DBA Early Samurai Army Completed

Here is the whole army arrayed and ready for Battle. These are all 15mm Eureka figures and are meant to represent the army of Minamoto no Yoritomo, who would become the first Shogun of Japan in the late twelfth century and establish the Kamakura Shogunate.

4 bow elements including one that can be played as a general.

3 blade elements that can be played in place of part or all of the bow elements.

The heart of the army is of course the four cavalry elements, of which one can be played as a general.

5 elements of Auxilia make the samurai army a fast moving bad going army, but in an open field they can be a challenge to play. So far I have been lucky enough to win terrain both times I have played. With lots of bad going around they are a tough army, and so far are 2-0.

The 5 auxilia elements consist of two stands of warrior monks, and three of lesser samurai or well armed peasants.

The big cheese himself, watching the battle from afar.

Rohan to the Rescue

King Theoden of Rohan takes the lead in this stand of knights with Gamling and a royal guardsman close behind.

Erkenbrand, the real hero of Helms Deep. Made conspicuous by his absence in the film, Erkenbrand led a vital contingent of the Rohirrim in a counter attack against the orcs of Isengard. This figure is one of those infuriating GW sets that pairs a nice metal rider with a cheap plastic horse. If you look closely you can see the support pin I had to put into the horse's belly to stabilize the figure.

Now counter attack would be complete without Gandalf to lead the way.

Here are two elements of riders who are the vanguard of a much larger force. I have enough for 1 more element of riders and 6 elements of knights already painted. They are just waiting on the basing.

Erkenbrand on foot with some royal guard, and some aerial support featured below.

Isengard Unleashed

Here we have some plastic Games Workshop Lord of the Rings (LotR) Uruk Hai. The plastics were fairly easy to base as I just tacked the plastic sprue on which they are resting to the wooden base with super glue, and then built up around it. The banner is a nice little customization of a pike.

Some blade elements and a large troll which will play as a behemoth.

Here is a close up of one blade stand. I tried to give the armor a good crude rusted appearance. On some stands I have mixed in armor that appears newer, as much would have been just produced. Below are the archers. In the pipe are some more crossbow, blades and of course, Saruman

DBA Samurai Camp

Finished up my camp for the early samurai. Now just a few more elements of bow and blade and they will be ready to go.

Painting contest entry

This is my entry for the TMP intimidation Doubled painting contest. Unfortunately I was a bit slow in getting it submitted (graduate school and family has a way of changing priorities) so I doubt it will be includded in the contest, so I thought it would be nice to at least show it off here.

My son was kind enough to provide computer assistance and help out with the background for a nice finished look. As for the model itself, I did a bit of snipping and cutting. I rearranged the sword arm to be a bit more aggressive and disguised the joint by adding a little hair. I also draped some more hair over hear chest as she was rather buxom, and I thought she might appreciate a little modesty.

The basing is done with sculptamold paper mache rocks and static grass with a turf under base.

These are just raw images but show the shield side of the figure. The shield came with raised detail, so I was limited in design. I would have much preferred a blank shield and almost filed off the design, but lacked the time and energy to do so.

I'll probably pop her up on eBay, so if anyone is interested in taking this figure home let me know in the comment section. I don't play any RPG games at the moment, so though she was fun to paint, is of little use to me.

Command Elements for Fields of Glory

While at Nashcon I heard a lot of good things about Fields of Glory (FOG) so I thought I would change some of the basing arrangements of my large big battle DBA Persian and Macedonian armies. The only significant lack I had was command elements, which are separate in FOG, whereas in DBA they are incorporated into a regular element. I found some Foundry packs on clearance at Nashcon, so was able to get many of the extra figures I would need. I also need to finish up a few light Persian troops and some Macedonian pikemen, but hope to have the army ready to go by the summer break. My idea was to be able to play FOG or BBDBA once I get the additional troops done.

I have tried to incorporate mounted and infantry elements in the command stands as this mix of troop types helps to distinguish them on the field. The cavalry commander is an older paint job, done with a fair amount of drybrushing. The infantry are new paint jobs done by using washes and some deliberate highlighting.

Finding appropriate Persian figures has been a real challenge, as most are made for the Xerxes / Marathon period and not for the armies of Darius which fought Alexander. Essex makes the nice commander with the standard. The horseman is from Old Glory and the swordsman is from 1st Corp.

I love this figure on horseback, but every time I pull him out I want to repaint him, but so far I have resisted the temptation to do so.

I rather like the way this element turned out. The horseman in back looks as if he is keeping an eye out for his commander and I just like the dynamic of it.

A view from behind.

Not a great example of photography, but I also put together a few markers with casualty figures for disruption status. I'd love to get some of the Foundry Persian casualties, but at $20+ for five dead folks I think I'm going to have to pass.

Early Samurai DBA Army Under Way at Last

It has been a long time since my last update. I guess Nashcon kind of took it out of me, but I have been slowly painting. Lots of small projects have kept me busy, like re-basing some of my 25mm Persians and Macedonians so that I can give the Fields of Glory rules a try. Grad school is also getting very serious now, and with working a full time job and going to school my time for painting has shrunk dramatically. School didn't keep me from dreaming however and I got a wonderful Eureka Early Samurai army from a fellow Fanatici and have been slowly whittling away at it. This army required much more research than usual, because I just didn't feel comfortable starting until I had a better understanding of the period and more specifically the armor and all of it's intricacies. I used several books on the samurai as a guide, but relied most heavily on the Heiji Scroll, a period illustration of a raid led by Minamoto no Yoshitomo, a relative of Minamoto no Yoritomo, who would eventually become the first Shogun of Japan and establish the Kamakura shogunate. Here is a link to a wonderful interactive website for the scroll: http://www.bowdoin.edu/~ktravers/projects/heijiscroll/viewer.html

Here we have the mounted Samurai. The banner is that of the Minamoto clan, and though I don't know if he had a banner other than the present one, the command stand is meant to represent Minamoto no Yoshitsune, the brother of Yoritomo, and one of the most famous warriors of Japan. There are two very early novels about the period entitled Yoshitsune, and the Tale of the Heike, which details the actions of the Taira clan in their struggle against the Minamoto clan in the late 12th century.

The layering of the Japanese armor is very complex and it took some time before I felt like I had a good grasp of how all the pieces fit together. The breast plate of this period was often covered in white deer hide and intricately designed, as were the turned back cheek protectors of the helmets. The armor was meant to be collapsible and the Japanese name for it means "box armor", because of it's ability to be collapsed and stored in a compact box. It was designed to collapse to accommodate a warrior as he sat on his horse and during this period was primarily an arrow defense, as the samurai still relied most heavily on the bow as their primary weapon.

You have to love the helmets of the samurai commanders. It seems bigger was almost always better. The really tall hat is based on a much later helmet worn by Tokugawa Ieyasu, perhaps the most famous Shogun who established the Tokugawa Shogunate at the turn of the 17th century.

I tried to give the swords a shiny wavy line on the sharpened edge which is so typical of the Japanese blades.

The horses have lots of tassels which I assume served as a protection from arrows as well as decoration. The bridle is slightly different from the western design as their is no strap over the nose connected to the bit. I gave some of the samurai patterned robes, but also a lot of just plain utilitarian robes, or ones with a subtle woven pattern that simply would be too difficult to try and paint at this scale.

You can see here why I love these Eureka figures as the sculpting quality is just marvelous. These are hard to find on their site because for some reason they have been listed under the "Pirates" tab. They are available with Sashimono (back banners), but the samurai are really modelled on the early period. The Ashigaru are perfect for the banners however.

Here is a detail shot of the back. I used a black Micron pen to line the horizontal divisions of the laced armor.

The command stand from the back

These are the lesser samurai and armed peasants that play as Auxilia. I started with these first to try and gently warm up to the period.

One of the strange phenomenons of Japanese warfare was the class of warrior monks. Many sons of noble Japanese families populated the Buddhist temples and so it was natural for them to have military training. There are also many elements of Bushido (the way of the warrior) which are closely related to Buddhist ideology. Warrior monks were often indistinguishable from regular samurai, but often wore a white head cloth or white robe as a sign of their religion. At one point rival warrior Buddhist monks almost destroyed the capital city of Kyoto.

A good shot showing what the back of the armor looked like. The small square shoulder shields were designed to move freely to accommodate the shooting of a bow. The arrows were held in a wicker box that held each arrow individually in a lattice-like structure.