28mm Samurai: Sekigahara Project

[Smoke Frog]

Greetings!

Big fan of medieval Japanese history here, and I am hoping to continue working on this project for some time. Lots of great inspiration on this site!

I purchased Warlord Games' Test of Honour main box about a year ago. It looked like a neat idea for a game plus I always wanted to collect some samurai miniatures and add them to my wargaming collection. My experience is Warhammer fantasy/Mordheim, and in tackling this new game I wanted to figure out a way to make the figures compatible with regular Warhammer, and potentially other game systems I would like to try in the future such as KOW. I will be using magnets to switch some bases from round to square bases.

For color schemes, I decided to go with a historically inspired set of heraldry for the samurai/ashigaru banners, inspired by the Battle of Sekigahara. I have been doing a lot of research on the different leaders, daimyo, and clans who were involved in this battle, and will be picking and choosing between what I have found to be “accurate” and what looks good to me.

List of references:

• Battle of Sekigahara screen (Sekigahara Kassen Byobu)
• Samurai: Military History by Steve Turnbull
• War in Japan 1467-1615 by Steve Turnbull, Osprey Publishing
• Sekigahara 1600: Final Struggle for Power by Anthony J Bryant, Osprey Publishing
• Samurai Heraldry by Steve Turnbull, Osprey Publishing
• Many pages on the Samurai Archives (link)
• Old Japanese sashimono source (hataumajirushi)

Other references, but not necessarily specific to this project:

• History of Japan (vol. 2 1334-1615) by George Sansom
• The Savage Samurai: Warrior prints 1800-1899 by Kuniyoshi, Yoshitoshi, and Others... Ukiyo-e Master series (vol 9) and others
• Japanese Prints by Gabriele Fahr-Becker
• Shogun Total War 2 
• Really bad anime like Sengoku Basara  , and first episode of Drifters

Some pictures of my fledgling Samurai forces as of September 2018:



Samurai Cavalry:



Two warbands ready for Test of Honour: Ukita Clan and the Ii Clan

[jambo1]

Great start, looking forward to seeing your progress.

[OSHIROmodels]

Looks promising 

[Belisarius]

My friend has the Sekigaha board game from GMT , which we,ve played several times . It gives a good account of the campaign and might be used as a background for tabletop battles . It comes up secondhand on EBay from time to time .

[Smoke Frog]

Sir Belisarius I looked at the Sekigahara board game (which I am pretty sure was 15mm?) and considered getting it, but that was after I had already bought the Test of Honour set (28mm) 

Research

I have been enjoying working on the "fluff" for this project by researching the different clans that were present during the battle. I already posted a link to the screen that I have been taking inspiration from, here it is again with labels for all the clans I have been able to identify:



I was able to ID most of the major clans. The trickiest one was the Fukushima clan, which I originally thought were the Toyotomi clan based on the symbol. Turns out Fukushima Masanori was Toyotomi Hideyoshis cousin... makes sense they shared some heraldry. I hope you can actually make out the labels, if not you can also find the image here.

Using the screen and a map...





...I was able to make my own decisions for what clan heraldry I was going to use. Here are my rough sketches of the battlefield, the clans, and their heraldry.



Zoomed in map for the battle:





Here is the clan information:

Western Army: Ishida Mitsunari and his allies, the Shimazu, Ukita, Konishi, Toyotomi, and others




Eastern Army: Tokugawa Ieyasu and his vassals/allies





Here the clans are all cleaned up for easy reference:

[Smoke Frog]

Army Size Planning

When I finally decided on the battle and using square bases, I was very curious to see just how big of an army I could eventually create (given enough time, money, time, painting skill, and time). I decided to do a little powerpoint-wizardry to make paper tiles to mark each unit that I could possibly make to create this army in 28mm.





Here are the block sizes I was working with:

Infantry (missile ashigaru, spear ashigaru, foot samurai): 40 x 40 mm; 4x infantry per base
Cavalry (samurai): 50 x 50 mm; 2 mounted samurai per base

Each tile has a picture of the clans I have been researching.



The Clans, starting with the Western Army:





Western Army Traitors (Kobayakawa and his allies who went over to Tokugawa and swung the battle in his favor):





Eastern Army:





Western Army to the rear of the Eastern Army (who never showed up in the actual battle but I may model them anyway):






...After everything was cut out, here is what it looked like on the game table!









And here are the generals I am thinking to lead the forces. Not sure if one or two of these were actually present, more research is required!

[Smoke Frog]

Magnetic Basing

In order to make these samurai miniatures functional on both square and round basing wargames, I will be using magnets. I bought a metal sheet and some tin snips to cut out dime-size circles.



The metal is magnetic, so by the addition of a small hobby magnet in each base I will be able to move the miniature on the metal circle onto whatever base I want!



Not all the samurai minis will be done this way of course, that would be too much work. Most will probably be going onto straight up square multi bases.

The first set of ashigaru that I based were for the Ukita Clan:



They look pretty good on the movement tray!








Also here are the square basing options:

[Dr Mathias]

Looks like a fun project, I like your approach. I have started samurai in 15mm twice, and 28mm twice. I never seem to get very far before moving onto something else.

[FierceKitty]

10mm. That way it looks like a battle, not a skirmish. Sekigahara had nearly 200, 000 participants!

[Osmoses]

Ambitious project! What will it be ultimately, 700+ figures all told?

All your generals were present at the battle, except Kato Kiyomasa. He was fighting on Kyushu.

The mon for Otani Yoshitsugu (in case you wanted it for your general's card) was:

[OSHIROmodels]

Looking very promising 

[Lord Raglan]

Well this is a bloody good project, well done mate!!

[Smoke Frog]

Thank you for your compliments!

Ambitious project! What will it be ultimately, 700+ figures all told?

All your generals were present at the battle, except Kato Kiyomasa. He was fighting on Kyushu.

The mon for Otani Yoshitsugu (in case you wanted it for your general's card) was:

Good catch with Kato Kiyomasa; I have yet to see the actual Kato commander at Sekigahara featured as an actual model, so I may just cheat and have the legendary Kiyomasa stand in for him  .

And good guess with the total number! Based on the test-tile build I did up it came out to a grand total of 776 total figures needed to cover all those bases (four per infantry square, two per cav square). This is the upper limit of figures I would ever reach in this project though... I don't think I will even get close to that far! Casting extra bodies and legs does help keep the costs down and use all those extra arms/legs/heads that come in the kits.

That being said... I only currently have 64 ashigaru/samurai fully painted up, with another 64 ashigaru on my worktable slowly painting through as I test new paint schemes. Long way to go!

10mm. That way it looks like a battle, not a skirmish. Sekigahara had nearly 200, 000 participants!

I have considered it! If I enjoy this project I may go back and do another historic samurai battle in another scale... maybe the Siege of Osaka!

[Osmoses]

There's some photos of a statue of Kato Yoshiaki here if you want to convert a figure for him:
http://equestrianstatue.org/kato-yoshiaki/

Also a photo of one of his armours:


And this particularly strange helmet:

[Hunlion]

For those who have not seen this.....

http://www.theartofbattle.com/battle-of-sekigahara-1600/


Hunlion