Samurai Progress

It has been a while since the last update on my 28mm Samurai for Ronin project, but I have not been idle. Since my last post I have finished my first 100 points of two new Buntai.

The first is a second Bushi buntai. This time a very small, elite team.

The Bushi faction restricts the models you can choose pretty heavily. Combined with the high points cost of the models, most 100 point Bushi buntai are likely to be more or less the same. You will have no more than five models, of which only one can be a Samurai. The rest will all be Ashigaru and, although you have some choice of weapons, no more than one can have a teppo (musket) and no more than half can have missile weapons.

There is an alternative option, however, and that is to choose only models of rank 3 or higher which means Samurai and above. With that in mind, my second Bushi buntai is made up of only two Samurai and one Hatamoto* on a warhorse.

 A confrontation between the Ii and Shimazu clans

Technically, this buntai is against the rules as the "what you will need" section at the start of the rulebook says you need 4 - 20 models per side. But I'm not sure this can be considered a hard and fast rule. The same section says you need counters, but if you chose to right down wounds and status changes on a piece of paper it couldn't really be called cheating. In any case, I plan to expand the buntai when I get the chance.

The Samurai are painted red in the style of the Red Devils of Ii Naomasa, who long term readers may remember were the basis for my 6mm Samurai army. The Red Devils are always a popular choice because they were one of the only clans to have anything close to a uniform colour scheme. Ii Naomasa himself was shot by a Shimazu clan sniper at the battle of Sekigahara, so they fit quite nicely with my first bushi buntai.

My third buntai are the Sohei, or Warrior Monks.

The Sohei are pretty good match for the Bushi. Their combat pool and fight values are about the same as the equivalent rank bushi and they have a similar array of weapons. They're more lightly armoured, but trade that for being fearless, which means they can ignore morale checks. They also include some rank 0 models, in the form of the two temple attendants armed with yari (spears). These guys are little more than speed bumps, but only cost eight points each, less than half the cost of the cheapest bushi model.

The models are all from Perry miniatures. I am using the bare-headed monks as Initiates and the one with a covered head as a full Sohei. I have no idea if this has any basis in history, but it's an easy way to tell the apart.

Most of the Monks are equipped with the fearsome naginata, one of those ambiguous weapons that sits somewhere between a pole-arm and a sword. Basically, if a pole-arm has a longer handle than blade and a sword a longer blade than handle, the naginata, like the Dacian falx, sits in between with a blade almost the exact length of the handle. In game terms, the naginata boosts damage (but not as much as a two-handed sword) and initiative (but not as much as a spear) and so is a good compromise weapon.

This picture is from a recent test battle between the Shimazu bushi and the Sohei. The battle was an absolute flat draw, which shows how good a match the two sides are.

More picture as soon as possible.

 *Hatamoto, meaning "men under the banner" where the retainers of a senior Samurai or Daimyo (Warlord). Ronin appears to be using the term to designate an elite Samurai, as they are the lowest rank that can ride a horse.

Painting Table Update - Ronin

I have been wanting to do something with 28mm historical Samurai for a while. I had a accumulated a few Perry Miniatures models, but hadn't figured out what to do with them until Osprey released Ronin as part of its wargames series.

Ronin is designed for small scale skirmishes with 4 to 20 models a side, which means I didn't have a lot of painting to do. But between Chaos Dwarfs, Bushido, Inquisitor, I only just got around to painting them.

The warbands/battle groups in Ronin are called Buntai. So here is my first Buntai.

They aren't supposed to have a very uniform look, but I tried to put a little bit of blue on all of them.

 

The Sashimono (back banners) show that they belong to the Shimazu clan. The Shimazu were based in the far west of Japan in Satsuma, far enough away from the centres of power to develop a few idiosyncrasies. They were one of the first clans to encounter westerners and to use muskets. But in spite of that, at the battle of Sekigahara in 1600, the clan leader Shimazu Yoshihiro turned up carrying a bow, which was considered quite quaint.

The Shimazu were unique among the Samurai in being involved in two overseas ventures. The first was the unsuccessful invasion of Korea in the 1590s. The second was in 1609 when, at the behest of the Shogun, they invaded the independent kingdom of Ryukyu, now the island chain of Okinawa, conquering it and absorbing it into Japan.

Two hundred years after this they were the instigators of the Satsuma rebellion whose history would be mangled by Tom Cruise and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles among others.

These first five are a 100 point Bushi buntai, consisting of three Ashigaru, including one with a teppo (musket), an Ashigaru-Gashira (basically a sergeant) and a Samurai. I'll be boosting it up to 200 points in due course and working on a couple of other Buntai so they have someone to fight. If you look in the background of the top two shots you see the beginnings of the next Buntai.

Random Factors

There has been a lot of discussion, much of it highly critical, about Games Workshop's new game, Dreadfleet. The bulk of the criticism seems to have been focused on the extent to which the game is dominated by random factors, leaving the outcome of the game too dependent on the roll of a dice. I don't want to get into the Dreadfleet debate at the moment as I haven't played it yet, but the discussion did get me thinking about randomness in gaming.

There currently exists a theoretical dividing line between looser, friendlier, 'beer and pretzels' rules and more competitive games. The latter being considered a genuine contest of skill with rigorous rules and less scope for randomness to play a part. The odd thing is, that if you want to design a contest of skill you probably couldn't find a worse field of human endeavor to base it on than warfare.

Lets take a look at one significant example, the Battle of Sekigahara, the largest Samurai battle in history which saw over 160,000 men take the field. On one side was Tokugawa Ieyasu, future founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate that would rule Japan for 200 years. On the other, Ishida Mitsunari, loyal defender of the Toyetomi family, that of the Toyetomi Hideyoshi previous ruler of Japan, Toyetomi Hideyoshi and his young son Hideyori. At stake, nothing less than the future of the country.

Despite the stakes and the historical impact that echoed down the centuries to this day (For example, Tokyo only became the capital of Japan because of this battle) very little hinged on military tactics on the the day. Mitsunari had the slightly stronger position on the high ground, but what swung the battle in Ieyasu's favour was that a good proportion of Mitsunari's army refused to move when ordered or actively switched sides. A lot of this had to do with Mitsunari's personality, he was disliked and distrusted by his own side and had insulted several high ranking supporters, and much due to Ieyasu's political maneuvering before hand, but in the end the battle was decided by events outside of the field.

The point illustrated by this battle, is that so much of the outcome on the day is beyond the General's control, at least once they take to the field. Sekigahara is a nightmare to recreate as a wargame because the betrayals either have to be predictable, in which case the Mitsunari player is at a disadvantage but is able to plan for the betrayals in a way that the historical Mitsunari could not, or the betrayals are determined randomly, in which case the outcome is largely out of the control of the players. Sekigahara is a particularly good example of the outcome of a battle being determined by chance, but it is scarcely unique.

A while back, I read a post on a message board in which a gamer complained about the the command and control rules in Black Powder. The crux of the complaint was that real General's don't roll dice to determine if their orders will be carried out. The point missed was that these rules simulate, in an abstract way, the extent to which a general's orders can be lost, misunderstood or simply not followed. There are abundant examples. The Charge of the Light Brigade is probably the most famous example of orders being misinterpreted. Another, less well known example is Agincourt. Although remembered as the famous defeat of the flower of French chivalry by English Archers, what is less well known is that the French general could see it coming. Unfortunately for him, as he had born a commoner elevated to his rank by skill rather than birth, his orders were largely ignored by his Knights.

In the end the outcome of many battles is down to luck, by which I mean the chance collision of uncontrollable factors. To be a good simulation of warfare, a good wargame needs to reflect this. This applies to command and control, but also to troop performance. When committing his forces the general should know that unit x will defeat unit y 9 times out of 10, but also that unit y will be triumphant 1 in 10 times and, crucially, have no way of knowing if this is one of those times. Good generalship is often about gambling with the most favourable odds, not certainties.

It is worth remembering that real generals didn't do this for fun or as an attempt simply to prove their tactical skill. Mitsunari and Ieyasu were in contest for control of Japan. Sekigahara was about contesting the forces they could marshall. There was no use afterwards complaining that the rules were unfair.

Of course, making a wargame a realistic simulation of warfare is not the same thing as making it a good game. This is why some famous historical battles are better to wargame than others. It is also why most wargames tend to allow both players roughly equal forces or skew the victory conditions to make it a contest of skill. Historical Generals didn't fight for fun and wargamers don't play to contest the fate of nations. If Dreadfleet is a terrible game (and I mean if) then arguing that its realistic is no defence.

However, it is still worth considering that adding random elements to a wargame may make it more realistic, rather than less.

The Red Devils march

After more than two months of on and off painting my Warmaster Medieval Samurai army is complete.

Well I say complete...

This army is made up of the miniatures from Baccus Samurai starter army for Warmaster Medieval, with the exception of me leaving out one unit of foot Samurai. The reason for this is that Baccus actually make two types of foot Samurai, advancing and charging. A 1,000 point Warmaster army can contain 4 units of foot Samurai and I want 2 of each. However, the starter army came with 3 advancing units. So, with the first batch complete I now have to order 2 more Samurai units.

This is actually only the beginning of my plans. My Red Devils need someone to fight and so I will have to start work on a second samurai army, again of about 1000 points. My current plan is to do one based around the Shimazu clan of Satsuma who were famous for the feigned retreat tactics and made good use of snipers. It was a shimazu clan arquebusier who gave Ii Naomasa the wound that ultimately killed him.

This is a unit of mounted Samurai. In Warmaster they count as shock cavalry which means they are based facing the narrow edge of the base. This allows more stands to get into combat for extra impact. I have two of these painted up, the maximum allowed in a 1,000 point army.

They have been painted with completely red armour, like the foot samurai, but I tried to vary the colours of the horses with a few different shades of brown or grey and one or two black.

Ii Naomasa himself, though he could also represent his son Naotaka if necessary. He is shown here with an attendant carrying his gear in a horo, or large sack and accompanied by a messenger. In reality a Samurai of his rank would have been accompanied by a hundred or more attendants, weapon bearers, messengers, etc. These two are just a sample.

The golden horns were an addition to the model made with green stuff. They look a little crude, but work well at a distance. Remember this model is 6mm scale and is less than a centimetre tall. The horns were absolutely compulsory, given that Naomasa is famous for wearing them.

Naomasa is based in the traditional Warmaster character fashion on a 2p coin.

Kimata Morikatsu, one of Naomasa's closest retainers. He was assigned to him by Tokugawa Ieyasu himself and served Naomasa then Naotaka for the rest of his life.

His official role was as commander of the Red Devil vanguard and the most senior Taisho. This term doesn't translate perfectly, but can be considered equivalent to general.

In Warmaster terms he is a Samurai hero. He is based on a 2p like Naomasa.

The army here is arranged in an approximation of the Hoshi formation. This was a common attacking formation were missile fire would break up the enemy before mounted Samurai charged in in a wedge formation.

At the front we have three teppo formations, mixed missile troops with hand guns and bows. Directly behind them in the centre are two Mounted Samurai units acting as the vanguard. Their commander, Kimata Morikatsu, is directly behind them. They are supported by a second division of foot samurai directly behind on the left and right.

On the left and right behind the teppo are Yari Ashigaru, low class fighters with long spears who fought like pikeman and guard the flanks.

Behind the Samurai is a middle division of more Yari Ashugaru, with the commander, Ii Naomasa behind them. This was quite common for Samurai armies. The general would rarely engage in front line combat, instead watching the unfolding battle from a camp at the rear and issuing orders.

This was not a question of keeping him safe, but more about ensuring that the battle was well directed. If the battle was lost the losing general would probably commit suicide in any case.

Of course Ii Naomasa had plenty of opportunities to see front line combat, as he would usually command one part of a larger force usually under the command of Tokugawa Ieyasu. This formation shows how they might have fought if the Red Devils fought alone.

At the back is a supporting Teppo Ashigaru unit to guard the rear.

I don't have quite enough units for a proper Hoshi formation. There should be a clear bodyguard covering Naomasa on both sides as well as two rear flanking units and more missile troops at the back, but it gives some sense of how the army might have deployed. Whether this would be an effective formation for Warmaster is less certain.

As before, I have more pictures on photobucket. Take a look at them here

With the Red Devils finished I am taking a break from painting 6mm. I have actually started work on painting a Warhammer Chaos army. Most of the models have been hanging around unpainted for ages so I thought it was about time I got them finished. Once they're done I'll be ordering more Samurai and hopefully soon have enough for a full scale battle. Watch this space.

Hikone castle rises

Ever since I decided to put together a Samurai army I wanted a castle to go with them.

When I decided on 6mm scale it became even more important. The reason for this is that, while I have a lot of scenery for 28mm scale, much of it isn't really transferable to 6mm scale. The hills are fine, they just become bigger hills or even mountains. But 28mm forests don't work so well. I have seen people use large scale trees with their small figures and while they are fine for gaming purposes, they never look quite right.

Most importantly, I needed buildings, specifically Japanese style buildings in the right scale. This is easier said than done. Not many manufacturers make 6mm Japanese buildings. In any case, I was keen to save some money and wanted to do it myself.

Starting with the castle was probably not a sensible idea. But I like a challenge and loved the idea of my army of Samurai lined up with the castle in the background.

I ummed and ahhed for some time before deciding on a castle to model. I thought about creating a generic castle, but was worried that it wouldn't look authentic. I considered Gifu castle, because the Red Devils had fought there and seen some action.

But in the end my eyes were drawn to Hikone castle. This was the castle of the Red Devils themselves and, fortunately, one of the few Japanese castles to still be substantially authentic. Most are reconstructions. This meant I could find lots of nice photographs of the castle for reference.

Of course when I say 'castle' I am really referring to the keep, the large central building within the castle compound. The whole castle is made up of dozens of buildings surrounded by walls. I plan to do more buildings and some walls, but I had to start somewhere.

Hikone Castle keep as it appears today

Hikone wasn't constructed until after the battle of Sekigahara, and was not completed until after Ii Naomasa's death, so it was almost certainly never besieged. Using it in battle would be necessarily anachronistic. But I decided I didn't care. I could play an 'alteranate history' game or use it to stand in for another castle. The chance to build the Red Devil's own castle to go with the army was too good to pass up.

Unfortunately I had a great deal of trouble finding any plans or blueprints for the castle. In the end I relied on a dodgy translation of the Hikone city website, that stated the castle was 21 metres tall and measuring numerous photos to work out the scale of everything. The results are less than precise, but should do for gaming purposes.

I also wanted to be able to put models inside, so I decided to build it with three seperate detachable floors. I am clearly insane.

I started by making the walls of each floor using foamboard (two thin layers of card with a layer of foam in between). Foamboard is nice and thick and can be pinned easily for extra stability. I then gave the first two floors a flat roof. This allowed the second floor to sit on top of the first and the third to sit on top of the second. The flat roofs were made using 1mm thick card.

After that I made the curved roofs out of more thick card. These had to be carefully cut to match the design of the castle and still allow each floor to be detached.


This work in progress shot shows the keep at this stage. At this point I made a major blunder. I measured the heights for each floor, taking into account the added depth needed to clear the roof of the floor beneath. Unfortunately, I screwed up the second floor and made it 10mm too short. It dissapeared under the roof of the first floor. I ended up having to scrap the whole second floor and start again.

After that I neede to texture the roofs. I spent a lot of time looking around for appropriate thin round objects to stick to the rooves to give them an authentic look. In the end I settled on barbecue skewers, which were probably a bit too thick, but look okay in this scale. I cut them into small pieces and glued them on to the rooves covering up any visiable card.

I added windows and wood panels with more card. Finally I had to build the base. All Japanese castles are built on a mound of tightly packed stones for added defence. These mounds are fantastically tough and in many cases the mound of stones is now all that remains of the castle. I build my mound using more foamboard with a flat card 'roof' for the castle to sit on top of.

Completed, but unpainted castle.

Finally I painted it. This wasn't too hard as the castle is mostly black and white. I gave the whole think an undercoat of black primer before painting the walls in two coats of white. The roofs were touched up with more black, to give them good coverage before being drybrushed, first with Tamiya Nato black and the German grey. Finally, I gave the windows a quick go with German grey to simulate pains of glass.

Painted Keep

So far, I have only partly textured the mound, by gluing a layer of small stones. I intend to add smaller stones to fill in the gaps before painting.

Painted keep with partly texture, but unpainted mound

This was an ambitious project and took the better part of a month to complete. I still need to add more, I think a few extra details, like the gold stars on the original castle would look good, but I have to figure out to do them. I also intend to add more buildings, the keep has at least two further buildings attached, and no castle would be complete without some walls.

First, though I think I will do some smaller buildings that I can use as a village. After the Castle that shouldn't be too challenging.

I am very pleased with the three level effect. It means that a good six warmaster stands can be placed inside the castle ready to defend it. Given that Warmaster Medieval has siege rules, this is quite a tempting prospect.

The three levels of Hikone castle keep

If you're interested in seeing any more pictures of the model you can find them here: http://s663.photobucket.com/albums/uu353/Humorous_Conclusion/Hikone%20Castle%20model/

Hopefully, I will have pictures of my completed Ii Red Devil army soon.

The Ii Red Devils (in 6mm)

A while back I mentioned that I had been looking into collecting Samurai models and here are the results.

These are 6mm scale samurai from baccus miniatures. For my first historical wargames army I choose to build an army for Warmaster Medieval - Games Workshop's recent rejig of the Warmaster game to cover Medieval armies. I choose this game for two main reasons, firstly I really like the fantasy version and it's grand scale approach to warfare. Secondly, because they have actually bothered to produce a Samurai army list, which few others have managed.


Fields of Glory are doing one and you can get one for DBM, but I find both of these games a little fiddly and over fussy.

Of course Warmaster is designed primarily for 10mm scale. But I choose 6mm scale because I it makes for even larger and more impressive forces and because Baccus is dead cheap. I picked up a 1000 point army at Salute for only £40 (including the cost of the bases). A 10mm scale army of the same points value would have cost as much as twice that.

These are Senngoku Jidai (or age of warring states) Samurai. This period encompasses the 16th and early 17th century and was a period of near constant civil war as well as great military change. The Samurai became less important as new weapons such as the arquebus, brought by Portuguese traders, placed greater emphasis on large formations of lower class retainers called Ashigaru.

Unit of foot samurai armed with yari (long spears).

Yari Ashigaru unit. The difference between the models in this scale is not huge. The Samurai are slightly heavier armoured. So I painted the somewhat differently to make them stand out.

Ashigaru Teppo unit. Teppo was the Japanese word for Arquebus. Though it's hard to see here, this unit actually includes both arquebusiers and archers. This was quite common during this period as the archers could keep up fire allowing the Arquebusiers to reload.

A unit in Warmaster consists of 3 stands of 40mm X 20mm. The number of models on the stand doesn't matter as long as the stands are the same size. In this last image the stands are positioned side by side for maximum fire effect.

As can be seen, the painted detail at this scale is pretty low. The point is to make the models look good (or at least decent in numbers).

I choose to make my Samurai army represent the army of the Ii clan as lead by Ii Naomasa. It took me quite a while to come up with a theme for my army. I was very keen to ground it in some kind of historical fact. I'm not a purists, but I didn't want my army to stand out as obviously ahistorical and I wanted a good hook to build my army around.

I found my hook in the rather excellent Samurai the World of the Warrior by Stephen Turnbull and published by Osprey (they of the million and one military history books). This is an unusual Osprey book as it is something of a prestige piece of over 200 pages, though it contains the usual excellent illustrations and photos. I picked it up in a discount bookshop in Brighton for an absolute bargain price of £5.99. It's a great overview of the Samurai class as a whole through its history and a nice introduction if you're thinking of getting into Samurai wargaming.


In one chapter I stumbled across the story of Ii Naomasa and immediately grabbed it for my army concept. I am surprised the story hasn't been turned into an Anime or Manga, it seems so ideal.

At the start of the 16th century the Ii family were retainers of the Imagawa family, who had ambitions for conquest. This lead them into an attack on the province of Owari. At the time this was ruled by a minor Daimyo (warlord) called Oda Nobunaga. Unfortunately for the Imagawa, Nobunaga was to become the first of three great unifiers of Japan and would have conquered the whole country if he had not been assassinated by one of his own generals.

The attack turned into a disaster and the heads of the Ii and Imagawa clans were both killed at the battle of Okehazama.

This disaster lead the new head of the Imagawa, Imagawa Ujizane to become somewhat paranoid. So much so that he accused the Ii of plotting against him. He had the head of the family and his brothers and sons murdered. Only his grandson, the four year old Ii Naomasa survived, hidden in a buddhist Monastary by his aunt, who was a Nun.

When he grew to adulthood Naomasa went seeking his fortune. With no way to reclaim his ancestral lands he offered his services to another local Daimyo. He fell in with Tokugawa Ieyasu. This turned out to be astute, Ieyasu was the third great unifier and would go on to found the Tokugawa Shogunate that would rule Japan for 250 years.

Naomasa proved valuable to his master , saving him from an assassination attempt in 1576 and helping to capture Takatenjin castle in 1581. He rose quickly through the ranks.

Naomasa fought with Tokugawa at the battle of Nagashino were the Takeda clan were defeated with ranks of arquebus fire. At that battle Naomasa observed the Takeda retainer Yamagata Masakage in action. He dressed his followers in red armour and Ieyasu suggested that Naomasa follow the practice. Naomasa did, but took it to even greater extremes. His samurai were clad entirely in red lacquered armour, right down to their spears. This was unusual for Samurai armies, which generally did not adopt any standard uniform. Naomasa himself took to wearing a helmet with huge golden horns.

A reconstruction of Naomasa's famous golden-horned armour

The red armour and reputation for ferocity of the Ii troops caused them to be nicknamed the Red Devils. Naomasa himself was sometimes referred to as akaoni (literally red devil).

Naomasa fought for Ieyasu for a numbr of years and ultimately at the battle of Sekigahara, which established Ieyasu as Shogun. Naomasa received a bullet wound in the elbow at this battle which Ieyasu tended to personally, suggesting something of the high regard in which the soon-to-be Shogun held him. Naomasa was well rewarded after the battle with lands in Omi province. But Naomasa never fully recovered from his wound and died in 1602. He was ultimately succeeded by his son Ii Naotaka who maintained the family tradition and the Ii family would continue to be influential up until the fall of the Shogunate in 1868.

The Red armour was enormously appealing for me, both because it looks striking and because I have painted an all red army before (Warhammer Dwarves) and know how to do it. Along with Naomasa's own story this made for a highly characterful army.

So far I have two each of the Yari Ashigaru and foot Samurai as well as four units of Teppo Ashigaru complete. I still have two more Ashigaru, two more Samurai, 2 units of mounted samurai and the army commanders to paint. Once these are done I will post some pictures of the complete army in all its red-armoured glory.