Down with Feudalism

I was planning a VBCW battle today but life got in the way. I did however give my quick play Samurai rules a run out. These are similar to the rules I normally play with much less complexity (I try and make them work like movie sequences). There are 4 levels of figures. Level one are peasants and bandits and roll a D4, level 2 are Ashigaru and roll a D6, level 3 are samurai and roll a D8 and sword saints are level 4 and roll a Q10.
The battle was 10 levels per side with the local peasantry (8 level 1 peasants and a level 2 leader - Ko) attacking the local feudal lord Mifume (level 3), his son Kenki (level 3) and 2 level 2 ashigaru.

The battle opens with the peasants rushing the gate guarded by 2 ashigaru. 2 peasants reach but are killed. The ashigaru then advance and block the entrance and attack the next 2 peasants. 1 is killed but the other peasant kills one of the ashigaru.

Meanwhile Kenji has advanced to attack the peasant and Ko that have swung round to the left killing the peasant. There followed an intense fight between Ko and Kenji with Ko landing numerous his and pushing Kenji back for 2 turns but Kenji's armour kept saving him. 

Finally kenji land a killing blow.

At the gate the last ashigaru kills the last peasant and on the right Mifune attacks the 2 peasants there and kills one per turn

A good victory and the rules worked well with the armour and quality of the weapons being the major differences between the units. The peasants needed to gang up more on the higher level troops. A fun hour was had by all - well me anyway as it was a solo game.

This is a properly cool song.

Cutting in

Started to paint up some of the toys from yesterday (this post was originally going to be called "Can you tell what it is yet" but that now means something completely different now (if you don't know google Rolf Harris)

First up are the couple of Pictish houses. There are some issues with photography today with the light being a little weird and the camera picking up a diffraction effect. The consequence of this is that much of the shading has vanished - the stones are 3 difference greys for example

Next area couple of temple dogs, again shading dissappeared

Finally a witch in a basque (not sure who's the creepiest figure designers or their customers). shading more visible here. With the blue skin she is either Rogue Trooper or Scottish. 

She can be her Mum's apprentice

The Seven Samurai

Been a busy week. It's results week for school leavers here in the UK and I've just launched a new degree at my University- Earth Science. So I've been making and ruining kids lives all week - a weird experience. Still we've got a full compliment of students which is pretty good for a brand new degree so today I'm very hungover
I've finished painting the last of my Japanese figures. These are from a Northstar lucky bag and are really good figures. The naginata spears are made from plastic brush bristles with the ends flattened and shaped, much better than wire and less of a H&S risk to one's palms.

I also received some goodies this morning from Ainsty Castings, my 1st purchase from them and the quality is excellent. Some barricades and some crates, barrels and sacks. There are also some propane bottles from Hasslefree.

I'm generally trying to finish off some of my random unpainted figures to complete collections. It's the Border Reiver show in a few weeks and .... well you know.
This is the most appropriate song

Be My Enemy

So this week I painted some of my Northstar Samurai and started to build a really big hill. The Northstar lucky bags contained 17 samurai and I've painted the unarmoured ones.

I recently acquired some large chunks of polystyrene and so I bought a polystyrene cutter from e-bay. Like most things from e-bay it was a cheap piece of tat but it works, although finding 4.5V batteries was trickier than it used to be.
I had bought some MDF to make terrain boards and so cut and trimmed the blocks to form a really big hill. I then covered it in Mod Roc, my first go with this and I must say it was great fun and very theraputic. Areas that were too steep were bulked out with filler.
Next it will be painted with poster paints mixed with PVA to give it a good base colour, brown areas too steep to climb in normal battles but feasible in skirmishes, Finally some flocking, outcrops and foliage, more next time.

This seems an appropriate song about a hill in Wales https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlRrdbkyV8w&list=RDLlRrdbkyV8w#t=0