Hello!
I know this is not probably the most appropriate forum to post a warhammer army... but it is so unconventional that I want to share it with you, and after all it's mostly lead... and will most certainly make a good addition to future oriental adventures!
To make a long story short, let me just tell you about the wargaming reality in Portugal, in some brief items:
- There is no GW here besides being sold in a couple of stores
- Warhammer, FOW and 15mm antiquity (DBM and FOG) are the most played games around the country
- Warhammer is the most popular among the younger wargamers
- In order to have some events to keep the overall players in touch and present wargames to a new generation, the players must organize some tournaments (in this case it was organized by a group of very nice chaps who call themselves the White Crows)
- The Food is great in our country
- Everyone counts in these events in order to support the fees and have as much people as possible, so that the casual gamers don't think that they are alone in this hobby
- There are a couple of teams so that we can taunt each other about the amount of 6's that one team can roll
- Normally these tournaments are very fun because we end up talking about lead, painting, tactics, games and odd warstories that we like to share with each other!
So that's why I end up every year playing warhammer! usually I pick up some fantasy miniatures that I have and go play with them. I also belong to a team named "Suricatas de Alpercatas", which stands for "Meerkats in sandals". We had to have a team with an Animal name and with something that rhymes
This team is composed by myself and 3 other long date good friends of mine, one of them is torradas (which is also here in the LAF) and the other two are Zé and Jorge (which are brothers) And we all share interests in painting and not so common games!
Every week we meet each other by lunch (see above item about food) to talk about lead, games and overall insane ideas! and during June in one of these lunches we were talking about preparing the miniatures ready for this upcoming tournament and Torradas asked Jorge (which is the one who knows how to make the army lists)
about making a specific list because he was painting french fusiliers and could use them in a warhammer army and later could use them back into napoleonic games. After a couple of exchanged mails Torradas looked at the Dark Elf army list and said this would be very fun to do with Samurais!
And we all though "Why don't we all go to the tournament with Samurai themed Armies! after all the game is about fantasy we should use our imagination!" and after the tournament we could use most of the miniatures to play some games in the Sengoku-jidai period
And that's how I end up doing nothing more than painting during the summer!
I must admit that It was one of the most funniest projects that I have made, and in the end was very pleased with the result, almost every day we exchanged ideas about what we were doing asking for advice and criticism about the work done. We also had to wander in the net and in stores searching for Japanese miniatures and bits and had to make some research about the overall feeling of the several armies!
First of all we couldn't go for GW miniatures they are just too expensive to make a group of about 60 to 70 figures.
And second we really wanted to go for something really different. Usually in most warhammer related forums and blogs there are amazing armies with lots of conversions and excellent paint jobs, but most of them are always based on GW miniatures even if completely covered in green stuff...
I chose an High Elf army made with TAG oriental monks! I must admit that I've been flirting these miniatures for some while but never had an excuse to buy them, and they are really something! On the positive side, monks dress themselves in white which is a colour that people tend to connect with high elves!
I also needed an oriental dragon and a magic user, so I went to Black hat (I also had a crush on them
) and with some modelling touches I was able to transform the Chinese miniatures into something more Japanese!
For the war machines, first I though about ordering some perry cannons, but I needed 3 of them and I didn't want to spend that much money for some items that I wouldn't use later (3 cannons in medieval Japan skirmish is something of an overkill). So I went for scotia grendel which have war machines for almost all tastes (but they a little bit bulkier than average) and prices and converted a couple of TAG peasants in order to make the several crewmen.
The missing part was a giant eagle, I had the idea of using some flying eagle from some manufacturer, but then torradas was also thinking about what kind of fliers he could use to make the harpies for his dark elves, and someone spoke about a ninja in a delta wing! I happened to have a perry ninja around the lead mountain, so there you go! only need to make a delta wing from toothpicks and paper! The first version was very crude (It could fit nicely into an orc army) and nobody liked it, so I went back to the drawing board. There was something that was missing in the overall model it needed a specific oriental touch, and I didn't want to take to much trouble building something because I'm not that patient when it comes to scratch building! "So why don't I make an Origami eagle!" I though to myself, and went to the internet finding some instructions and found a video of a guy making one! I copied that, but the eagle lacked mass, so I've used only the head to give a more eagle touch to the miniature!
In the end I also made a bonsai tree, a Tori Portal (got the idea from an old Rackham magazine -> those French guys are really pro when it comes to painting and modelling) and bought a small Buddha from a Chinese shop in order to make a stone statue. These items were only made to give some more oriental touch to displaying the army!
The choice of colours was fairly simple -> read an Osprey about Warrior monks and chose the white robes and yellow tunics like the pictures in the book (tuned it down to yellow ochre in order to give a more organic feel) and painted most of the bits in dark brown and some special items in red for the characters and champions!
I normaly paint my miniatures in the usual foundry the colour technique, but I use very dark colours as base (a little bit like Capt. Blood does, but not with the same jaw dropping effect) because after all I'm painting miniatures to be used and looked at in the table top
So there you go ... a not so brief history about this army... let's look at the pictures:
The overall army still with some unfinished items
And some more detailed photos of some models:
these are the links from photos, from our teams armies taken during the tournament:
http://www.pbase.com/squig_hopper/corvos_2009_pghttp://www.pbase.com/squig_hopper/corvos_2009_ze_jorge_martinshttp://www.pbase.com/squig_hopper/corvos_2009_torradasTorradas fielded a dark Elf Army, Zé a daemon Army and Jorge a Lizardmen army! all made with samurais, lots of insanity and not a single GW miniature!
The warhammer players liked the idea and hopefully this will give them some ideias in building new and stranger armies themselves!
I even won the prize for best painted army!
(which was voted among all players)
To finish this, just 2 more thoughts:
- Cheers to TAG, Black Hat and Scotia Grendel for Excelent service and wonderful miniatures
- If torradas doesn't add a reply about his army (you should go and check it in the link), I'll add later more info on our other armies and some wip pictures!
thanks for reading! (hope my British writing accent is not that bad)