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

[Cat]

Thanks!
 
These are 2.5mm MDF.  I get my group bases from Things From the Basement which come with 3 single bases that are the hole cut-outs.  Plus I have a stack of additional singles that can all fit into the group bases too.

[Sakuragi Miniatures]

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.

When it's the 1920s but you can only afford a modern haircut...

I hope before the year is out to have a set of "moga" modern girls ready for the Taisho era.

[Sakuragi Miniatures]

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!)

I think you did great modifying those miniatures and I like how they came out. Thanks for sharing all those inspirations. I love Big Trouble in Little China too!

[Cat]

I hope before the year is out to have a set of "moga" modern girls ready for the Taisho era.

Hope they're in some ready for action gaming poses!

[Sakuragi Miniatures]

Hope they're in some ready for action gaming poses!

Like smoking cigarettes and discussing radical ideologies while listening to jazz music?

I want to do a haikara-san holding a broom like a sword.

[Cat]

Like smoking cigarettes and discussing radical ideologies while listening to jazz music?

I want to do a haikara-san holding a broom like a sword.

More like exciting and dangerous things are happening all around them, as is usually the case in miniatures games... fighting stances with or without weapons , even brooms, reaching for weapons, running, etc.

[Sakuragi Miniatures]

More like exciting and dangerous things are happening all around them, as is usually the case in miniatures games... fighting stances with or without weapons , even brooms, reaching for weapons, running, etc.

That kind of excitement! Not dancing the Charleston, then.

[Cat]

Another clan force ready for the table, with a somewhat different assortment of troops for this one.  Kakizaki Clan in the far north who handled relations with the Ainu, so bringing in the Scouts for probing the wilderness of Ezo, and the odzutsu big boom sticks since the Ainu are not fond of the Japanese gunpowder weapons.  Gave one of the samurai a musket too.

As usual, I didn't go for a super-tight paint job, just a decent get-them-on-the-table approach.  Did the mon freehand with a .005 Micron pen, so couldn't get the lozenges squished down skinnier, but happy with the result.

The onna-bugeisha with long hair is Bad Squiddo. Converted the musician to female with long hair in back, and the Scout runner got converted with a big hair bun on top.  Also added a second group of Ashigaru scouts with 25mm female figures, 2 Eureka and 1 old Ral Partha.
 
Otherwise, this one is all Grey For Now / Footsore minis.

Minor mod on the Scout sergeant — converted the scroll to rolled-up so he's not wandering the battlefield all day trying to read the open scroll the figure came with.

[Cat]

Last summer, I picked up the TTC set of Miyama mountain village houses.  Perfect rooflines for Miyama that I'm modelling, nice layered detail, but with one tragic flaw.  For whatever reason, the designer built hinged doors into the houses instead of sliding ones.
¯\_(?)_/¯

After getting the first house from the set mostly assembled, I set it aside knowing I would need to retrofit a proper door.  Recently put in an order with Things from the Basement for some other Japanese kits, and Joerg very kindly filled a special request to include extra doors and runners so I could improve the TTC kits to my liking.

The hinged door, and doorway, was very wide.  Using scrap MDF, I put together a wall section and framing to fill the excess space, and now there's plenty of room on the inside for the new door to slide open.

Now, I can finally finish up the painting and roof thatching, then get on to finish the rest of these TTC houses.

[erpigi]

Absolutely loving the depth and care you're putting into this! The decision to base your terrain on western Kyoto—with inspiration from Ine Bay and Miyama—is a fantastic touch, and it really gives the project a grounded sense of place. The split between the Hosokawa and Asakura clans using Perry minis is a clever way to build opposing forces efficiently, and the attention to period-appropriate terrain (cherry blossoms, shrines, lanterns, etc.) is spot on for Test of Honour. That cherry blossom flocking must look amazing on the table! Also, bonus points for the bamboo placemat bridge—simple but evocative. Looking forward to seeing village buildings and your religious fighters hit the board!


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https://www.medipakiet.pl/blog/dieta-dabrowskiej-jakie-sa-jej-zasady/

[Cat]

Thanks, erpigi!
 
Some more reïnforcements are done, and a slight shift in the story line as my Asakura troops have changed their allegiance to Isshiki and I repainted their banners.
 
Recently, I've levelled up my navigating of ja.wikipedia to get a much better grasp of my narrative timeline.  The Japanese language version tends to have much more detail on things Japanese than the English language one does.  Fortunately, the English one tends to give the Japanese language spellings of names and places in the opening paragraph of its articles.  So I can cut and paste those into the search bar at ja.wikipedia, and then toggle the English translation of the resulting pages.
 
Between searching clan names and historical province names, I was able to piece together a better timeline of my narrative conflicts.  Turns out that the Hosokawa were not in Tango Province and Ine Bay until several years after the Asakura were eliminated.  The Isshiki held Tango province until eliminated by the Hosokawa in 1759.  After that, the Hosokawa moved from their holdings in Yamashiro and Tanba provinces to Tango.
 
As I was painting some banners for the new figures, this was a good time to re-do the previously painted Asakura.  The new mon is also more visually legible which is nice (it's also the same mon as used by the Satomi Clan up in Awa).

I had another batch of Perry Asakura now Isshiki figures in the pipeline.  There's one Footsore onna bugeisha, and a number of the new Perry ashigaru have been converted to women.

Recently picked up a batch of painted Old Glory ashigaru that just needed some minor touch-up, and I split them between Isshiki and Hosokawa.

Also finished up some AW Miniatures that can be assigned to any force for scenarios — a palanquin and taiko drummer (sill need to finish painting the big drum).  Diced and spliced a round sabot base to make a palanquin sabot.  The palanquin itself is not glued to the porters' hands, so they can be killed or just scarper off and leave the palanquin sitting.

[Cat]

Ikko-ikki underway for games at Huzzah next May.  Painting up many more than needed for Test of Honour with Never Mind the Bushido planned for publication next year (there's an article in the current WI).  Andy Hobday has also begun work on a Clan Wars variant of Barons' War, so having 'Never Mind' quantities of figures will certainly cover that too.

We've had a couple of good days of spray-painting weather here, and the gathering Ikki all have base colours done for clothing and/or armour now.

Mostly Perry Miniatures, some AW (including some ashigaru and samurai mixed in for the better armoured sort), and some Grey For Now.  The FLGS had a 20% sale last month, so that took some of the sting out of GFN prices, and I got to support my store which is always a good thing.

Swapped in actual spears and naginata for any that had farm implements or sharpened bamboo which are much later period imaginings.