15mm Ashigaru with Yari

 Another 54 elements comprised of 162 figures completed toward the Samurai army. This troop type is classified as Fast Pike in DBMM, which I think is quite an apt description. 

As with the remainder of the army the figures are all Eureka, and have three basic poses; kneeling, advancing and standing. I thought about mixing the figures up on each base but decided that might look a bit silly, so kept the different pose types together. Given that they will be operating in three ranks anyway, this was probably the most sensible approach:

I painted most of them in red armour, with a smaller proportion in black armour for variety:

I gave most of the figures sashimonos but left a few without, to make them easier to pick up during a game. regardless of this I have a feeling I'll be gluing a few back on after each encounter:

Next up will be some more Ashigaru with naginata who will be used as followers, to essentially provide close support to the already-completed samurai cavalry.

15mm Japanese Peasants

The samurai army list has an option for up to sixty elements of "horde", either as Japanese peasants or the more useful Ikko Ikki fanatics. The latter are rated 'superior' in DBMM and, while they only have a factor of 2, they can attract a plus 2 if scoring higher than the enemy. They also only cost 2 points each which, given most foot elements are 7 to 8 points and we normally play 400 point games, seems like good value to me. Quantity does have its own quality after all, and so I decided to go for the maximum and paint 300 figures:

The figures are all Eureka with a choice of four poses, so each base has a double-up. 

They were not unpleasant peasants to paint and certainly a lot less fussy than samurai, but with this many figures it turned into a bit of slog.

Three hundred figures is almost like a mini army within the army, and I'm looking forward to picking my moment and springing a surprise when the samurai force first goes into battle (none of my group are active in the blogosphere so I'm fairly confident of preserving the element of surprise):

Next up some ashigaru with yari, which should be a lot more interesting to paint.

15mm Samurai Cavalry

 It was a long weekend last week and I managed to get the Samurai cavalry for this project completed, with 18 elements of cavalry and three elements with mounted generals:

The figures are again all Eureka Miniatures, and are a true 15mm. I'm hoping three mounted generals will be enough, but alone with the three foot that will be six generals in total:

Generals aside, there are a mixture of nine poses among cavalry with three each of bow, katana and naginata:

The sashimonos are also a pain to glue on and won't withstand rough handling, but I think are worth the effort:

That's all the samurai, mounted, foot and bow, now completed for this army:

Next up some peasants. They look a lot simpler to paint, but I have 300 of them to do which will no doubt take some time so will split them into two lots of 150, interspersed with some ashigaru to help preserve my sanity.

French 15th Dragoons

This unit has been sitting patiently awaiting the arrival of some replacement GMB flags for a couple of months, until I realised that I had a spare chasseur flag with essentially the correct battle honours and so was finally able to complete it. 

The 15e dragoons are the last of the four line dragoon regiments for my French army, and along with the Empress Dragoons makes five regiments in all. I used a lighter shade of pink for the facings on this unit than I had applied to the cuirassiers earlier, and think it contrasts nicely with the green uniform:

As for the flag, well all it is potentially missing is Albuera. Who knows whether that battle honour was ever actually applied alongside the others  and, in 28mm, who will really ever notice anyway?

I'm eagerly awaiting a replacement order from GMB so I can complete the last nine regiments of French cavalry, including four units of lancers where the GMB lancer pennons should work very well.

I'm currently trudging my way through sixty or so 15mm samurai cavalry and will hopefully them completed within the next few weeks.

15mm Samurai Bow

 The next tranche of figure for this project are eight elements of samurai bow, comprised of 32 figures:

There are two different poses, with one shooting and the other looking as though he's about to draw another arrow from his quiver:

I did a few less sashimonos for these, primarily because they would only sit correctly on the shooting figure:

I initially gave tried out a few bowmen with the traditional red and black hoops on the bow, which took me ages to do but ended up looking too busy so I painted over them and reverted to a basic red. At least the red bow is itself a traditional colour:

The figures are again from Eureka and have a nice amount of detail for "true" 15mm sculpts:

I'm keen to get stuck into some samurai cavalry, but will complete another regiment of 28mm French dragoons before I do. I've grown a little tired of waiting for the replacement flags to arrive so will use a spare chasseur standard which has roughly the right battle honours, just to finally move them off the painting queue. 

15mm Samurai

While awaiting the arrival of some flags to replace an order from February which appears to have gone astray, and which I need to complete the last ten regiments of French cavalry, I thought I'd get started on a 15mm Samurai army for DBMM starting with twenty-seven elements of samurai foot:

I went with Eureka Miniatures which are a true 15mm, so look quite small next to my other Xyston DBMM armies but will fit in nicely alongside my Khurasan Tibetan army:

That said, the details are certainly still there:

I found them quite fiddly to paint, not because of the sculpts which are very nice, but because of all the lace on the samurai armour:

I stuck with a few basic designs for the sashimono banners to keep try to keep things somewhat muted, essentially just black, white and red:

There are six different foot warrior designs:

Plus a general and standard bearer figure for the command stands:

 

That's a total of 110 figures in all, with two left over for a camp:

Next up, some samurai bow.