ToH - Sohei Warband.

First Steps:

Well, this is it folks, after going through the main core box, the Masked Men box and the Perry Miniatures Samurai models the other day, I spent a day off work assembling a full warband as I had a rare day with nothing at all to do.

Sohei - Buddist Warrior Monks - being one of my favourite parts of fuedal Japanese history had to feature somewhere near the beginning, I just wasn't expecting them to be the first warband to be built.

The fully built 18 point Warband.

Obviously, Masahiro is the leader, he is straight out of the Masked Men box, he is armed with a Bo (staff).

On the right is a Warrior Monk on his own, he will count as a Masked Man with Naginata (polearm).

One of the things I love about this game is that you are free to arm your models with whatever you wish, only Bows cost more points when given to Samurai (who may not field guns either).

Here we have a Banner Bearer I made by converting one of the Perry Miniatures monks to hold one of the banners from the Ashigaru sprues.
Alongside him is a group of 3 Warrior Monks in one of Warlord Games multibases. This allows easy movement of three figures together, when commoners are taken in groups they gain bonuses to their Honour and Perception stats until they start dying. Again the monks are going to count as Masked Men armed with Naginata.

Next we have the main core of the warband, two groups of Masked Men. the left is armed with Yari (spears) and the others are armed with Yumi (bows). These models are all made from the basic Ashigaru sprues with the metal Masked Men heads attached.

Finally we have a solo Masked Man armed with a bow. I converted this model using half of a pair of standing legs and half of a pair of kneeling legs and then added an ammunition backpack to the base for him to stand on. I wanted a more dynamic pose for him as I may count him as a"Sergeant of Archery" to add a bonus to the archer group when he is near those models.

I may use the last Warrior Monk model and convert him into being a Sergeant to give a free movement action to commoners when he is near them which would bring the warband to 20 points.
I am also thinking of adding a Ronin type character to them to get some more Samurai activations in the bag for the warband, but we will see.

Next Steps:
I am going to add sand to all the bases and get these guys primed white in the next couple of days so I can begin painting this weekend.

Until next time.

 - Lewis