Wargames Factory Samurai Cavalry

[Dr Mathias]

I haven't posted much on LAF for a while because I've been working on Wargames Factory's Asian range for them. I can't show all of the images, but heres a couple pics of some samurai cavalry. I have to say the mounted samurai are significantly improved over their unmounted brethren in terms of detail and ease of assembly. I'm pretty happy with the ashigaru as well- they're pretty useful for assembling a large force inexpensively.






Now I'm pretty much free to work on Hinterland stuff and the tutorials I promised

[Za Zjurman]

Very nice Doc. I like them 

[Sangennaru]

Very nice poses on the samurais, and the bases are great!

The horses look quite like little ponies, though!...
EDIT: I'm referring on the sculpt, the paintjob is cool!

[Calimero]

Really great work! I will use these pictures as inspiration to paint my Dixon samurai

[Bugsda]

They look excellent with your paintwork on them  

I like the horses even though they've got that tank top body builder look, big shoulders and chest but skinny arses.  

[janner]

Wonderful colours and impressive work on poor quality sculpts.

Their new WW2 figures are okay, but these horses are truly awful.

[Dr Mathias]

these horses are truly awful.

I can't lie, the horses are the weak point of the set. They have soft and shallow detail and suspect anatomy, which makes them very difficult to paint. I'm sure I could have done better exaggerating the musculature and detail but I'm not sure it wouldn't look worse if I was left to the task of making things up! I was certainly challenged by the WGF horses, having painted Ebob horses recently.

There's a reason many artists over the centuries have considered the horse to be among the most difficult of subjects to portray. In fact, I think many miniature ranges can be judged by the horses alone

I do think they're a reasonable value if you want to field a lot of samurai cavalry.

[Captain Blood]

Beautiful paintwork Matt. The figures really are getting better.
But the horses' heads are inescapably dire 

[DoctorPete]

Excellent painting!  I agree, those are wonderful bases.   

[gamer Mac]

Lovely painting
Not knowing anything about samuria, what are the big yellow balloons, crash bags?

[OSHIROmodels]

Nice painting  but I'm afraid I'm still not convinced by these at all although the actual armour does seem an improvement on previous attempts (sculpting) 

Not knowing anything about samuria, what are the big yellow balloons, crash bags?

They are called horo and we're used by messengers. In the Sengoku period (broadly 1500's to 1600's) it was a bamboo frame covered in silk with the clan mon or symbol on the back. They originally were in the form of a cloak (back in the earlier periods, 1200's etc) that was tucked in at the legs when riding and it helped provide protection from arrows when the messenger was riding.

The Wargames Factory ones are far too low and they should be up on the shoulders almost 

The horses look quite like little ponies, though!...

The Japanese horse of the time was almost like a pony in size! Very similar to the horse in the link below. I've read in certain Japanese books that the mounted samurai acted as mounted infantry and got off for combat. A much as I like the Perry figures they really got the horse sixe wrong, the Curtys samurai horse is pretty much spot on for size although the sculpting is somewhat lacking 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Przewalski's_horse

cheers

James

[Sangennaru]

The Japanese horse of the time was almost like a pony in size! Very similar to the horse in the link below. I've read in certain Japanese books that the mounted samurai acted as mounted infantry and got off for combat. A much as I like the Perry figures they really got the horse sixe wrong, the Curtys samurai horse is pretty much spot on for size although the sculpting is somewhat lacking 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Przewalski's_horse

cheers

James

I'm not talking about ponies (http://martapony.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/cool-pony.jpg)  but Littleponies (http://oscar.ofm.co.za/img/uploads/My%20Little%20Pony.jpg)!


anyway, as I said, the painting and the basing are very interesting, the overall look is quite interesting! The horo might be not in the right place, but it is quite similar to Shogun2 Total War, which although it's not historically accurate it's still a high budget videogame!
Money wins on culture!

[Dr Mathias]

It wouldn't be terribly hard to move the horo up and modify the sword to hang blade down, tachi style- in fact I thought about it a lot- but I made them as close to stock as possible so customers would know what they're getting.

Thanks for the comments all!

[Blue in vt]

My knowledge of things Samurai is limited so I will restrict my comments to the painting...which is Fantastic...just as we would expect from you Dr. M.

Well done sire.

Cheers,

Blue