Taking A Stand!

Hey folks! Still alive after all that life has enriched me with. 

I know that I've been awfully remiss in neglecting this blog. And without further ado here's a long awaited article that I'm finally posting. Thanks for your patience and let's get to it.

I love eye-candy in all my games, so I put forth some effort in making the command stands included in the boxed game as a diorama to compliment my Samurai Battles table.

I'll be using epic 6mm miniatures (previously referred to in an earlier post http://thehistoricalminiaturist.blogspot.com/2015/12/hai-on-more-conversions-part-1.html) to truly capture the scale of these opposing armies. 

Additionally I substituted the Honor and Fortune tokens with some generic Chinese coins obtained online.

(click on the pix to enlarge)

Dice Roll showing Honor and Fortune

Cardboard Game Tokens
(Honor and Fortune Tokens: White Asterisk on a purple field) 

Chinese coins from EBay

Typical Figures that come in the box

Using the provided game accessories to record and document a general's winnings seemed lack luster and uninspired to compliment the epic look and feel of the game.

WIP: conversion of standard game combat game units to 6mm

Red and Black Army Command Stands

Vignettes depicting Army Commander receiving messages and viewing
heads (victory banner representation) of vanquished enemies

Hai on More Conversions! Part 1

Here's the latest project on my table. Conversion of the board game Samurai Battles to another miniatures game using Hexon and 6mm Baccus Samurai figures.

The game comes with these beautiful 1/72nd scale plastics from Zvezda. 

However, I didn't like the aesthetic look. To me it does not capture the epic scale that I've seen in those Kurosawa films (Ran, Kagemusha, etc.) and gives me the impression of a small unit / skirmish game feel. Hence my conversion. 

Ran: Ashigaru Arquebusiers deploying

The following pix are progress shots of this current project. As you can see below the 6mm scale gives a better visual for some truly epic battles. Incidentally, our group has been doing the same for most of the Command and Colors family of games (e.g. Memoir 44, Battle Cry, Command and Colors Ancients and Napoleonics). And we've been having great success in the look and feel complemented by the great playability of this system.

From L-R, Black Army, Red Army
Finally completed opposing armies fully represented on my
table top using my Hexon terrain. I have enough here to play all
the scenarios from the base game to the latest expansion.

I've decided to take a count of all the units in the scenarios and represented them as single stands. All combat units except the Peasant Infantry (found in the expansion) are 4 stands strong. Meaning they take 4 hits to kill. That's represented by four figures per stand in the original game. I chose to use single 2"x3" metal stands from Games Accessories... 4 banners each...

Finally my order came in from Baccus and first order of business was
sort them into their unit types. It was a daunting task that completely
overwhelmed me. I knew I had to be systematic in this approach. 

Notice that some of the minis are black primered. In my earlier attempt, I primered a few bags and realized that it was better for me to restart the process and get them all sorted in their respective units first then I can paint them piecemeal.

Here are 3 AY (Ashigaru Yari = Non Samurai Spearmen) 
Medium Infantry units for the Red Army

Same units from another angle. Notice that each unit has four
sashimonos (flag banners) to represent their hit points