Gaming Again (WarmaHordes and Ronin)

After a too-long drought, I'm finally getting to play some miniatures games again. Something about this time of year just seems to lend itself to pushing toy soldiers around a table. (It's not just the inclement weather, either—even back when I lived in L.A., wintertime was always a popular time for miniatures.)

A couple weeks ago I dusted off my Skorne minis and played a small game of WarmaHordes. It was using the MkII rules, as my opponent and I haven't had a chance to really get into MkIII, but we like what we've seen with the new edition and are planning to have a game of it really soon. I'm particularly interested to see how Rasheth's revised Feat works out.

As with most W/H games I've played so far, this one came down to failing to act at a critical moment and things quickly spiraling out of control. This time, it was the Skorne who got the thrashing...

Beatdown!

Then this past Saturday, I sat down with my wife for a game of Ronin, the samurai skirmish game from Osprey Publishing. It was great to finally get a chance to play, nearly two years after painting up my two buntai (gangs).

We ran the basic "Skirmish" scenario to get a feel for the system, and I was duly impressed. It's very quick to pick up, and close combat is lots of fun and incredibly bloody! The game ended up culminating with a deadly showdown amidst the pillars of a local shrine that left the site strewn with corpses.

Other highlights included my sohei (warrior-monk) getting brained by a peasant's mattock and the yojimbo (bodyguard) of the Ikko-Ikki's leader getting knocked senseless by a bullet meant for his lord, then standing by helplessly as his lord was cut down by the opposing samurai.

In the end, it was a fairly one-sided victory for the Bushi in part because I was absolutely on fire with my dice rolls, but also because using the peasantry of the Ikko-Ikki is a bit trickier than wading in with professional warriors.

We both enjoyed the game quite a bit, though, and are thinking about giving the campaign system a spin. Amazingly for a first outing with a game, I didn't forget any major rules—a testament to Ronin's tight, simple design.

Some selected shots from the game:

A Miscellaneous Wrap-Up to the Painting Challenge

[This was my twelfth entry for the Fifth Annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, reposted here for folks not following that blog.]

For this, my final entry in the Challenge, I present a miscellany of figures that, quite coincidentally, touch on some of my very first entries...

First up, we have what will be my third (and hopefully final) version of Malifaux's Taelor. Way back when I posted my "Hired Guns" crew, I talked about how dissatisfied I was with the "official" versions of this character - neither the plastic nor metal sculpts did much for me. I found a suitable substitute in MicroArt's "Alice Tinkerly" but...I still wasn't completely satisfied. Her laid-back pose didn't match Taelor's fearsome combat abilities.

Then I spotted this excellent figure, part of a special edition boxed set from Bombshell Miniatures. The animation of the pose combined with the ludicrously huge industrial wrench told me at once that I'd found my version of Taelor:

The crazy eyes were a bit of a happy accident...

One of Taelor's signature moves is "Weclome to Malifaux!" Indeed.

This next piece is one that I don't plan on seeing featured in many games, but it was too cool not to pick up when I placed an order for my Ikko-Ikki from Kingsford: a giant taiko drum and a horagai player blowing on his conch shell.

This painted up in an evening and will make a fine centerpiece on display with my Ronin factions.

Lastly, we have the final figures for my 35-point Skorne army for Hordes. More Titans! First, the fearsome Bronzeback Titan. (And since the Challenge ended last Thursday, I've  completed the units required for my 50-point list; they'll be making their debut shortly.)

In keeping with his name, I gave his central ridge of spiky hair a greenish cast, evoking a verdigris patina on bronze.

I believe this is the largest model for this base size in the whole WarmaHordes line. I could be wrong, but all I know is: you wouldn't want to see this guy bearing down on you in the middle of a battle!

"I heard they shaved a gorilla."

And here's another Titan, a Defender, to act as bodyguard for my caster.

Although not as large as the Bronzeback, he is at least as equally impressive, with his ornate armor and shield.

As before, I've left his back banner blank pending a decision on what sort of custom sigil to put on it.

Finally, we have the reason why everybody loves to hate the Skorne: the Agonizer. Not only are these guys a pain for any Skorne opponent mechanically, they're the living embodiment of the true depths of Skorne evil. It's a baby Titan (read: baby elephant!) kept in a state of perpetual pain and agony, which in turn is used to fuel the magic of nearby warcasters.

This is my second Agonizer in the list, and painting them never gets any easier. It's kind of funny to feel so ambivalent about one's own army. Everyone has to play the bad guy from time to time, I suppose...

All those hooks! Poor baby...

Inspired by a co-worker who was out sick last week with conjunctivitis, I gave this Agonizer infected eyes oozing with pus. Ewww!

The trio together.

With this entry, I hit my target "points goal" for the Challenge. My display cabinet, which before the Challenge featured mostly unpainted figures, is now top-to-bottom featuring painted miniatures, and it's a thing of beauty.

The Challenge really was surprisingly effective in motivating me to get painting and to maintain that pace over time (something I've always struggled with in the past). I heartily recommend it for anyone with a "lead mountain" of unpainted figures.

The one caveat is that, in following the Challenge, you see a metric tonne of other really cool projects being churned out by other participants, and you start to get that itch to jump on the bandwagon... 

Thanks to the Challenge, I'm now getting back into 28mm WWII skirmish, I'm dipping my toe once more into the grimdark world of 40K, and I'm even considering starting up a 15mm American Civil War collection. I intend to keep working away at the new projects over the course of the year, but I'd be surprised if I'm done with all of them by the time the next Challenge rolls around. It's been a wild ride and I can't wait to do it again. I'll just have to see about buying a new display cabinet between now and then...

28mm Ikko-Ikki for Ronin

[This was my third entry for the Fifth Annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, reposted here for folks not following that blog.]

As promised, here are the foes for my samurai buntai for Ronin, as posted here: the Ikko-Ikki, the sect/movement/uprising that so bedeviled samurai lords of the Sengoku era.

Figures are a mix of Perry and Kingsford. Since this is primarily a band of rabble, there were quite a few more to paint than with the bushi, and even more fabric involved...which meant lots of patterns to hand paint. Nothing for it but to power through, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't relieved to put this project to rest finally.

As with my previous buntai, I mounted the leader figure on a larger base for easy identification. My wife actually designed the list for this buntai, and she made the leader a ronin armed with an arquebus, which gave me the perfect excuse to use this wonderful little Perry tableau of a flunky handing his master a freshly-loaded teppo. I added a pavise screen as well because, hey, it looks cool.

Just as the Matsudaira faction boasted warrior-monk allies, so too do the Ikko-Ikki; in this case, a monk from the Jōgū-ji temple. Japanese monks seemed to have favored two different color palettes with their outfits, so to differentiate this one I painted him in the "not orange" outfit.

I picked up this banner bearer from Kingsford, but ended up doing a scratch-built banner and pole - the original's banner was cast from metal and made the figure too top-heavy, plus the pole bent too easily.

I painted the bearer in the livery of Matsudaira's retainers, thinking he's perhaps a defector. Also, this makes him nicely interchangeable between factions, since, after his victory over the Ikko-Ikki, Matsudaira took this very banner as one of his personal standards! The text is a prayer favored by the Ikko-Ikki: "Renounce this defiled world and attain the Pure Land". (Or such is my understanding, not actually knowing any Japanese...).

Next up is a trio of Ikko-Ikki from Kingsford. I love their looted armor, particularly the fancy (and old-fashioned) samurai helmet one of them is sporting. Clearly these guys know how to pick over a battlefield! They put me in mind of Tahei and Matashichi from Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress.

Finally, the peasant mob.

Although I gave them screen-printed fabric designs, I kept things relatively low-key: a rustic palette and simple, repeated designs. I expect these fellows to die with grim regularity, but at least they'll look good doing it.

This is my last Ronin project for the foreseeable future. I have half a mind to do a third buntai built using the "koryu" list - that is, unarmored sword masters. The historical Hattori Hanzo was active in Mikawa Province at this time (and was Matsudaira's sometime ally); I could see putting together a band consisting of Hanzo and his students. But that means even more fabric-pattern painting, and that makes my brain hurt too much to contemplate right now...

28mm Bushi Buntai for Ronin

[This was my second entry for the Fifth Annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, reposted here for folks not following that blog.]

Continuing in a skirmish vein from my last entry, here's a samurai (or bushi) war band (or buntai as the game calls it) for Ronin, Osprey's samurai skirmish game.

This was my first time painting 28mm samurai (I've done 10mm samurai in the past) and I'm now firmly convinced that this particular genre compares very closely to Napoleonics in terms of fiddly painting detail and potential for eye-catching, colorful "uniforms." On the one hand, I love how everything turned out; on the other, I can't begin to imagine painting a whole army of these guys! Lots of detailed brushwork was called for.

I have another buntai in the painting queue, a band of Ikko-Ikki - fanatical peasants out to destroy the system. Rather than painting up a bunch of generic samurai and peasants, and being unable to resist my history-geek tendencies, I've placed both forces in a historical context: the Ikko-Ikki uprising in Mikawa Province during the autumn of 1563 that culminated in the Battle of Azukizaka in January of the following year. That battle was one of the first victories of a young lord named Matsudaira Motoyasu - later known as Tokugawa Ieyasu, unifier of Japan.

The buntai I've assembled here is modeled around the spark that caused the uprising: "Fighting broke out in 1563 when Suganuma Sada, a Matsudaira retainer, entered the Jōgū-ji temple in Okazaki, and confiscated its rice to feed his own men."

Thus, I've chosen to paint up Suganuma Sada and his hungry escort.

Unlike Napoleonics, there is a fair bit of room to get creative with choosing colors and so forth, especially for minor figures like Sada. His outfit is a riot of colors, but I think they hang together nicely. It helps when you have an excellent figure to work with, as with this Kingsford figure.

Although I'm usually averse to doing elaborate, diorama-style basing, I couldn't resist throwing in a Perry casualty figure as I had some extra real estate on the base. (I painted the casualty with a Takeda clan mon, as they were also early foes of the future Tokugawa.) The mon on Sada's back is a decal transfer from Veni Vidi Vici and was, mercifully, quite easy to work with.

I hit the "lacquered" bits of armor with some gloss varnish to provide a bit of a shine.

As was often the case, different temples in the region aligned themselves with either the Ikko-Ikki or the local lord. Here is a warrior-monk (sohei) ally of Matsudaira's from the temple of Daiju-ji.

That blade means business!

For the ashigaru (infantrymen), I mostly pulled from the Ronin starter set put out by Artizan, but I supplemented with an excellent banner bearer from Perry Miniatures. The banner pattern is based on one used by Tokugawa over the course of his career.

For the sashimono (back banners) of the infantry, I wanted to put on the Matsudaira family crest, but it's so intricate I knew there was no way I'd be able to free-hand it like I did the Takeda mon. I was unable to find an easily-acquired set of Tokugawa transfers, so I set out to make my own with some decal paper.

The experiment was mostly a success. The ink ran slightly when I sprayed the fixative, giving the crest a slight reddish outline...but I kind of like how it turned out, actually. Chalk this one up to "happy accidents."

The long holiday weekend promises some excellent painting opportunities, so hopefully I'll be back next week with the Ikko-Ikki!