Ninja Miniatures

[Mr. White]

I think I want to add a Ninja Buntai to my Ronin games. Are there any decent sources of regular ol’ ninjas bedsides that Warlorss of Erehwon pack? There’s lots of hyper-stylized ninjas, but I just want plain old ninjas. Maybe 8-10.

Any suggestions?

[Flashman14]

Old Glory

https://www.oldgloryminiatures.com/proddetail.asp?prod=SUM-13&cat=13

[Panaldi]

Being the black garb kind of a modern myth, You could of course use any old Samurai or fighter in civvies and declare them Ninja in disguise, but where’s the fun?

The Perrys have a pack of those too:
https://www.perry-miniatures.com/product/sam41-ninja-various-weapons/

[EnclavedMicrostate]

Aha, a fellow experimenter in Ninja/Shinobi list-building! Perhaps we could swap ideas for unit profiles!

I've been gradually building up (though, I confess, not necessarily painting) a lot of bits and bobs for Ronin over the last couple of years; here's where I've got my collection from:

First off, Perry: https://www.perry-miniatures.com/product/sam41-ninja-various-weapons/

All with visible swords, plus one with kusarigama, one with a grenade, and one with shuriken. Not sure that the crawling chap will be easily used though – perhaps as a casualty?

Then there's Zenit. They do four sorts:

A pack of 5, three with single sword, one with dual swords, one with kusarigama: https://shop.zenitminiatures.es/en/kuge/237-ninja.html

They also do three 'hero' ninjas, comprising two masked swordsmen: https://shop.zenitminiatures.es/en/basic-heroes/293-shinobi-.html https://shop.zenitminiatures.es/en/basic-heroes/376-shinobi-.html

And one female ninja with bow: https://shop.zenitminiatures.es/en/basic-heroes/380-kensei.html

Bad Squiddo do a pair of 'Shinobi Sisters', one with bow and one with sword: https://badsquiddogames.com/shop#!/The-Shinobi-Sisters/p/122894143/category=26170741

There are others, but those are the ones I have.

[pws]

Good old Grenadier/Mirliton's Njnjas?
https://www.mirliton.it/historical-25-28mm/diorama-kits/ninja-warriors-kit013



I used those for my buntai http://pippoweb.blogspot.com/2014/11/ninja.html

[Mr. White]

Thanks for the suggestions, all!

I opted for the set from Perry Miniatures as I wanted some villagers from them anyway and both appeared to be on sale.

I think I intend to just equip the ninja buntai the same as the group in the Ronin scenario for now.

[rokurota]

https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=142586.0

[Ultravanillasmurf]

No idea how historic they are, but Crooked Dice have some ninja.

Possibly not historical colours either...

[Cat]

You can always add a pair of kunoichi with the lovely Shinobi Sisters from Bad Squiddo:
https://badsquiddogames.com/shop#!/The-Shinobi-Sisters/p/122894143/category=26170741

[EnclavedMicrostate]

A late addition, but rules-wise this might be a good opportunity to look at the way En Garde handles special movement, especially around climbing and jumping. Ninjas being, well, Ninjas, there should be some fun things you can do with letting them take advantage of verticality in your terrain.

[Cat]

A late addition, but rules-wise this might be a good opportunity to look at the way En Garde handles special movement, especially around climbing and jumping. Ninjas being, well, Ninjas, there should be some fun things you can do with letting them take advantage of verticality in your terrain.

For ninja flavoured rules, you can't beat the Ninja All Stars board game.  It's a fun game as written, the only change we found really useful after playing a full campaign of all the scenarios as written is to shorten each scenario by a turn or two.  I've also heard of folks who use One Page rules with it too with good success.

[Mr. White]

https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=142586.0

Already have him! Great model! He’s gonna be setup as the ninja leader. This is mainly why I wanted traditional ninjas, so he’ll stand out as a character.

[Nogbad]

Do they still make the Dixons ninja, they were excellent. I think you can still get them. Apols if someone already mentioned them.
And just to correct the claim on here that the traditional image of ninja clad head to toe in black is a modern myth - that's not the case. There are plenty of 19th century prints you can even find online showing them wearing exactly that. Their two great watchwords were disguise and camouflage, and given they often had to operate at night to compensate for their shortage in numbers, the camouflage would be black.

[EnclavedMicrostate]

It's 'modern' in the sense that the modern era begins with the French Revolution 

More seriously though, a lot of the popular culture surrounding the Sengoku period comes from artistic license taken from the subsequent Edo period, and ninjas are probably the most egregious example. As regards black clothing in particular, theatre stagehands in the Edo period wore black overalls to be less conspicuous and not distract from the action, but playwrights started using this for subversion by writing scenes where a stagehand would suddenly reveal himself to be an assassin. So although ninjas were associated with black clothing by 1800, there's no evidence that there was any distinctive style of shinobi dress in the period when they were meaningfully active, i.e. up to 1620.

[Cat]

Feeling poetic this morning...
 
Ninjas wear all black,
Romans all carry red shields,
Eternal coding.
 

Romans are red,
Ninjas are black,
Just like in art,
So it's a fact.

 
=^,^=