More of the Phoenix

I thought I’d actually try and finish a Hordes of the Things army for the Phoenix Clan. It’s kind of silly, really, as it would probably be the least useful army – the clan being pacifists and only resorting to armed conflict when all other channels have been exhausted. They’re also waaaaaaay up in the Northeast – far from the Shadowlands where the goblins dwell (Goblins being only other HOTT army I currently have that could be passed off as Rokuganese). I’m really only doing it because it’s so darn easy – half the army (in terms of army points) are three stands of shugenja – with two figures on each!! But that’s another reason why it’s not so useful; the triple wizard combo is a TOUGH army to play. It is very PIP intensive - if you can’t roll the PIPs you are doomed. I imagine it’s not one that many would be terribly interested in playing.

Originally I had thought I’d make an army that looked like this:

3x Magician (Shugenja)
2x Blade (Foot Samurai)
1x Rider (Mounted Samurai)
3x Shooters (Archers)

The make-up of the non-magician contingent was more or less decided upon because… well… it’s what I HAD… I have since aquired a few more packs of things I thought I might use for the Phoenix army, but I’m not quite sure what to classify them as. I have four of each of Earth Elementals, Avalanche Guard, and Void Guard.

The Earth Elementals just look like lightly armoured samurai. I was tempted to just base them individually and use them as such – better armed ashigaru or poor samurai… but now I’m thinking I may just paint them brownish and base them together and call them a stand of “Earth Elementals”. But what to classify them as? Blade….? That’s what they look like!

The Avalanche Guard and Void guard are a little tougher. I’m not really sure WHAT the avalanche guard are supposed to be. They’re sort of human looking… but are more or less unarmoured but their flesh looks really bumpy – perhaps it’s elemental armour? Two of the four are brandishing swords, another has one strapped to his back and the fourth, I’m not sure about (they’re still in the pack…). Blade again? If they’re just warriors magically protected by the earth kami I suppose that’s what they could be…?

The Void Guard are the hardest. They are ghostly forms carrying weapons and animatind a small amount of armour… BLADE AGAIN!? That seems silly – they should have SOME sort of different effect… Hordes…? (because they can’t really be killed and keep coming back…?)

I guess I should try and find out what they were supposed to do in the Clan War game…

Oh, I also got a pack of Isawa Inquisitors… I want to use at least one for skirmishing… maybe I could put the other three on a base… but what to call them…? Cleric? I’d have to drop one ofhte magicians, and if it was too close it could diminish the effect of my OWN magicians… and honestly cleric is a guess - I have no idea what the unit was actually used for…

Anyway, here’s a few things I’ve finished recently. The are all out of print Clan War figures from AEG

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)


Mounted Phoenix Samurai (Riders)


An archer… No, this isn’t for Hordes of the Things, I had based a few singly as I had way more than I could ever use in HOTT and I thought I’d paint one up in Phoenix colours to see what it looked like before painting up a whole bunch. Alternatively I do have Old Glory Ashigaru archers I could paint up for the Pheonix archers. Since everything else in the army will be clan war figures, I think I’ll stick with these as my Phoenix shooters.

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

Probably more Phoenix Shugenja…

Oh dear....

Two large ebay lots arrived today.... blowing the whole painted-to-purchased ratio all to hell...

One lot - which was completely Clan War stuff - consisted of 139 foot, 25 mounted, and 16 great big beasties (multipart nasties that I would put in the same category as "vehicles"). The other lot, which also included some clan war stuff, but also contained four packs of mega miniatures, added another 64 foot, 13 mounted (8 centaurs, 5 Naga!) and another 2 dragons and a dude on a flying carpet!?

Oi....

Unicorn, Lion, Scorpion

A few more from AEG’s Clan War/Legend of the Five Rings.



This is a Unicorn clan shugenja – to be used as a Magician stand in my Unicorn HOTT army. (those white spots in the background are big fluffy snowflakes... it was snowing this morning when I took the pics outside!)

Nothing like focusing and finishing one army before moving on to something else… now I have Magician Stands for Unicorn, Phoenix, and Naga armies… but very little else… DOH!!


Lion and Scorpion bushi – which may see action shortly in our L5R Campaign on Savage Saturday Night…

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

Hopefully a report of two HOTT games I had last week… more of the same painting…

Campaign Thoughts and Plans for 2010

Well I’ve been thinking about campaigns again. A while ago, back in October, I had announced that I’d be running a Dark Ages DBA Campaign
at the end of February. I’ve had to change that to the first week of March due to some conflicts… and for a number of reasons I’m going to have to bump the Dark Ages campaign until the summer and will run another Hordes of the Things Campaign in March instead.

There are two main reasons for this. The first being a few have expressed interest in coming but are uninterested in traveling across the prairies in late February/early March… (sissies...) Anyway, I figured if I bumped it to the summer we might have a better turn out (there is that possibility of 12 armies… maybe more… and so far only 6 people have said for sure they’d come…). The second reason is I’m not sure I’ll be able to finish everything I’d like to have done in time for March… I COULD have it done… but what I’m really interested in working on RIGHT NOW just isn’t the Dark Ages stuff – I’m having much more fun working on Feudal Japanese and fantasy stuff.

I’ll get those Damn Irish done sometime… Then there’s the Welsh and the Scotts… Finishing the options for a number of the armies and the additional Viking army (or two…) and the Picts... I hate rushing… it makes things seem like “work” and “work” is the antithesis of “hobby”.

So get ready! My second annual HOTT campaign will be held on Saturday, 6 March 2010! If you are interested in sowing up please do let me know ASAP – as I do have limited armies! Actually, that’s not entirely true I will have quite a few army options by then – the real limiting factor will be the number of people that can be crammed around tables in my house!! WE had eight last year, I thnk anything beyond 12 would really be pushing it – though it would be cool to HAVE 12!! So far I have six committed!

I’ve started redrafting the campaign rules – with some considerable changes – after lessons learned during the last two campaign weekends as well as the online campaigns…

The Dark Ages DBA campaign will be held on Saturday, 29 May 2010...

I’d still like to do a fall campaign, it might be in September instead of October… and I have NO idea what I’ll be doing for sure. It definitely WON’T be one of the grand DBA campaigns I have been thinking about (The Successors of Alexander, Roman Civil War, Greek City-States, English Civil War, etc…) I’ve come to the conclusion that each of those will take more or less a year to prepare for. It’ll probably be something I already have stuff for… but I’d rather not do something I’ve already done in the past year (Dark Ages, HOTT, Russian Civil War) and I won’t have any other DBA campaign ready…

I’ve actually been toying with the idea of a Savage Worlds Skirmish campaign of some sort… running a series of linked skirmish scenarios with players possibly all playing on the same side against my minions but possibly having opposing goals… or it could be a campaign where all have their own “warband” and play a series of scenarios against each other mordhiem-style… except it might be set in World War Two – in the streets of Stalingrad – where evary player commands a squad of Russians of Germans… or maybe a Rippers game where everyone has a group of monsters or monster slayers…

I don’t know… just an idea…

Here We Go Again…

Happy new year, everybody! A couple new things to kick off this years painting updates…

I had meant to do a sort of wrap up and look back at 2009… but I’m not sure when (or if…) I’ll get around to that…


This is a Naga Shugenja from AEG’s Legend of the Five Rings. This particular one will be a Magician stand in a Naga Hordes of the Things army. I actually have enough of them to make an entire army (just need to PAINT them now...). I’m not entirely sure what to class the rest of the Naga as, however. I’m kind of leaning towards just calling them all “Beasts” – they move quickly (400 paces/turn), aren’t slowed by bad going, +3 vs foot, +4 Vs mounted, quick-killed by mounted…. Seems reasonable… I might include a hero in the army as well…


My friend John dropped off a bunch of his old skaven (© & TM Games Workshop Limited, used without permission). I was going to just rebase a bunch of them and make them into a Hordes of the Things army for him (SHHHHHHH! DON’T TELL GW I’VE USED THEIR FIGURES FOR – shock-horror – ANOTHER GAME!!!). Of course I couldn’t help myself and I went ahead and repainted these two to make a stand of Sneakers.


Darn Ninjas… so hard to photograph. This is a Scorpion Clan ninja from AEG’s Legend of the Five Rings.

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

I have a Unicorn Clan Magician (Shugenja) stand for my Unicorn HOTT army just about finished… after that I’ll probably be working on Feudal Japanese/Rokuganese and other assorted fantasy things for the next bit…

I am resolving this year to paint TWICE as many figures as I purchase in an attempt to lower the painted to unpainted ratio... (See MORE LIES)... unfortunately I have a whole SCHWAK of goodies en route which is going to blow the acquired versus painted totals for this year for a while... but I just won't buy anything else until I catch up....

Birds of a Feather…

Well 2009 is rapidly drawing to a close. I keep looking at that total over on the left there and thinking “dang… didn’t quite make 1000…” Then I realize I’m looking at the foot and totally discounting the 148 MOUNTED I painted as well… I thought I’d actually end up painting more than I purchased this year – and very nearly did it before I went on this little spending spree over the last four weeks. Ah well…

Anyway, more on that in another post – here’s the latest…


Here are two Phoenix Clan samurai (the figures are from Perry Miniatures)


These are Crane Clan Samurai – one is another Perry Mini the other two are Kenshinzen from AEG’s L5R/clan war line.


…and then not really related to birds at all we have a Unicorn Clan shugenja (Iushi Takaai, I think… also from AEG) and another converted West Wind vampire (she’s flying… birds fly…?).

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

A look back at 2009 – it really has been an extraordinary year…

Scorpions, Phoenix, Dragons and Lions…

The other night I finished up a handful of assorted figures for our upcoming Legends of the Five Rings Campaign on Savage Saturday Night.


These are actually from Perry Miniatures - the first of a few I recently ordered to check them out. They’re very nice. I picked up two daimyo command groups to use as general’s/camp follower stands to sit in my Samurai DBA camps. I also picked up these – a pack of samurai with swords in everyday clothes and some villagers and townspeople.

The rest are from AEG’s L5R/clan war line.


A Scorpion diplomat and two Phoenix Shukenja. The Phoenix shukenja are Isawa Uona and Isawa Tadaka.


I ended up with two packs of Uona and Tadaka – and I may have yet ANOTHER on the way (when you pick these up in lots of 4-6 packs… sometimes you get doubles… or triples…). So I thought I’d paint a second pair of them to make a magician stand for Hordes of the Things.

I think I’m going to try and put together a couple Rokugan HOTT armies. I have enough Unicorn already, and almost enough Naga. The Generic Samurai armies for DBA that I’m working on I’ll paint in the colours of the Rokugan clans… I haven’t entirely worked out what the make up of the armies will be just yet but here’s what I’m thinking for a couple of them so far:

The Phoenix
I get the impresson that the Phoenix are thought of as relatively weak militarily but strong in magic – so this would be a good army to sport a triple-wizard-combo. I’m thinking something like:

3x Magicians - Shukenja
1x Blade – Samurai Foot
2x shooters – Samurai Archers
2x Spear – Ashigaru Spear
1x Rider – Mounted Samurai

Alternatively I could replace one or more of the Shugenja with something else big and nasty that the Phoenix could summon to do their bidding… not sure what… Dragons? “gods”(Oni or powerful Kami)? Or maybe I should field a Cleric (defensive magician/monks). They also have some funky units like Isawa Inquisitors and Void Guard… I’m not sure what I’d classify these as – if I was even able to track down a pack or two of them…

The Unicorn

I more or less have all the elements ready to be painted. I got a Unicorn Army Expansion box and then picked up a few other hero types here and there. The army will look something like this:

1x Hero – Daimyo and personal guard or perhaps a unit of Battle Maidens – if ever I could find some
1x Magician – Mounted Shukenja – Iuchi Daiyu
8x Riders – Mounted Samurai

Alternatively I guess I could field some archers as shooters. It might be a good idea as this army would have a really, really tough time dealing with bad going otherwise… Some Knights, perhaps, as I have a few figures with fully barded horses.

The Naga
Between the Army expansion box set and two other lots I have nearly enough to field an entire army of these as well. I know very little about them however. I need to do some more reading. My initial thoughts are to call them ALL Beast (perhaps with a magician and/or hero). They are fast moving and move swiftly through bad-going – not super-powerful and hate other mounted… sounds like Beasts to me…

Shadowlands
I have a few Oni already and a pile more on the way… I have enough appropriate looking Orc Wolf riders to field an entire army of them alone… and if all that weren’t enough I have a PILE of clan war goblins on the way (another couple ebay lots) I will probably be able to field TWO commands of shadowlands baddies. I’m just not sure what to filed the host of wildly different Oni as… have to do some more reading and thinking about it…

The Other Clans – Lion, Dragon, Crab, Crane, Scorpion, etc
These would more or less be modeled on DBA Early Samurai army – perhaps with a Hero and/or Magician thrown in. Parhaps the Crab could have some Warband… I’m not sure… I’ll have to do some more reading of the background fluff…

Anyway, that’s my initial ideas – if anyone out there is very familiar with the Legends of the Five Rings – particularly Clan War – and have any suggestions, I’m all ears!

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

More o'the same...