Hello All,
This is the start of a samurai and ashigaru force of 1/72 scale figures made by Zvezda for their Samurai Battles board game. I’m planning on using these figures for skirmish wargaming (Ronin or Test of Honour) so I based them individually.
![](https://i.imgur.com/qSGwQHc.jpg)
I want to paint two opposing forces from the battles of Kawanakajima, this is the start of the Uesugi force, a Takeda force will follow. The Zvezda Samurai Battles sets come with decals for the battle of Nagashino (Takeda and Nobunaga clans), so I searched online for the Uesugi emblem (mon) and came across this awesome thread from 10 years ago that had tons of images of the mons used by the Uesugi vassals:
http://www.samurai-archives.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=52326&sid=2af90b2e8e368f80c12457ac224a4c1fI decided to paint these figures as the army of the Uesugi general Matsumoto Kageshige as the simple two-tone back banner (sashimono) looks good and is easy to paint. I also borrowed the color scheme of the ashigaru used by the illustrator in the thread linked above.
Here are the three samurai; each figure is from a different Samurai Battles set (set 6404 Samurai Archers, set 6411 Samurai Commanders and set 6403 Samurai Naginata).
![](https://i.imgur.com/buAQgox.jpg)
The larger sashimonos on these samurai are not from the Samurai Battles figure sets; these come from the Zvezda Samurai Infantry set (8017). At some point I will add the Matsumoto symbol to these larger samurai sashimonos but I want to use printer decal paper for this as I’m not good at freehand.
This was my first time painting Asian skin. I usually paint skin using the P3 flesh tones but those paints have a pinkish hue so in this case I used Vallejo Model Color Dark Flesh as the base color.
![](https://i.imgur.com/KvT1Tdz.jpg)
Here are the yari ashigaru from set 6401. The figures from the Samurai Battles sets are large for 1/72, closer to true 25mm scale. For anyone not familiar with 1/72 historical figures, I highly recommend the website Plastic Soldier Review which is a treasure trove of information about miniatures in this scale. These figures were digitally sculpted and are beautifully detailed.
![](https://i.imgur.com/YReVeR1.jpg)
Here are the teppo ashigaru from set 6402 Ashigaru with Arquebus. In the picture below the blue cords on the ashigaru armor stand out a bit more, I used P3 Cygnar Blue Base which is a medium blue but it is hard to see on the black armor.
![](https://i.imgur.com/Uapll0z.jpg)
Another shot of the teppo ashigaru with a better view of the back-banners (these are the sashimonos that come with the Samurai Battles sets).
![](https://i.imgur.com/yH8F9ar.jpg)
Finally, here are the ashigaru archers from set 6414. All of the figures in these sets are multi-part plastic, but they go together easily and do not require plastic cement. It should be noted that the plastic is fairly hard but brittle in some places; thin parts such as the yari spears are easily broken.
![](https://i.imgur.com/jdeyZZy.jpg)
That’s all for now. I’m really happy with the way these figures turned out, I need to add some figures to make a complete force and I want to paint an opposing force so more to come.