Cat's Test of Honour (and beyond — Ikki primed)

[Cat]

Since last fall, I've been cranking away on my game set-up for The Warriors (as seen over on the Pulp board), but bubbling under at the same time I've been working on getting Test of Honour to the table too.  I've thoroughly enjoyed ToH since it first came out, but valiantly resisted gearing up for it in the hopes that somebody else around here would.  We did have someone who had geared up for 1st edition, but he hasn't been active at the FLGS since the beforetimes of the pandemic.  With Sh?gun on the horizon last fall, I finally succumbed and started purchases and modelling.
 
Mid-May, immediately following Huzzah and the first big game of The Warriors, I switched gears to getting Japan on the table (and still working on Brooklyn in the background).  A lot of the stuff was just waiting for final touches and flocking.
 
In the interest of getting it on the table quickly, I had started by focusing on mountain terrain and bits for a shrine.  Village buildings will follow.  My main modelling inspiration is western Kyoto, especially the fishing village of Ine Bay where the mountain meets the sea, and inland a bit at the village of Miyama in the cedar forests of the mountains.
 
Having settled on a geographic locale (and local flora), I started figure painting with the local Hosokawa clan, and neighboring Askakura clan.  I used Perry miniatures for these.  Since they come in packs of 6, they split very nicely for making a pair of starter forces.
 
Also in the interest of getting this on the table, I had someone else start with getting the block painting done on the starter forces, then I finished up the finer details.
 
There are of course a number of other forces and fun figures in the pipeline and a few of those are rolling off the painting bench now.  6 Perry Sohei are ready (although the bulk of my religious fighters will be Shrine Maidens and Nuns that are all prepped and primed), and 9 assorted Ninja (3 Crooked Dice and 6 Turnkey/Mega Minis).
 
Since Test of Honour is practically cherry blossom obligate, and I will be modelling spring foliage, the bases all got flocked with SuperLeaf Japanese Cherry blend as the final sprinkle.
 
To get started with quick and easy terrain, I made a plain bridge from a bamboo placemat and basswood supports, wide enough to support a group stand.  And I had a pile of plastic lanterns and small shrines from two sets of the Ninja All Stars boardgame that just needed painting.  Cut out some gel circles that can go under the lanterns to indicate when they are lit for night-time use.
 

[Cat]

I had picked up a couple of small terrain kits earlier in the year from Things From The Basement.  Then got their lovely tea house at Huzzah, which went straight onto the workbench when I got home from the convention.
 
This was my first crack at doing a thatched roof and also modelling pieris japonica (aka andromeda), and quite happy with the results.

The thatch is strips of cheap tan cotton towel from the dollar store, cut into strips and soaked in thinned PVA.  After it set, spray painted lightly with a couple of colours and then sprinkled with 3 colours of flocking for the moss.
Scratchbuilt the framework on the peak with strips of basswood.

Requested a special-cut piece of corrugated paper from TFTB for the tiles on the portico roof.

The andromeda is made from 3 layers of Wild Bush mat from Scenic Express, and green flocking glued around the base of each layer for the leaves.  This came out looking much more like the actual plant than I expected! (we have some growing in our back yard).  This grows in pink and yellow varieties.

The same technique will work for kerria japonica, a very similarly shaped yellow rose shrub (also just planted one out back).

The andromeda and kerria grow in thickets in the cedar forests of the mountains of western Kyoto, and are spring blossoming.  So all in full bloom during the requisite cherry blossom season.

These forests have a relatively short red cedar, cryptomeria japonica (radicans) ~30'–40', which is a great height for the game table.  The cedars, and cherries for the village, are fully operational now too.
: 3
 
For the beacon light, I scratchbuilt a separate platform from layers of 1/4" balsa wood that can go under it to provide more height as a signal beacon.

Detailing the bulletin board was a fun evening's project looking up the style of historical documents and wanted posters from movies.  I squared off the edge of the roof on this as I don't subscribe to the theory that history is full of bad carpenters.

I might break down and adjust the roof over the well too if it keeps making me twitchy.

Lovely kits and fun quick builds!

[blacksoilbill]

Nicely done. The figure basing is really eye-catching.

[EnclavedMicrostate]

Shrine maidens and nuns, you say? Looking forward to those!

[Cat]

I've primarily been working on terrain (will have some progress photos in a bit), but also painting minis for ToH, as well as also working on The Warriors and DBA armies too...
 
Just finished up a small batch of Bac Ninh minis, plus a couple of related ones that I painted at the same time.
 
I have a lot of the Bad Squiddo minis in the pipeline, but also converted a bunch of these to females to add more variety.  Just takes a little carving to slim down the waist, shoulders, and sometimes jaw line, some shaving down of upper arms and thighs, and then a trip to the green putty hairdressers for some extensions.
 
The Hidari Siblings models are now the Sisters.  Ronin Kenshin and a Ral Partha Ronin are now the first in the ranks of fighting shrine maidens.
 
Lady Snowblood needed a little corrective puttying.  The actress was in fact very thin and flat-butted, but one of the cheeks on this model was pretty concave and needed a bit of fill to bring it out to flat.
 
For the still male figures, the pantsless Toshiro Mifune from Seven Samurai was too fun to resist, along with Zatoichi the blind swordsmen.
 
To go with Zatoichi is a slightly modified Bad Squiddo figure,  Tweaked her hairstyle a bit and flipped her sword into a reverse grip to make Oichi the blind swordswoman (aka the Crimson Bat in the English dubbed movie titles). 
 
The colours on the Hidari Siblings are inspired by the Storms from Big Trouble in Little China, that were inspired by the Hidari from one of the Lone Wolf and Cub movies.
 
Lining on the kimono and obi were done with my staple .005 Micron Art pens.
 
Lady Snowblood wears a variety of kimono in the movies, this stripey one was the easiest to render with the pens.  Oichi also wear a variety, but this plain red one is eponymous with the Crimson Bat titles in English.  (For a blind drifter who travels without any luggage, she has a surprising array of kimono and well-matched obi!)

[FifteensAway]

No half measures for you, then? 

I think a lot of the "sloppy" architecture we think of as 'old time' is an unfortunate result of the the "rustic" movement of late 1800s to early 1900s where things were made to look old through 'poor' construction.  Reality is most builders throughout history took pride in a job well done and older buildings that had apparent 'bad' construction were either results of the ravages of time or very amateur repairs.  Of course, I am sure, there were the odd poorly built structures out there - shoddy contractors are not a new phenomenon nor are amateur builders who don't quite know what they are doing.  But those were the exceptions.  Good on you for giving your work a sense of pride. 

Isn't Kyoto home to the oldest extant large wooden building on the planet?  Kyoto is the one place in Japan I'd like to visit, the old Imperial City.

[Cat]

I like the notion of blaming the rustic period for model designers' tendency towards ye olde bad carpentry.

I'm modelling villages in Kyoto Prefecture. Kyoto City, capitol of the prefecture, certainly has the the largest surviving number of old silk kimono — by virtue of having escaped the fire bombings of WW2.

*google, google* they have a couple of big wooden buildings too for the same reason, but looks like Nara wins for largest wooden building:
https://muza-chan.net/japan/index.php/blog/sanjusangendo-the-longest-wooden-structure-in-japan

[FifteensAway]

Thanks for the link.  Will have to give it more time.  Appears that both Kyoto and Nara are within the greater Osaka conurbation of 19 million people (though not certain of that).  That's a lot of neighbors! 

[EnclavedMicrostate]

Yep, that broad stretch of the Kansai Plain is pretty urbanised (or perhaps more accurately suburbanised, as most of the taller buildings are in Osaka). There's always something slightly surreal about the official memorial plaques to the 1868 Battle of Toba-Fushimi being in direct line of sight of the head offices of the Nintendo corporation!

[Cat]

Monthly games at the FLGS have been proceeding.  Finally got another small batch of figures table ready for tomorrow's games.

Reïnforcements for the Hosokawa Clan — a second group each of archers and musketeers, plus a pair of onna bugeisha.  Also converted one of the ashigaru archers to a female fighter by carving down the waist, shoulders, and chin, and added long hair.

For the forces of not-so-good, a Witch with a Kitsune Mask (converted the Demon Mask figure by Grey For Now with a bit of carving and a bit of putty, and a group of Armoured Ronin, possibly Drunkards.  This brings me up to a small force of Bandits, Ronin, and other associates.

[Andy in Germany]

Lovely as usual, and I really like those bases.

I'd like to make a 1920's era Japanese Pulp scenario, but with a Japanese wife I'd have to be very careful about getting the details right...

I agree about the "no bad carpenters" idea, that said, I think that a lot of what we now see as "normal" is connected to use of CNC and machines that can cut wood to within 1/10th of a millimetre. Japanese joinery is remarkable, but having seen a fair few older Japanese houses that were built by hand, and having made a fair bit of hand tooled woodwork in my apprenticeship, I can assure you there are gaps, it's a matter of making sure they don't matter.

Also, Japanese building are generally built of pine or cedar, and they will sag and settle eventually, although not to the point of being banana shaped.

Isn't Kyoto home to the oldest extant large wooden building on the planet?  Kyoto is the one place in Japan I'd like to visit, the old Imperial City.

It is a remarkable place, and yes, it's just upriver from Osaka. I'd heard that post C19 they had maintained a ban on "foreign" tourists in the centre, but I'm not sure oif that has been maintianed. To the southeast of Kyoto is the old imperial city of Nara which has its own collection of temples and shrines.

The old temple city of Ise, south of Nagoya, has some buildings and the main shrines of Shintoism, it's nowhere near as grand as Kyoto but also a bit less touristy.

 I used Perry miniatures...

A certain historical irony there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_C._Perry

[Cat]

I'd like to make a 1920's era Japanese Pulp scenario, but with a Japanese wife I'd have to be very careful about getting the details right...

Taisho era fashion is such a fusion delight, all sorts of Western influence that started in the Meiji, but done 20s style with kimono and flapper hair cuts!
=^,^=
 
We had a great exhibit recently at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts featuring a number of period outfits on display, and a lot of Art Deco style cover art for sheet music and albums, and other various printed thingies.
 
As for the carpentry, gaps and warping I'm good with.  The area that I'm modelling is all fast-growing cedars.  It's the boards cut to dramatically different lengths that make me twitchy.

[Ultravanillasmurf]

Nice work,  and the bases look great.

Are you going to have lots of cherry trees to shed all the petals (at 5cm per second)?

[Cat]

Test of Honour is practically a cherry-tree obligate game!
 
For bonus poetic points, the figures can compose simultaneous cherry blossom and death haiku as they lay dying.
 

[FifteensAway]

More nice work.

On the bases, yours look like some sort of wood/mdf product but if you like round metal bases then check out Total Element's products: https://totalelement.com/collections/steel-discs/F1_Shape_Disc