Ashigaru Teppo unit for TSUCHIYA MASATSUGU

Well I am on a roll. Painted more figures in this last month than I have for the whole year. That's not saying much, but at least I am painting. I am not sure which is harder, Highlanders or Samurai. Tartans drive me crazy, and Samurai are so busy. I think I prefer Samurai over Highlanders, but in either case they take me a loooonnnnggg time to paint. But I am having fun with the Samurai right now and that's all that matters.

I've got three complete units for my Saga Warband. I have started in on painting a unit of Cavalry, and my Warlord. If I get those done I will have a 4 point and very playable Warband. My goal is to paint two more units (at least) so I can have a 6 point unit to face my nemesis from the South, the dreaded Torok the Terrible, in September. I think I just might have enough gas to see it through. We will see.

Here are a few snaps of my latest unit, an Ashigaru Teppo (Arquebus) unit flying Masatsugu colors.

....and below the unit together, ready on the firing line!!!

Thanks for looking...

Cheers

Kevin

DATE MASAMUNE Promo figure disaster....

Had a nervous breakdown yesterday. Got a promo figure with a magazine of Date Masamune. I was excited. Then.....

As I was mounting the nice little fellow an ankle broke off. No problem I says to myself, I'll glue ankle to base then Warlord onto that. It worked but....

As I assembled a banner man to put on the Warlord base, Date kept bending this way and that, waaaayyyy to easily. I kept saying to myself this is going to work, but as I struggled to get banner man on base it dawned on me that somebody would pick up my figure, innocently, and after all the time I spent painting it, it would break off. Soooo...... 

I ripped the cheap piece of crap off the base, made with too much lead in it (or whatever), and threw it away. I was steamed to say the least! I then tried to make my own plastic one (from Wargames Factory plastic set), became frustrated, and so gave up for the day. So I dug out the POS out of garbage to maybe one day make a fishing lure out of it (also because I felt really guilty about doing such a thing). 

[Exhibit A, POS material, but nice sculpt]

Then today happened.....

Good night sleep, a tasty breakfast, and I was off to the hobby room to see if I could make this right. Digging through my wargames factory plastic samurai kit I slowly started pulling out pieces I was going to use to assemble my new Date figure. Here is a picture of what his helmet looks like.

So with this in mind, I grabbed some plastic strut and glued on a very small piece to the front of the helmet I had chosen. When it had dried I carefully sanded it down a bit and then glued on the very cool half crescent of whatever that big ole thing is supposed to be. I used the lead piece that came with the promo figure as the plastic kit has nothing like this in it. 

I am very happy with how it turned out, and I have him in a much more dynamic action pose. "Forward you rogues! Do you want to live forever!".... oh wait I think that was Fredrick the Great that said that... anyways here is what I came up with. Hope you like it.

Cheers
Kevin

TSUCHIYA MASATSUGU Ashigaru unit for Saga

OMG! I can't believe I have not done anything with my Samurai since fall of 2015. Man do the wheels spin around.

Well after awhile away from painting anything Samurai, I started reading this book called "The Imjin War: Japan's Sixteenth - Century Invasion of Korea and Attempt to Conquer China" by Samuel Hawley. I have to say that it's completely wicked and awesome! Which you can figure out is why I am probably painting Samurai again. A really good read so far, and I highly recommend for those who are unfamiliar with the period to get Stephen Turnbull's book "Samurai Invasion: Japan's Korean War 1592 - 1598". A good compliment to the aforementioned book.

So I've finished up another unit, and it's another Clan from Takeda's 24 generals. Easy to research, for me anyways, banners and such. The Clan I chose to paint this time was Tsuchiya Masatsugu. White mon on black banner. The earlier Clan I did was Yamagata Masakage. Both these generals or family Warlords where killed at the battle of Nagashino 1575. My plan is to paint a unit of arquebusiers for each family and then to paint up some cool full armor Samurai dudes. Will see where my spinning wheel ends up cause as anyone has figured out who follows my blog, next week I could paint up Scifi, or Romans, or mice, or.... well you get the picture. So first two photos are ones I did two years ago, after that are pictures of my newly painted Masatsugu Ashigaru unit. Oh and you can click on the pictures to see larger ones if you don't know this already.

[Above I did almost two years ago]

[above first new group of 4]

[above 2nd new group of 4]

[and finally them all together]

As always thanks for looking.

Cheers

Kevin