wasn’t till I posted the above photo on The Miniatures Page that it was pointed out to me how apt this bamboo edging was for an Asian scene!

The buildings are all Plast Craft Games kits available from the Fukei website. They’re mainly made of pre-cut plastic foam card. This is very easy to work with, and the pressed-out parts fit together well with just a touch of superglue gel. The roofs are made of corrugated card supplied with the kit, and the windows of the house are resin pieces.

The end result I think looks terrific. Though they may be a smidgen fragile for very robust wargaming, especially the pointy roof ornaments. But handled with care they should be fine.

Fukei also produce the Japanese gravestones in resin. I’ve glued them as ornaments on the bases of my cherry trees. I’m not sure if this is where you would find them in real life, but they look the part to my eye. The large grave makes a nice centre-piece for a courtyard.

The little hump-backed bridge, despite its complex curved shape, was surprising easy to put together. Superglue gel holds the curved pieces very quickly because of their light weight. Scoring some boards on the deck of the bridge also helped shape the plastic foam card into a curve.

Overall, I don’t think you can get more Japanese than this peaceful scene. It seems almost a shame for my models to fight over!

Oh, one last thing:  I’m not sure what Japanese characters to write on the white plaque at the top centre of my torii gate.  Any Japanese speakers who can help?  I just want it to be two or three characters in a vertical line, saying something like “little red shrine” or similar …

Sharpie and Harper in the cherry blossoms

I’ve been working on some cherry-blossom trees for my samurai project, but also promised to post some photos of my 40mm Sharpe-like riflemen.  So here they all are in some combined shots!

The blossom trees are el cheapos from Hong Kong, mounted with a hot glue gun onto heavy steel washers. I still have to finish the scenics on the bases.

I can’t recall the maker of the 40mm Sharpish figures. But they do have a certain hint of those books and the TV programme, right down to the sergeant’s multi-barrelled firearm.

As a bonus, I’ve managed to catch in the background a couple of large plastic Napoleonic toys, and a distinctly un-Sharpish Citroen H Gendarmerie van!

Cherry blossoms for my samurai

There’s a saying in Japan about how the life of a samurai and the life of a cherry blossom are the same. Both lead beautiful but short lives.  

With the cherry blossom so entwined into samurai culture, it was almost obligatory that I include some blooming cherry trees in the terrain for my samurai skirmish gaming project.

A search on the internet quickly revealed a very cheap source of model cherry trees from a Hong Kong-based eBay store, The Style Home.  I was astonished at not only the low price for the trees, but also the very reasonable postage costs to New Zealand.  So how could I resist?!

These trees are mainly intended for N and HO scale model railways, which are both smaller than the 28mm figure size I use for my gaming.  So I had to look carefully amongst the products in the eBay store to find the largest sizes.  In the end I settled on a pack of 20 medium-sized trees, and one pack of 5 larger ones.

They arrived relatively quickly (about a week or so). The trees were tightly packed into plastic bags, so I’ll need need to tease out the branches to get the right look.  But this will be easy enough, as they’re made of twisted wire.

The foliage and blossoms are shredded sponge glued onto the branches.   Overall, I think they look really effective, and certainly miles better than any of my homemade trees.

The only problem is that they have no bases.  So I bought some metal washers for this purpose.  The heaviest ones I could find were square, which is a departure from my normal round or hexagonal tree bases.  But with suitable texturing, they should look OK.  I could maybe tart some of them up with an ornamental Japanese  lantern or two, a small carp pond, or a raked gravel garden studded with mossy stones!

However, the biggest issue so far is getting the trees to stick to the bases.  I’ve tried inserting them into the holes in the washers with Liquid Nails.  I did this last night, but 24 hours later the glue still hasn’t yet dried, so the trees are currently supported on glasses, vases, walls etc whilst they set.

I’m not sure yet if the Liquid Nails bond will be strong enough, bearing in mind the huge leverage imposed by such a tall tree stuck in such a shallow hole.  So if this doesn’t work, I’ll have to figure out something stronger (maybe by seeing if I can splay out the bottom wires from the trunk into roots).

All in all, they’re great trees, as you can see in the picture above of two of the larger trees.  They certainly look realistic enough to bear out the old Japanese proverb:

“The flower of flowers is the sakura [cherry blossom]. The samurai is the man among men.”

By the way, the same company makes many types of green trees too.  And for those with a Victorian Science Fiction turn-of-mind, they make some lovely cheap working street lamps that would be perfect for gas-lit London.

A look at my new ‘Ronin’ samurai rules and figures

Much excitement here, as the order of North Star figures and Ronin rules for my samurai skirmish project arrived in the mail yesterday.

The figures
The North Star figures depict four ‘buntai’ (or groups) that you can use to play samurai games.  I’ve reported before on the exact make-up of these buntai in a previous post.  

The figures arrived in four clear plastic disc cases, one for each buntai.  These boxes looked very impressive and professional with their printed slip-covers, which include lots of eye-catching painting information.

In each box were the figures making up one of the buntai. These models look nicely sculpted and cast. They are all in lovely dynamic poses that exude ‘Japanese-ness’. The anatomy proportions look pretty realistic to my eye, though perhaps verging on the heroic in terms of weapon to figure size – but I like that.  Overall, they’re nice and appeal to me very much … and I am fussy!

There is going to be a little bit of clean-up work to do, with some jaggy bits from casting process to remove (somewhat similar to the way Perry figures often come). A few figures require some slight assembly, especially where scabbards and ‘sashimono’ (back banners) are concerned. But once cleaned up and assembled, these figures appear as if they’ll be a joy to paint.

I plan to base the figures individually on washers, as this is the ideal set-up for skirmish gaming. And I’m already thinking of ways to make these bases look Japanese – maybe adding a little stone lamp, or bonsai tree, or even a raked gravel garden effect!

Despite the very sturdy packaging of the figures in their disc cases, and the bubble-wrap bags containing the figures, sadly there was still one breakage in my order. (Such breakages always leave me in a quandary – do I ask for a replacement figure, in which case I feel mean at probably clawing back any profit the company has made from me; or do I live with a very fragile glued-together repair job – particularly as my talents don’t lie to replacing the long ‘naginata’ (sword-tipped polearm) with wire?).

All in all, though, a nice lot of very interesting figures.  They’ll be a fun challenge for me to paint, as I know next to nothing about feudal Japanese uniforms and armour!

The rules
I was looking forward to reading these rules. But in hindsight, I’m not sure why, as rules generally make my eyes glaze over. I’m not a numbers person, and I’m slow at picking up rules mechanisms. As a consequence, I just don’t enjoy reading rules (and this might also be why I am not that frequent a gamer, feeling happier just building up my forces for some imaginary game that never actually occurs for real!).

What I’m trying to say is that perhaps I’m the wrong person to review the rules because of the above. The rules were for me just as I find most other sets of rules I read – not at all my cup of tea as a reading experience.  Nevertheless, I suspect they are very good rules for those who do like the rules part of gaming. So I’m going to put a link here to another blog for those of you who want a more objective review on Hachiman’s Toy Chest.

Suffice to say, though, that the publication itself looks good, containing lots of juicy pictures of beautifully painted miniatures alternating with colourful artwork from other Osprey books on the period. So the book will be very inspiring for my painting and Japanese terrain-making.

Overall conclusion of the figures and rules? I would think most people interested in this period will love them. I’m certainly happy with them (even with the caveat about my own personal difficulty with reading wargames rules of any type!).

Fukei buildings and scenery for my Samurai project

If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know I have started a samurai skirmish project.  As part of this, I’ve been considering what scenery I’ll use to give my wargames table a Japanese touch.  Today I ordered some kitset buildings and scenery from Zenit Miniatures in Spain.  These are marketed under the tradename Fukei to accompany Zenit’s Kensei samurai game.

The first item I ordered was a small building with raised base and gabled roof. This design is inspired by Japanese feudal architecture and can be part of a military residence, shrine or daimyo’s palace.  It comes as a pre-cut PVC kit with resin doors and windows.   Note that the figure in this and the following pictures is a Kensei samurai that they put in all their photos for size comparison.

A torii gate is very iconic of Japan.  The torii is a traditional Japanese gate that symbolically marks the transition from the profane to the sacred at Shinto shrines.

Of course, no Japanese garden is complete without a little red humpbacked footbridge.

I also got a pack of Japanese gravestones, as I think these could add some Oriental flavour around the little building, or just work as garden ornaments.

Finally, I thought I would try out what the Kensei miniatures look like, and at the same time add at least a single civilian to my Japanese figures.  So I’ve ordered the rather charming geisha.

 

‘Wargaming Compendium’ arrives …

Woo-hoo!  Look what arrived today!  I now know what I’m going to be doing for the next few days.

And to prove my dedication to my blog visitors, please note I have taken the above photograph before I have actually even opened the book for even the briefest of look-sees!

Samurai miniatures decision made

I mentioned in a previous posting that I was mulling over which line of 28mm samurai figures to buy to accompany my recently ordered Osprey Ronin ruleset for  late 16th century feudal Japanese skirmish gaming.

Well, I’ve finally decided, and put in my order.  This whole process of planning a new period is one of my favourite parts of the hobby, with the delicious decision-making prior to any commitment to the project, and thus allowing constant changes of mind as my fancy flits from one range to another.  And in this case I stretched out this wonderful mulling out for several weeks.

There were several contenders.  I love Perry Miniatures figures, and their samurai range is certainly extensive and made up of beautifully animated figures.   Kingsford Miniatures also came very close to winning my heart, with some lovely big figures.  And I was also tempted by the early-period samurai figures produced by Westwind Productions.

But in the end I settled on the North Star range, which is actually designed to go with the Ronin rules anyway.  The reason for my choice is that, good whilst the above mentioned ranges are, none of them have made me suddenly want to start a new period when I’ve seen them previously on the internet.  It wasn’t till I recently saw the North Star figures on the internet (as below) that my imagination was fired.  So there was obviously something indefinable about them that grabbed me.

I splashed out and ordered all four sets of their figures, shown below (though these have been beautifully painted to a standard I won’t be able to emulate – though I’ll have fun trying).

The first group are some samurai warriors accompanied by ashigaru foot soldiers.

This group depicts the warrior Sohei monks, who’ll be very colourful in their yellow robes.

These bandits, led by a duo of particularly fearsome ‘ronin’ (masterless unemployed samurai), will be an interesting band to play with.

Finally, we have some more ‘ronin’, this time in ordinary clothes. Seven of these figures are based on the characters from the famous Akira Kurosawa movie Seven Samurai.  I’m not sure who the sensei is modelled after, but presume he is also a Japanese movie character.

So, all in all, once I’ve painted all the figures, I’ll have four factions (or ‘buntai’).  With a little bit of Japanese scenery, I’ll be all set to host various match-ups of skirmish games.

Archaeological investigation of the Ruapekapeka campaign

Today I stumbled across Ari ki te Ruapekapeka, a blog by Jono Carpenter, a PhD student in the Department of Archaeology and Natural History at Australian National University in Canberra. The blog outlines his archaeological journey to investigate the Ruapekapeka campaign  of the colonial New Zealand Wars as part of his doctoral research.   I’m also interested in Ruapekapeka as it was a key campaign during the period of my own  New Zealand Wars wargaming project.  

In late 1845 a combined force of approximately 1600 British troops, colonial militia, allied Maori and sundry hangers-on disembarked on the muddy banks of the Kawakawa River, which flows into  New Zealand’s Bay of Islands. They proceeded to push their way over miles of rough terrain in order to confront Chief Te Ruki Kawiti and his own force of 3-400 Maori warriors at his pa, Ruapekapeka.

Jono introduces his project as follows:

The British and the allied Maori camp received little attention in the primary and secondary accounts of the battle, focussing as they do on the cut and thrust of the military engagement and descriptions of Ruapekapeka itself. However this albeit very temporary settlement would have seen one of the most intensive cross-cultural encounters of the mid-19th century in New Zealand. More than a thousand British soldiers, marines, settler militia and sundry others, largely “fresh off the boat”, were forced to live under arms, in close contact with and depending on the good will of hundreds of Maori warriors …

He goes on to say:

While Ruapekapeka Pa itself is the key component of the battlefield and was the focus of the military campaign, the research outlined here does not propose invasive investigation of the pa. Rather it concerns itself with the positions of the British and Maori combatants beyond the pa, and the wider battlefield and campaign landscape.

Although Ruapekapeka Pa and the campaign are well known from historic accounts and the impressive surface archaeology of the fortification itself, almost no attention has been paid to the main British and allied Maori encampment and forward positions, the battle and campaign landscape or their archaeological potential. Other sites associated with the Ruapekapeka campaign have not been recorded in detail yet alone investigated, including the marching camps and allied Maori pa, or the post-war British military cantonment established at Te Wahapu in the Bay of  Islands.

One of my favourite postings in Jono’s blog is one where he takes his three-year-old son on a tour of the battle-site, explaining it in terms that young Charlie can understand.

Samurai and Maori, and a dash of compendium

My previous two posts indicated a return of enthusiasm for the hobby, after a doldrums in my interest for some time. So, what has the outcome been?

New Zealand Wars
Within an hour or so of doing my posting about Empress Miniatures’ new releases for this period, my order was swooshing its way down the internet. I expect the models to arrive this week. So hopefully I’ll be doing the cleaning and undercoating of these figures next weekend. So all go there!

Samurai
Likewise, an order went in for the new Osprey Ronin skirmish rules shortly after my posting about them. I ordered them from a New Zealand supplier for just a few dollars.

I’ve no idea how long the rules will take to get to me, but that doesn’t worry me, as it is all the more time for mulling over my delicious quandary of what line of 28mm samurai figures to buy. I’m really undecided on this, as there are several excellent makers, and each of them has good points and bad points. A hard decision, but daydreaming about pre-buying decision-making  is one of my favourite parts of the hobby. Once you actually make the decision and order, the die is cast and the daydreaming tails off as I move into the process to get them painted up.

To get me more into the samurai groove, I’ve also been reading a couple books. Firstly an old Stephen Turnbull book I bought on TradeMe, which was a bit disappointing as a motivator with its dull and somewhat “quick-once-overish” writing style. But then a much more exciting read from the library, with Jonathan Clements’ book The Samurai – I’m still reading this, and finding it quite unputdownable.

So, my enthusiasm for samurai still remains at a high, though other than the Ronin rules, nothing has been ordered as yet.

The Wargaming Compendium
One other item that will hopefully help to restore my mojo is that I have Henry Hyde’s new book The Wargaming Compendium on order. It has only just been launched.  First reviews are very favourable, and they are already talking about how it follows in the footsteps of those wonderful wargames writers of yore such as Donald Featherstone, Charles Grant et al.  I can’t wait for it to drop into my letterbox.

So, all in all, there is some small progress in the hobby for me, even if I haven’t touched a paintbrush for quite some weeks now.