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The first wave of my Kickstarter stuff finally arrived, and I'm excited to get back into painting fantasy figs. I spent my last three or four painting sessions clearing off some space on my painting station, and I'm ready to go green!



My first troop! I put these guys together just this afternoon. I left the shield arms off until I get their bodies painted. As I type this, the plastic cement is setting. I hope to get them primed and the first basecoat on tonight, after my son is asleep.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
My boy is asleep, and that means I get a couple hours of painting time. Here are the results:


I know, it doesn't look like I got very far. I primed these minis with a mix of a cheap Dark Charcoal craft paint that I got on sale at a Japanese-equivalent to Home Depot, mixed with Liquitex white Gesso. This gives a neutral base color that anything will stick to. Then I painted all the exposed skin with Vallejo Intermediate Green. Then I applied a wash made with water and Liquitex Permanent Green Deep (high viscosity). This is the same technique that I use on my Space Orks, and I think it turns out well with a minimum of fuss.

I plan to let the lads dry overnight, and then hit their armor tomorrow. I'll try to post photos then.

After drying overnight, the lads were ready for the next stage. I painted all the cloth-looking bitz as leather, using Vallejo medium brown and washing with Army Painter Strong Tone. They are back on the shelf, waiting for the wash to dry. This is probably all I will get done this weekend. Next week: armor!

I managed to get in a couple hours of painting today/tonight. The armor is Vallejo chainmail silver, washed with Army Builder dark tone. The belts are Vallejo dark fleshtone, highlighted up to Citadel bleached bone, then washed with Ogryn Flesh from the old Citadel wash line. The lads are drying now, and I hope to get some time to do highlighting and touch-ups tomorrow.

Here we see the lads with their weapons painted, as well as teeth and accessories as appropriate. You can barely see them in this shot, but the shields are primed solid white, pending me finding inspiration on what to do with them. Also, as weird as it seems to come right out and say it, I think I'll follow Jervis Johnson's advice and not do the eyes. They're tiny, and will be invisible on the tabletop, so I think I'd rather put that time into basing or whatever.

Not pictured: the GW space Ork buggy gunner that I threw together as a test figure for some water-based walnut varnish I found at a ￥100 yen store. I want to speed this army along, and I wonder if dipping (or rather, glopping, as I'll be using a brush) is a viable option. Also not pictured: 5 Mantic Enforcers that I assembled tonight.

The first ten boyz are essentially finished, and the next ten are assembled and primed. I wanted to take a break from all the earth tones, so I broke out a few Enforcers. Along with the cursing, crying, and trying to get the superglue off my fingers, I spent quite a while researching paint schemes. Here is what I came up with:




The colors are,of course, based on an Iron Man design, specifically the Silver Centurion armor of the '80's. I'm going with white rather than a metallic for the legs and arms. I'm not entirely satisfied with the face, but the rest will work, I think.

After Kickstarting the bejeezus out of Deadzone, Dreadball Extreme, Myth, Mecha Front, Bones 1, Mars Attacks and probably a few others that I don't recall at the moment, I find myself with a truly unreasonable backlog of unpainted minis packed in boxes in the upstairs closet. To save my marriage, I have sworn not to buy any more miniatures this year, and to work on clearing out the backlog. DZ, DB, and MA stuff goes in the Restic Odyssey blog linked below, but Kings of War stuff will go here. I'll start with this demi-regiment of Ashigaru from Zenit miniatures:


Here they are as they will look on the tabletop, less basing and sashimono, of course. Everything is done with basecoats and washes, with some token highlighting on their hands and faces.


Here they are in the light box, or rather the Foldio. The lacing on the armor shows up better here.


And this is a decidedly unforgiving close-up. Zenit samurai are pretty much true 28mm, so a lot of the details (like the lacing) is too tiny to justify Golden Daemon/Crystal Brush level detailing considering these guys will be in a tightly-packed block of twenty. Not also that I didn't bother with their eyes. That is one of the best pieces of gaming advice Jervis Johnson ever wrote: don't bother with details you won't see during the game. I will, of course, be painting the eyes on any and all samurai in this army.

These guys look great, Josh. Please keep on updating us with the KoW stuff.

Thanks for the kind words, Azazelx. They look better at arm's length than up close, as appropriate for a mass battle game.

I had a few minutes waiting for some paint to dry, so I photographed some models I had finished but not shown off. First, a unit of Moraxe:


These are all basecoat-and-wash: Army Painter greenskin washed with liquitex deep hue green, leather brown with strong tone, chainmail with dark tone. The Renedra-crispness of the models makes it possible.

Next up, some boar riders:


I used the same techniques as above. Despite being restic, these are really nice models. I have fifteen more unpainted and stashed away in a box upstairs. Finally, a Krugger and Flagger:


With these guys, I did a little highlighting to make them stand out a bit more. Instead of dark tone, I used a wash of Payne's Grey in something called "painting medium." I prefer this effect over straight black, and use it for pretty much everything now.

Now, some more samurai:


These guys are from Kingsford Miniatures out of Canada. They are a little chunkier than the Zenit minis I posted yesterday, which makes them easier to paint. They are arranged for WHFB, but will be easy to redistributed for KoW basing.



These are also from Kingsford. I based the lacing patterns on an image in one of the many Osprey books I have acquired over the years. This more ornate lacing is actually easier to paint than the sparser lacing on the ashigaru: paint a stripe of the desiderd color, then hit it with a wash.


One more set from Kingsford. I painted these well over five years ago, and did each of these Sohei individually, layering/highlighting everything instead using washes. I have one more set of these guys to paint up to complete the unit.


Finally, a unit of mounted samurai. I picked up a Clan War boxed set, along with the infantry, cavalry, and Dragon Clan expansions, brand new many many years ago. At the time, the models were top notch, but now they seem just a little flat and lacking in variety. They are fun and easy to paint, though, which is a plus given how many of the darned things I have. The bases are a weird size-- 27~28mm frontage instead of 25.

I really like the samurai!

 EyeamRai wrote:
I really like the samurai!

Thanks! I have intended to build an army since the early '90's, but haven't gotten around to it until quite recently.

All looking good! Love the Mantic Orcs, myself. Very nice little models.

 JoshInJapan wrote:

 EyeamRai wrote:
I really like the samurai!

Thanks! I have intended to build an army since the early '90's, but haven't gotten around to it until quite recently.

Ive been intending to do the same for some time but you have made considerably more progress than me so far. Love what you have done so far and can't wait to see what else you paint.

 carlos13th wrote:
Ive been intending to do the same for some time but you have made considerably more progress than me so far. Love what you have done so far and can't wait to see what else you paint.

Thanks. You're painting blog is what inspired me to restart this army. I'll try to update as often as I get stuff finished.

Then I am really glad I started that blog despite the lack of real major progress since it began. Glad to see more Samurai on Dakka though.

Quick question. Do you have a size comparison with mounted Kensei and Mounted Perry.

The kingsford stuff looks very nice. Sculpting style and size differences from Perry would make me reluctant to use them in the same unit as Perry miniatures but not the same army. That might seem hyocritcal of me since I plan to use perry and Steel fist in the same unit but SF have the size difference from Perry but the sculpting styles seem to be closer to one another. Kingsford has a very distinct sculpting style.

Your work is making me want to work on my Samurai more too, hopefully we can spur each other on.

Over the weekend, I managed to finish the ashigaru I posted last week:


I think we can all agree that no samurai/ashigaru mini is complete until he has a sashimono attached.



Here we can see the mon of the Nanbu clan, who used to rule the area where I live. I found a hi-res image on GIS, copy/pasted it into MS Word, then printed about 400 onto ink jet transfer paper from Micromark. Easy-peasy, but oh so time-consuming. I have another ten to finish assembling this morning, and hope to have the whole regiment finished in the next week or so.

I hadnt heard of that clan before.

The mon on the Sashimono look great.

 carlos13th wrote:
I hadnt heard of that clan before.

The mon on the Sashimono look great.

Yeah, the Nanbu were on the winning side at Sekigahara, but apparently weren't as close to the Tokugawa as many of the other daimyo. I agree, they do have a nifty mon.

Gonna ally Honda or Ii with them as part of your KOW army?

I quite like the Uesugi two bird mon myself.

I will probably keep everything local, and just leave the nifty-looking heroes unnamed.

The Uesugi mon is cool. There are lots that are too complex for anything but transfers. Thank goodness for Micromark!

Yeah not even the best painters could do either of these mons via freehand.

Just keeping them unnamed could be cool too. Its what i am considering doing.

Have you tired Lions Rampart Josh? I am considering picking up a kindle version in order to adapt it as a ruleset for a midway between the small conflicts of Ronin and the Large conflicts of Ronin. Wondering how it would adapt for Samurai.

It turns out that 45-50 minutes a day isn't a whole lot of time when painting a whole unit. Anyway, here is the full regiment of ashigaru spearmen:



Individually, they lack a little something, but I think they look pretty nifty in a block of 20. The sashimono really bring the unit together. The next step for this army is to finish off the other unit of spearmen and then supplement the teppo ashigaru to get up to two troops of ten. But before that, I have to finish off the miscellaneous minis that have been clogging up my painting area (visible in the background of these photos) since late November.

Nice stuff mate

Yeah, they look great as a unit - I understand exactly where you're coming from as well there. The sashimono really do add a lot to them as well.

Unit looks good. I know the feeling of unfinished minis starring you in the finish from across the painting table, begging to be finished.

How are you finding painting lacing btw?

Lacing isn't too bad, because I take a lot of shortcuts. For light lacing (like the ashigaru), I pick out a very light blue over charcoal grey armor, and then glaze the whole thing with Payne's Grey. For heavier lacing (like the horse archers), I do each "strip" of lacing in a light color and then glaze it with a darker shade. It doesn't hold up well to close inspection, but it works at tabletop distances.

Fair enough. I am still getting used to painting lacing. Just finished a samurai I was doing and I'm pretty happy with him. The lacing doesn't hold up to super close inspection but works well enough.

It turns out that 45-50 minutes a day isn't a whole lot of time when painting a whole unit. Anyway, here is the full regiment of ashigaru spearmen:



Individually, they lack a little something, but I think they look pretty nifty in a block of 20. The sashimono really bring the unit together. The next step for this army is to finish off the other unit of spearmen and then supplement the teppo ashigaru to get up to two troops of ten. But before that, I have to finish off the miscellaneous minis that have been clogging up my painting area (visible in the background of these photos) since late November.

After finishing my Zenit ashigaru spearmen, I decided to worn on another unit, this time by Perry miniatures. Here are the first six.

In skirmish formation:


And in block formation:


Finally, a comparison shot with a Kingsford ashigaru:


As you can see, the Kingsford guy is a little chunkier. I only have 12 of them, though, so not quite enough for a full regiment. The Perry sculpts are nice, of course, but they are showing their age a bit, especially when compared to the Zenit miniatures. One thing I do like about the Perry sculpts is their Lego hands. I know a lot of people prefer the hands molded on to whatever weapons they are supposed to hold, but all of these metal spears are soft and bendy, and open hands will allow me to replace them with brass spears when I get around to buying them.

Mass painting all these troopers has been kind of a drag, so I did this samurai commander at the same time:





This is another Zenit mini. I did a lot of highlighting/layering on this guy, as opposed to the basecoat-and-wash technique for the troops. Note that I actually did his eyes, as well. He was fun to paint, but some of the lacing was super-tiny and hard to pick out. Also, his sword is very thin and very soft, only a little thicker than the lead foil used on wine bottles, and it bends if you look at it funny. When it finally breaks off (and it will), I will have to replace it with one of the dozens of Dixon wakizashi I have lying around.