Ōuchi Clan Ashigaru

   After a break of a few months with other projects distracting me* I decided I needed to get back to work on my Ōnin War Samurai project** and get on with the opponents the Ōuchi clan. Starting as normal with the regular foot troops, which for feudal Japan is the Ashigaru.

*as per usual

**slightly grander title than a colour scheme I found online

   I found a single picture online that claimed to have the colours worn by Ōuchi clan Ashigaru and with no knowledge of my own, I decided to take it as gospel and get painting.

  I've decided I need to focus on getting a few key projects finished asap, so hopefully you won't see too much of me bouncing around for a bit.

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Hosokawa Samurai

   Last for this side of the project we have the units of Samurai. There were a few moving parts on this one when it came to building the units and painting them.

   The first big decision was how big to do the units as Lion Rampant does regular units sizes and halves the unit size for "elite" units like knights, however, reading how most gamers who play this period do, they treat Samurai as slightly better regular troops and save the elite slot for Hatamoto Retinue, which seem to be elite Samurai. So, that is what I did.

   The second was a colour scheme. I decided to make this units a bit more interesting and to stand out for their Ashigaru regulars by letting each guy wear their own colours - to an extent - so the units are mixed. I think this helps the models stand out as elite, while not needing to be very elite in their rules. I then gave them all their back banners to tie them into the army again.

The two units of Samurai

The Samurai Archers

The Commander

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15mm Ashigaru Archers

   The next unit finished for my 15mm Feudal Japanese project is a unit of Ashigaru Archers, again, from the Hosokawa clan. Painted in the same way as they melee weapon carrying colleagues, the thing I struggled to find out was what the rule for their back banners was as half my guys have their hats on their back so can't fit a flag. As far as I can work out, there isn't really a rule for who does and does not wear them, but having a 50/50 split in a unit probably isn't massively historical, but limited by the figures I've done what I can.

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The Land Of the Rising Sun - but 15mm

   Someone at our club was having a clear out and one of the boxes I managed to pick up was a box of 15mm Samurai. I think they were bought to play DBA but I was thinking Lion Rampant.

   I normally do bases of 24 for 15mm Lion Rampant but I wanted this project to be fairly quick and cheap, so I've gone with 10 on a half depth base - I can always double up bases and get someone that looks ok against my other stuff that way.

   Upon checking the box, I think the only figures supplied were actual Samurai from Two Dragons, so I looked online and added some Ashigaru to my collection along with back banners for every figure that could have one as none were supplied.

   I decided to go with the same colours as my 28mm, which meant I had to check what decals my 28mm Samurai were painted in as I had no idea and it turns out that it is Hosokawa clan - although the symbol doesn't seem quite right to me. Then I found one of their opponents from the Ōnin War in a different enough scheme to be interesting and this seemed to be the Ōuchi clan. This is not my area of expertise, so any mistakes are completely due to my own ignorance.

I should probably get on with the rest of the project

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The Land Of The Rising Sun

   I'm still not doing much in the way of hobby but I thought I'd go back over some projects that never made it onto the blog for whatever reason.

    One of the books I was encouraged to read during Lockdown 1 was Shogun by James Clavell and this led to an undesirable outcome, a new project in a bit of the world that has never held much fascination for me beyond liking Pokemon.

   I decided to do it as cheaply as I could but still make it worth doing, so I bought a starter warband for Test Of Honour from Footsore Miniatures, an extra pack of figures from Steel Fist Miniatures and a few bits of scenery from Blotz and got going. I've not actually bought the rulebook yet, so that might need to be the next thing I look at. 

   I try not to be negative on this blog as its not the tone I want to go for, but there is something I'd like to get out of the way before I bring the tone back up. I'm really not a fan of the tiny wrist joints on metal models that the newer multipart Footsore Models have started to put out - I think its the bits not sculpted by Bill - so the stuff for Gangs of Rome, Mortal Gods and Test of Honour, it just makes some of the models* a nightmare to build and I doubt they will survive much in the way of gaming, even with pinning. The banner poles particularly worry me but I'm not sure what Footsore could have done about those.

*Not every model but a handful

   The figures in this post are a single Samurai away from a minimum warband - which is just my laziness on show, but I have all the Footsore Ashigaru finished (with just some Wargames Factory ones that came free with Wargames Illustrated to add to my painting list). This is one of those projects where I'm not 100% if it will ever make it onto the table, but as a hobby project it's earnt it's money back, so who really cares.

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