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Empchild wrote: As per the katana it was and still is one of the best swords ever made.

That's debatable, it's certainly one of the sharpest cutting weapons ever developed, but they are fragile. I'd take a Viking-forged blade over a katana any day of the week.

Kroothawk wrote:... and noone knows that Ashigaru don't wear Samurai swords
Next box will be European medieval peasants in full plate mail and Hoplites with hellebards

Dunno how truthful this is but some people on the forums mentioned this

Warriors of Medieval Japan by Stephen Turnbull states that Ashigaru carried swords. It also has several paintings and woodcuts depicting them doing so.

After Toyotomi Hideyoshi's Great Sword Hunt of 1588 when he permanently banned the carrying of *any* weapons by anyone other than the samurai, all Ashigaru became officially samurai (albeit of the bottom rung of the samurai pecking order). This came IIRC with the privilege of carrying the two swords emblematic of the rank of samurai. Now granted, the quality of swords carried by the Ashigaru were nowhere near as high as that of their samurai betters, being munitions-quality weapons designed to equip large numbers of newly-minted "samurai" who would now be permanent professional men-at-arms of their respective daimyo.

Kroothawk wrote:... and noone knows that Ashigaru don't wear Samurai swords

Yes they did. The relevant sword edicts took place at the end of the Sengoku period - at which point the non-disbanded ashigaru had transitioned into lower-ranking samurai anyway. Now, what would be odd is if everyone was armed with katana and wakazashi - for a start, katana and tanto would be the more common pairing - but individually there's nothing wrong with any figure's equipment so far (excepting the upside-down daisho on the first one). The sculpting though? Not so much. That teppo's just being waved about in front of the poor guy's face.

Edit: LOL. Got distracted for over an hour.

This is just an opinon but frankly compared to what this company is putting out http://www.bushido-thegame.com/ those samurai look pretty aweful.

Well duh, its wargames factory

Next you'll say hat miniatures looks terrible against perry

That dude's head is HUGE.

Major box art FAIL.

I don't realy care what packaging looks like. Ever...

insaniak wrote:"Suitable for 1/48th through 1/56th scale..."

Seriously?

Anyone with a clue knows those scales are well apart.

I not convinced by these at all, though some 28mm plastic samurai would be nice, I have a couple of lovely metal ones.

Do they have ashi-garu renders up? whats with the thread title if not?

Page 3, near bottom

Ah, cool looking render.

Ashigaru: Really good render - with better embossed detail than the samurai ones.
By far the best mini so far in this range.

As I understand it the "belt detail" (bullet pouch, swords etc.) will be separate on the sprue so no need to glue the daisho on - especially as they in that position would make it impossible to draw/fire a bow (I trust all Ashigaru bodies will be possible to assemble holding bow, musket or spear).

Nitpicking: A wider leg stance would look better - and the rear elbow is to high, firing the Teppo this way would dislocate his shoulder due to the recoil...
Better example:



Sign me up for 10-20 boxes of Ashigaru
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Suggested contents of an Ashigaru box of 10:
BODIES: 2 walking bodies, 2 running bodies (left shoulder front), 2 kneeling bodies (right knee to ground), 1 standing body (relaxed, chest front), 3 standing bodies (legs wide, left shoulder front).
HEADS: 10 heads with jingasa helmet, 5 heads with head band, 5 heads with other type of helmet.
MUSKETS: 1 arms with musket resting on shoulder (guard, march), 1 arms with musket at hip level (walking, running), 1 arms with musket reloading, 2 arms with musket firing.
SPEARS: 2 arms with spear resting on shoulder (marching), 2 arms with spear resting on ground (at ease, guard), 2 arms with spear tip raised (walking, running, etc.), 4 arms with spear trusting, left hand front.
BOWS: 2 arms with bow firing, 2 arms with bow reloading, 1 arms with bow at ease.
MISC: 10 small sashimono flags, 1 larger banner resting on ground and held by arm, 1 cartridge box held by arms, 1 arrow box held by arms, 1 rice bale carried by arms, 2 wooden mantlets, 5 swords in belt, 10 bullet pouches.

Omegus wrote:

Empchild wrote: As per the katana it was and still is one of the best swords ever made.

That's debatable, it's certainly one of the sharpest cutting weapons ever developed, but they are fragile. I'd take a Viking-forged blade over a katana any day of the week.

Not what I've heard, the foldng of brittle hard steel with layers of soft more mallible steel made Katanas both sharp and flexible.

Of course I read this in GI Joe comics...

kendoka wrote:Nitpicking: A wider leg stance would look better - and the rear elbow is to high, firing the Teppo this way would dislocate his shoulder due to the recoil...

The rear elbow needs to be higher. Someone in the WFG forums has rather helpfully posted pictures of arquebusiers (and one musketeer) that show how wrong WGF got it...and rather amusingly used said pictures to argue for the accuracy of the current sculpts. The stance needs to be widened, the rear elbow raised, the rear hand moved in and forward, the head tilted, and the fore elbow dropped. As it stands he's not even sighting down the barrel! If I was feeling charitable I could dismiss the pose as the immediate relaxation post-firing...but a whole army like that? Other than the sloppy rear elbow, your blue ashigaru is worlds apart.

Construct wrote:

kendoka wrote:Nitpicking: A wider leg stance would look better - and the rear elbow is to high, firing the Teppo this way would dislocate his shoulder due to the recoil...

The rear elbow needs to be higher. ... The stance needs to be widened, the rear elbow raised, the rear hand moved in and forward, the head tilted, and the fore elbow dropped.

You might be right.
I guess the chosen position of the rear elbow mostly depend on the curvature of the gun handle - but at least the elbow needs to be in a more forward position (up, down or to the side - bringing the rear hand forward) in order to absorb recoil.
The front elbow, as you pointed out, needs to be lowered/centered - as when trying to stabilise a modern firearm. The head will probably be separate (i.e. easily tilted).

Actually the rear arm looks more as if drawing a bow (I own two kyudo bows) - although drawing a bow wearing a jingasa helmet would be kinda hard...

Kid_Kyoto wrote:

Omegus wrote:

Empchild wrote: As per the katana it was and still is one of the best swords ever made.

That's debatable, it's certainly one of the sharpest cutting weapons ever developed, but they are fragile. I'd take a Viking-forged blade over a katana any day of the week.

Not what I've heard, the foldng of brittle hard steel with layers of soft more mallible steel made Katanas both sharp and flexible.

Of course I read this in GI Joe comics...

In real life, the reason why katanas were forged in such insanely labor-intensive ways was that Japanese iron was of dismal quality compared to that found in other regions of the world. They had to beat the living crap out of it just to make useful weapons. The mystique around this is vastly overblown in a form of Orientalism that elevates everything Japanese into an artform.

Methinks we're getting a bit off topic. Perhaps discussing the "magical" properties of katanas would be better off in the off topic forum or something

kendoka wrote:I guess the chosen position of the rear elbow mostly depend on the curvature of the gun handle

I don't believe it would. I've admittedly never even held an arquebus before but playing around with a hanbo as a stand-in I found that keeping the elbow as high as possible constrains the movement of the hand to forward and back, increasing stability in aiming and giving the impression there would be more control in recoil. I can only imagine how much more pronounced this effect would be should I be tired and weilding something as heavy as a real teppo.

Actually the rear arm looks more as if drawing a bow

It does, doesn't it?

Construct wrote:

Actually the rear arm looks more as if drawing a bow

It does, doesn't it?

Probably since its going to be multi purpose, I assume anyways. WGF loves to have open hand arms/etc

How look, now we have bows

*looks at the top of the arrow bundle*



http://www.wargamesfactory.com/announcements/3d-ashigaru-preview-2

kenshin620 wrote:How look, now we have bows

*looks at the top of the arrow bundle*



http://www.wargamesfactory.com/announcements/3d-ashigaru-preview-2

I'm with you on this. The fletching looks like absolute gak. The top looks really hastily put together.

So that's what, a 3 inch wide bow?

At least he's not wearing a giant bendy straw for armor like the last one.

Good lord. Did he steal the leaf-spring from Uncle Bubba's pickup? That stance does *not* work for archery (though fortunately the converse isn't true, so these guys can indeed share a body with their noisier brethren). Oh, and that's an ammunition-carrier's quiver he's wearing.


Still, not bad for a group of sculptors who I'm realising are in fact betentacled space-abominations beyond the ken of Man, working only from blurry photographs and memories of probings past.


Edit:

JOHIRA wrote:At least he's not wearing a giant bendy straw for armor like the last one.

Bendy straw is real armour.

Telephone-pole ashigaru are up: http://www.wargamesfactory.com/announcements/3d-ashigaru-3

Pole arms are usually way over scale in plastic and metal 28mm models because they would be too fragile if done to proper scale.

Historical wargamers often replace such items with piano wire or similar.

Bah, I hate the current WGF plastic pikes. As you mentioned they're very fragile

Lucky for me, Perry makes some good metal Nagae-Yari

Great...I guess this means we cant have short yari ashigaru? Gonna have to chop up the things manually

kenshin620 wrote:Bah, I hate the current WGF plastic pikes. As you mentioned they're very fragile

Lucky for me, Perry makes some good metal Nagae-Yari

Great...I guess this means we cant have short yari ashigaru? Gonna have to chop up the things manually

The perry ones are pretty fragile too honestly, is you are up for the work get some copper ones from northstar or foundry etc and just do a little sanding. All in all these ashigaru are horrible which annoys me because you need them in the masses because they formed the main blocks in major battles. So far it seems the perrys still have the best, also if anyone wants some great pic refrenses of samurai from different centurys look at shogun total war 2.

Construct wrote:

JOHIRA wrote:At least he's not wearing a giant bendy straw for armor like the last one.

Bendy straw is real armour.

Well, yeah, but on the real stuff the ridges look like they'd stick out at most a few millimeters. On the mini it looks like they stick out a few inches. I think in my elementary school music room we had some percussive instruments that you rubbed with sticks that resemble his armor. He could tuck his spare pens into the ridges so after the battle he's ready to write a haiku. I'm not criticizing the design, I'm criticizing the execution.

Empchild wrote:

kenshin620 wrote:Bah, I hate the current WGF plastic pikes. As you mentioned they're very fragile

Lucky for me, Perry makes some good metal Nagae-Yari

Great...I guess this means we cant have short yari ashigaru? Gonna have to chop up the things manually

The perry ones are pretty fragile too honestly, is you are up for the work get some copper ones from northstar or foundry etc and just do a little sanding. All in all these ashigaru are horrible which annoys me because you need them in the masses because they formed the main blocks in major battles. So far it seems the perrys still have the best, also if anyone wants some great pic refrenses of samurai from different centurys look at shogun total war 2.

Why exactly are they horrible?

lord marcus wrote:
Why exactly are they horrible?

Hmm if I were to make some guesses, historical inaccuracy, low quality, awkward poses, disproportioned parts

The usual for wgf sets

Oh and a tidbit of news, samurais are done apparently, funny how so many companies love not taking any pics of their sprues/models

We plan to release the first Rising Sun set this month (October 2011) if all goes well.

The Samurai figures and box art are completed, we are currently awaiting packaging. The release date will depend on the product clearing customs. If it clears without issue we should see a mid-October release; if there is a hold up, late October/early November. The Ashigaru figures will go into production soon as well.

Oh btw I decided to ask TMP about the telephone yaris. They actually say this isnt too far off. They still look thick too me though

My shortstaff (not quite a rokushaku-bo, it's only 5'8" tall) is big enough in diameter that I can just barely touch my thumb to my middle finger, and I have big hands. Remember, we're talking about shafts that you don't want to bend easily (the better to kill you with), not flexible shafts like you see in a modern kung-fu movie (the better to NOT kill you with).

Yep. Lion's on the money about the shaft. They are thicker and heavier than you might expect.