Ninja All-Stars: Yagyu Jubei

 Well, the plan to paint one miniature every other day is not going great... 

All I got done in the last week and a half is a solitary Ninja All-Stars miniature - Yagyu Jubei

Yagyu Jubei

Yagyu Jubei is a Ronin Mercenary, originally from the Sun Court. He travelled to  Kagejima to see witness the Moonlight Tournament he'd heard so many tales of. upon experiencing the tournment he vowed to stay until he learned all he could. 

Not helping my plan to paint more than I've purchased this year... I BOUGHT MORE THINGS!?!?

Clan Tanchyo team for Ninja All-Stars...

In my defence, they were pretty cheap... Like, some Marketplace seller on Amazon had them and clearly thought of them as "dead stock" and were blowing them out. They were less than HALF what other sellers were selling Ninja All-Stars teams for, and even less than it would cost me to order a team from Ninja Division... and as an extra bonus, these ones are packaged for Ninja All-Stars, which means they come with the cards and stats for Ninja All-Stars! (These miniatures are still available from Ninja Division, but Ninja All-Stars is long out of print and the miniatures have been repurposed for use with Super!Dungeon!Explore!). 

It doesn't REALLY matter about being in the original packaging, because, unlike SO MANY OTHER GAMES.... ALL of the rules and stats for ALL of the minituares that were EVER available for the game... were in the core boxed set!? Having the cards that came with this box is nice... but not NECESSARY!!!

Maybe they aren't blowing them out... The game came out in 2016. The price could be the original price... they just still had them kicking around and didn't see any purpose in raising the price (as others have done) because they are "scarce" or "collectables"... 

ALSO!?!?! Clan Tanchyo is one of the two clans NOT included in the original base game box set! So... 

I'm not sure WHAT prompted me to LOOK on Amazon in the first place...? I was probably looking for somethings else and it popped up as a suggestion as I'd been looking to see what was available the week before...? It's crazy, some sellers are selling individual Ronin (like Jubei, here) for MORE than this entire team cost me!? How could I pass on that!? Ha-ha.... 

Ninja All-Stars - Spirit Shrine Shinobi and Samurai Sentry

 

I'm not entirely sure how Keiran ended up with Ninja All-Stars...? I think it might have been that I found it deeply discounted.... somewhere... and I knew they were really excited about Super Dungeon Explore... So we picked it up for them a few years back... 

I'm not sure if they even played it (they may have played it with Finnegan at one point..?). 

As I mentioned in the previous post, I think I wasbeen looking around on Meeplemart to see if they had anything else I could add to an order, as it is unlikely that I'll be ordering anything else any time soon... and I THINK I went looking at Soda Pop miniatures to see if they had any heroes for Super Dungeon Explore and they didn't but they had the two Ninja All Stars miniatures above and I remembered that Keiran the game and I must have got it in my head that I should order these two miniatures and paint them and I could paint up a couple of teams of the ones that Keiran had and maybe that might motivate them to play the game....? Maybe...?

Anyway, while I was waiting for the order to arrive, I decided I could try painting a few of the miniatures that Keiran already had... just to see how quick they might paint up and see if it motivated Keiran to get back to painting - or at least interested in playing if *I* painted all the miniatures!?

In the main box there are four teams Blue (Water), Red (Fire), Orange (Spirit), and Purple (Void). I am a fan of orange, so I grabbed a couple of those Shinobi and a Samurai Sentry and started painting. 

Spirit Shrine Madoushi, Kaiken, and Samurai Sentry. 

As much as a paint in the ass that orange is to paint over large surfaces and get an even coat... (Seriously, there were three different shades of orange I used, and needed to do TWO COATS OF EACH!?) I think they turned out okay and would kind of like to finish up the rest of the team! 

Spirit Shrine Madoushi

Spirit Shrine Kaiken

Samurai Sentry

If Keiran were to show any interest in playing I'd probably do the Void Shrine next and finish up the Samurai Sentries. 

I also have a few little shrine-like terrain bits that came with the last Reaper Bones I could paint up to substitute in for the shrine tokens in the game... maybe... 

State of Miniature Painting

The second order from Meeplemart arrived yesterday with  The Crows boardgames, Litanies of the Lost for Wrath and Glory and... 

These two miniatures for Ninja All-Stars that I happen to see they still had... (just... don't ask...) 

Updating my Painted vs. Purchased page (and the list took on the left (if your looking at this on a home computer and not a phone...), I noticed that broughts my total of 29mm Miniatures Acquired for 2023 to 118... 

So far, I have only painted 53...

then I started comparing and that sent me down a whole rabbithole of crunching numbers and thinking about things... 

If I paint four more I'll match last year's total... but will still have acquired 61 more miniatures than I've painted. So I got thinking about how I could, at the very least, paint MORE than I've acquired. I need to paint 65 just to break even. There are 109 days left in the year. If I painted ONE MINIATURE PER DAY that would be 162, which would be brilliant - well over what I've acquired and on my way to brining down the mountain of shame (though, it's not really much of a mountain, they're actually all very neatly organized in drawers in the game room...). 

Is it realistic to think I could paint a miniature per day...? Maybe... Maybe not... If I did one every other day for the rest of the year that would only be 54 and bring my total to 107, just shy of what I need... so I need to paint a little more than one every other day.  

Looking back at the last decade and a half (since I started tracking painted vs. purchased) there are only four years I was "in the black" (having painted MORE than I purchased). 

In the previous 15 years I have acquired 13222 28mm miniatures (an average of 881/year),  but only painted 9643 (an average of 642/year)...

To get caught up, I need to spend the next 15 years painting 239 MORE miniatures than I acquire... 

Can I DO that...? 

Will I even LIVE that long?!

I don't know... 

Maybe lets start with just painting more miniature than I acquire from here on out! So that means painting a little more than one miniature every other day for the rest of the year. 

What miniatures am I going to paint? NO IDEA!?  

The ones most likely to be finished next are these three:

Three Ninja All-Stars miniatures from the game Keiran got a few years back. I don't know WHAT got me thinking I should paint these up...?! 

I think I'd been looking around on Meeplemart to see if they had anything else I could add to the second order, as it is unlikely that I'll be ordering anything else any time soon... and i THINK I went looking at Soda Pop miniatures to see if they had any heroes for Super Dungeon Explore and they didn't but they had the two Ninja All Stars miniatures above and I remembered that Keiran had that game, but we'd never played it and I must have got it in my head that I should order these two miniatures and paint them and I could paint up a couple of teams of the ones that Keiran had and maybe that might motivate them to play the game....? Maybe...?

Anyway, the Samurai Sentry is pretty much done and the two Shinobi just need a few finishing touches and that will be THREE that I've done...? 

What will be next...? Who knows... could be the two new Ninja All-Star minis... Could be more from the box set (to finish a team... or finish the sentries...?) Or SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!? 

If I were in a place that I could actually make a PLAN and STICK TO IT(!?) - I'd probably count out a few Kill Teams (Ninja All-Star teams?) and clear everything off the painting tables and just work on those until they are done... but that doesn't seem to work at all anymore.. so... we'll just have to see...