Ish’s Samurai Project

[Ish]

Back when WHFB 8th Edition was all too briefly popular, I assembled a large army of Tomb Kings, but grew bored with it and sold it; assembled a large army of Dark Elves, but grew bored with it and sold it; and then I assembled a large Empire army using samurai and ashigaru figures. I absolutely loved it... But then came the End Times. WHFB was no more!

Soon afterwards I packed up everything I owned, stuck it in storage, and headed to Oregon via Amtrak with only one suitcase and a laptop bag.

I only recently had my old samurai army shipped to me. Today, 16 December 2019, marks the four year anniversary of them going into storage... I decided to take an inventory.

Edited December 16, 2019 by Ish

[Ish]

So, as you can see, four years in storage and a cross-continent journey via UPS truck hasn’t been kind. A lot of broken weapons, some broken banner, numerous models that have separated from the bases, and so forth...

All of my mounted samurai, half my ashigaru with muskets, and two-thirds of my ashigaru with bows have apparently vanished into the Warp.

Here’s what’s left:

• Various “hero” models; three mounted, one fantasy samurai on foot with a great weapon, and one fantasy Chinese wizard/priest guy;

• War elephant with howdah (the plan was to convert this to a Celestial Arcanium);

• Steamtank (Steamtank);

• 18 Ashigaru with naginata (Halberdiers);

• 20 Samurai with katanas (Greatswords);

• 15 Ashigaru with muskets (Handgunners);

• 10 Ashigaru with longbows (Archers); and,

• 50 Ashigaru with yari pikes (Spearmen).

Gonna need a lot of repair work, but I’ve got plenty of spare parts.

 

[Andrewgeddon]

Excited to watch this army progress! Definitely some cool models in here, tons of character!

[Ish]

Took a few minutes to throw the above list into The 9th Builder, bearing in mind that I’ve never played T9A and don’t really know what I’m doing. It’s 2,315 Points, leaving me wiggle room for magic items and special banners. This seems like a decent 2,500 Point list to me:

 

--- Characters ---

165 -  Samurai Hero on Foot Marshal, General, Halberd (5)

125 -  Sorcerer Hero Wizard, Divination

--- Core ---

525 - 50x Ashigaru with Yari Heavy Infantry, Spear (50), Champion, Musician, Standard Bearer

225 - 20x Ashigaru with Naginata Heavy Infantry support unit, Halberd (20), Champion, Musician, Standard Bearer

260 - 15x Ashigaru with Muskets Light Infantry, Handguns, Champion, Musician, Standard Bearer

135 - 10x Ashigaru with Bows State Militia

--- Special ---

405 - 20x Samurai with Katana Imperial Guard, Great Weapon (80), Champion, Musician, Standard Bearer

--- Sunna's Fury ---

475 -  Steam Tank Steam Tank

--- Total ---

2,315 Points

[Andrewgeddon]

44 minutes ago, Ish said:

Took a few minutes to throw the above list into The 9th Builder, bearing in mind that I’ve never played T9A and don’t really know what I’m doing. It’s 2,315 Points, leaving me wiggle room for magic items and special banners. This seems like a decent 2,500 Point list to me:

 

--- Characters ---

165 -  Samurai Hero on Foot Marshal, General, Halberd (5)

125 -  Sorcerer Hero Wizard, Divination

--- Core ---

525 - 50x Ashigaru with Yari Heavy Infantry, Spear (50), Champion, Musician, Standard Bearer

225 - 20x Ashigaru with Naginata Heavy Infantry support unit, Halberd (20), Champion, Musician, Standard Bearer

260 - 15x Ashigaru with Muskets Light Infantry, Handguns, Champion, Musician, Standard Bearer

135 - 10x Ashigaru with Bows State Militia

--- Special ---

405 - 20x Samurai with Katana Imperial Guard, Great Weapon (80), Champion, Musician, Standard Bearer

--- Sunna's Fury ---

475 -  Steam Tank Steam Tank

--- Total ---

2,315 Points

Seems like a good start! Only thing I would suggesting for a list of this size (4500 points is the "standard" size for 9th Age) would be to upgrade the wizard to an Adept. An apprentice wizard only gets 1 spell, and can only select them from their hereditary spell or their #1 spell in the lore. Adept gets you two spells, and you can select from hereditary + spells #1 - 4 of the lore.

[Ish]

I’m figuring I’ll get what I have repaired and rebuilt, then grow from there. I definitely want to add cannons, mortars, and mounted samurai.

I’ve also got a lot of ideas for “unit filler” miniature dioramas that should allow me to stretch these existing unit numbers a bit. Taiko drums, small shrines, equipment wagons, and so forth. 

Plus, eventually I’ll have to add a Great Big Dragon. Every fantasy army eventually acquires a Great Big Dragon.

[Koyote]

Four words: SAGA Age of Magic.

 

 

[Ish]

1 hour ago, Koyote said:

Four words: SAGA Age of Magic.

 

Saga: Age of Magic -- Great Kingdoms Army List [8 Points]

• 1x Samurai Hero with Katana, Warlord on foot                       ( 0 Points )
• 1x Samurai Hero with Halberd, Captain on foot, Heavy Weapon  (-6 Levies)
• 8x Samurai with Katana, Hearthguard on foot                        ( 2 Points )
• 16x Ashigaru with Yari, Warriors on foot                                 ( 2 Points )
• 1x Steam Tank The Incredible and Extraordinary Machine (2 Points)
• 10x Ashigaru with Muskets, Levies with Firearms             ( 1 Points )
• 8x Ashigaru with Muskets, Levies with Firearms             ( 1 Points )

This is a pretty solid block of troops, who should be pretty durable. Plop the Warlord in with the Hearthguard, have the Captain lead the Warriors, and count on using the Enfilade order a lot with the Levies. It would probably be more efficient to drop the Steam Tank and bring more Warriors and/or Hearthguard... But, c'mon: STEAM TANK!

[Guest]

No wonder you were so insistent on waiting for your old army to arrive, those looks great.

[Ish]

30 minutes ago, paxmiles said:

No wonder you were so insistent on waiting for your old army to arrive, those looks great.

Thanks! Looking at them, I see a lot of areas where my painting skills have improved a lot since I started on these guys, I’m still no Golden Daemon winner, but I’m gonna spend my time repairing them and tweaking their paint jobs a just bit. (God bless whomever invented washes and inks.)

Really wish my mounted Samurai hadn’t been vanished. My dad suspects they were in one of the boxes that fell victim to a flooded basement and backed up sewer. (Clearly the work of scheming servants of the Skaven!) Cavalry models ain’t cheap... It’s $32.00 for twelve of ‘em! Highway robbery! 

[Guest]

27 minutes ago, Ish said:

Thanks! Looking at them, I see a lot of areas where my painting skills have improved a lot since I started on these guys, I’m still no Golden Daemon winner, but I’m gonna spend my time repairing them and tweaking their paint jobs a just bit. (God bless whomever invented washes and inks.)

Painting can always be improved later, if you don't like it now. But the base model limits how well you can really paint it. Those models have good potential. And you already have a lot of them. Would be very hard to rebuild such a force, especially with those models out of circulation (pretty sure).

Another approach, could always call those Daemons....I love how flexible T9A is in models.

Undying Legions (T9A Tomb Kings) also have rules for a Terracotta Army. Might look into that.

[Ish]

They’re not out of circulation, thankfully. Wargames Factory went belly up, but Warlord Games bought all their designs and tooling. They seem to be sold out a lot though, I suspect they probably only fire up the production line on them a couple times a years 

I’m pretty much good on basic infantry though, so all I really want to add are cavalry and artillery. I like the Wargames Factory/Warlord Games mounted samurai, since they have great cross-compatibility with their infantry (and I have so many bitz from infantry). For artillery, I plan to buy Perry Brothers and/or The Assault Group pewter crew figures and use GW’s Dwarf and Empire war machines. 

And, of course, eventually I gotta get a Big Honkin’ Dragon. 

[InfestedKerrigan]

Which one is Tom Cruise?

[Ish]

57 minutes ago, InfestedKerrigan said:

Which one is Tom Cruise?

No Tom Cruise, but I might add Toshiro Mifune and six of his friends.

[InfestedKerrigan]

41 minutes ago, Ish said:

No Tom Cruise, but I might add Toshiro Mifune and six of his friends.

Ah, so Starlord plus the cast of Training Day.

[InfestedKerrigan]

Also, this is me realizing Training Day and Mag 7 '16 had the same director.

[InfestedKerrigan]

On topic: Death to the false Emperor!  >_>

[Koyote]

On 12/16/2019 at 4:03 PM, Ish said:

Saga: Age of Magic -- Great Kingdoms Army List [8 Points]

• 1x Samurai Hero with Katana, Warlord on foot                       ( 0 Points )
• 1x Samurai Hero with Halberd, Captain on foot, Heavy Weapon  (-6 Levies)
• 8x Samurai with Katana, Hearthguard on foot                        ( 2 Points )
• 16x Ashigaru with Yari, Warriors on foot                                 ( 2 Points )
• 1x Steam Tank The Incredible and Extraordinary Machine (2 Points)
• 10x Ashigaru with Muskets, Levies with Firearms             ( 1 Points )
• 8x Ashigaru with Muskets, Levies with Firearms             ( 1 Points )

This is a pretty solid block of troops, who should be pretty durable. Plop the Warlord in with the Hearthguard, have the Captain lead the Warriors, and count on using the Enfilade order a lot with the Levies. It would probably be more efficient to drop the Steam Tank and bring more Warriors and/or Hearthguard... But, c'mon: STEAM TANK!

Looks good.  Just remember, with the exception of certain unit types (heroes, monsters, creatures, warmachines, etc), units must number between 4 and 12 models, so you'll have to reconfigure our unit of Warriors.

The steamtank is cool, but then again, so are monsters, such as these Oni that I found on Etsy.

 

Titan Forge Games has a terrific Dragon Empire model line with lots of east-Asian themed troops, monsters, and even war machines.

http://titan-forge.com/92-dragon-empire

One of these would work great as a Warlord mounted on a Beast

 

Or if you really want to splurge...

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ish]

Oh, there’s a ton of cool East Asian inspired stuff out there, some of which will definitely make it into the army someday. Step one is to repair and finish what I’ve got now though.

 

[Romans832]

On 12/20/2019 at 10:33 AM, Koyote said:

 

FREAKING SICK!

[Ish]

I'm a long way off from adding the Big Honkin' Dragon and that Titan Forge one is awesome, but I'm currently leaning toward the Arcane Dragon from Warploque Miniatures:
 

 

[Ish]

The rebuilding begins....

[Ish]

Work in progress shot of my Arcane Engine.

The  mounted figure is an old find from a “clearance bin” from a Chinese wargame that I do not know the name of (all the packaging was in Chinese) and he’s very out of scale with the rest of my figs. The plan is to paint him up as a sort of jade statue, then put a couple of figures on foot to count as crew (a samurai to guard the sacred statue and an peasant to wrangle the elephant).

And yes, I know, the Japanese never used war-elephants. They also didn’t have jade statues that shot beams of magical fire. It’s a fantasy game, work with me.

[Ish]

So... I was re-reading the Empire of Sonnstahl rules and it looks like if I want my unit of Heavy Infantry with halberds (ashigaru with naginata) to be able to function as a Support Unit, they need to be 20 Models. I’ve currently only got fifteen...

Well, lads, looks like you won’t be assigned to the musket unit after all...

 

[Ish]

Adding some “jade” to my samurai army.

First is an Imperial Guardian Lion (a.k.a. Foo Dog) statue to serve as unit filler or an objective marker.

Second is a large statute that will serve as the focal point for my war shrine.