The Feudal Japanese Project - part 1.

Last Saturday, in the midst of a chest infection, I had a big hobby building day.

Being "All Tyranid Out" for the time being, and lamenting the fact that the illness had cancelled our gaming day, I turned to my long held dream of a big feudal Japanese wargaming army.

I posted before about 3D printing Kyoushuneko Miniatures and took the plunge head first, ending up with this:

That is a 40k combat patrol sized box, filled to the brim with Ashigaru, Samurai and Sohei foot soldiers, I have another one curing with Samurai cavalry in it!

Carrying on with the theme of the last post, and making them multiple game useful, I dug out the big oval bases, small plastic bases and magnets.

This was the result after an afternoon of work*:

Various units and characters awaiting base texturing and printing.

Twenty-one Yumi Ashigaru:

The Yumi is a Japanese longbow, and for the longest time was the preferred weapon of the Samurai as they fought as Horse Archers back in antiquity. They transitioned to foot soldiers over time, but the need for archer support remained.

I have twenty Ashigaru, the peasant class foot soldier, here including full command of Banner Bearer, Horn Blower and Ashigaru Kashira (sergeant, he has the Sashimono banner on the left hand base). Also included on the right hand base is a Samurai Leader for the unit, he's at the front on the very right of the base.

I have to add a third base of troops to this unit to make up the full sized "Large Unit" I plan on fielding for games like Hail Caesar.

Next are Eighteen Katana Samurai:

The Samurai, or Bushi, are the real draw of the armies of this period. They have a mystique about them, which thanks to some revisionist history** and the massive amount of pop-culture from Japan have cemented the idea of the "honourable" Samurai in peoples heads. 

These are the fantastic Katana armed Samurai, which I took pains to only add helmeted figures to the unit, this does mean some repeats of poses, but I can live with that for the effect of the massed unit.

The Sashimono banners are added to all Samurai miniatures in the force and look great when grouped together, again I need to add a third base eventually.

There are some odd numbers with the units I've shown, and I could probably have squeezed more figures onto those oval bases, so why haven't I?

Whilst well organised and disciplined, armies of the time were not as drilled and line focused as say the Romans were. Not having to form a rigid shield wall for their maniples, the armies of the far east would have battle lines which buckled and bulged in places. I wanted to reflect this by grouping the men on the base in a fashion which looked like a military unit with discipline, but reflected the fighting styles of the period and setting.

Likewise with the odd numbers, recruitment was a case of being sunning by your lord, and bringing troops with you, there was no set/rigid number for the size of a unit, that I've found, everything is estimated if it wasn't documented at the highest level.

With the armies being semi-fantasy in nature for this project, I think I can get away any historical inaccuracies in this regard.

I've typed on for far too long already, so I'll details the other units and characters I got built in the next post.

Until next time, have nice day...

*There isn't really any assembly necessary as these are single or two piece for the cavalry miniatures.

It's just cleaning off any remaining supports and regluing any bits which broke off due to the nature of resin.

The longest part was actually sticking all the Sashimono to the Samurai.

**Not so much revisionist as romanticism, the whole code of Bushido was created well after the Sengoku Jidai, the civil war which saw the peak of Samurai power and influence.

Like the Knights of the west, honour and chivalry could, and would, be thrown out the window at the first opportunity if it meant winning and surviving.