Little Tanks & Tiny People

After a week of painting 2-3 hours per day my armoured samurai and ashigaru are done! I’ll be mixing and matching these with the ronin I painted earlier to form two little war bands. I didn’t want to use the same colour scheme for each miniature as if they were part of a larger army, because that would look odd alongside the more individual ronin models. I did want them to look coherent, though, if that makes sense. As a compromise, I gave all ashigaru the same black armour, but changed the colour of their tunics, the stitches on their armour plates and their war banners. For the samurai I did the opposite. Each has differently coloured armour, but their tunics are all grey. This also helps to make them stand out among the rank-and-file ashigaru. These were quite a bit more work to paint then the unarmoured ronin, but a lot of fun. I really like how they turned out. I shouldn’t have varnished them on such a hot day (34 ˚ C), though, because there are some very annoying air bubbles i...

I’ve been reading a lot of the Lone Wolf and Cub manga lately. The manga centres around Ogami Ittō, the former Shōgun's executioner, who is betrayed and is forced to take on the role of an assassin. Ogami Ittō travels the country with his young son Daigorō, who he transports in a baby cart which doubles as a mobile armoury with spears in the handles and even a multi-barrelled matchlock rifle in the bottom. While working on my North Star ronin figures, I figured that I might as well make a little baby cart to go with them. The cart was made from strips of wood cut from a tongue depressor. The handle was made from one of those fancy bamboo cocktail sticks. The cocktail stick was a bit too wide, so I had to slice it in half with a sharp blade. The wheels are thin cardboard. The cart was mounted on a 2 pence coin, which turned out to be almost the exact same diameter as the MDF bases that came with the figures. I’m awful at sculpting, so there is no little Daigorō in the cart. Le...

I’ve slowly but steadily been working my way through my ragtag team of ronin and I think they turned out pretty great! I like how every figure has a different colour scheme. I’ve also been experimenting with different patterns for some added variety. I particularly like the black crosses and the rising sun-motif.   Some kendo trivia for you. These are four of the five stances used in kendo. From left to right, Chūdan-no-kamae (although technically he should have his right foot forward), Hassō-no-kamae, Waki-gamae and Gedan-no-kamae. All that is missing is Jōdan-no-kamae (sword raised above the head).

There’s some news on the Samurai front. I’ve bought the Ronin rulebook published by Osprey Publishing and two sets of figures from North Star , which turn out to be the exact models that are illustrated in the rulebook. What are the odds? Ronin lets you field so-called buntai of between 4 and 20 models. This is ideal for me, because I love painting models but hate having to work my way through large armies of nearly identical figures. I’ve chosen a set of armoured samurai and ashigaru and a set of unarmoured ronin. The first set provides a nice variety of weapons like katana, naginata, spears, bows and arquebuses. Most of the ronin are equipped with katana, apart from one wielding both a katana and shorter wakizashi and one armed with a massive odachi sword. Each set contains nine figures, which seems an odd number (in both senses of the word ;-). It goes very well with the Japanese preference for odd numbers, though. I wonder whether that was on purpose... Anyway, with the two samu...