Redvers and Son Get Into Bushido

While I’ve 3d printed some stuff myself, I also bought a couple of larger pieces. One of these is a Shinto Shrine. Before setting out to paint, I’ve had a quick look around for some reference pictures.

The model comes in two pieces which were given a grey primer. I’ve then just used the cheap acrylic paints from the Works, except for the red, which is a vallejo crimson.

The wood was given a heavy wash before an Iraqi sand dry brush.

The tiles I painted a dark green and then dry brushed with a goblin green.

Unfortunately, the model suffers from stepping from the print which makes washes and dry brushing harder. For the wood and tile areas, this isn’t such a problem however my first attempt at the stones looked awful as a dark wash ran into the stepping creating a lined effect.

Now I could have applied some plastic glue or other methods to smooth this out, but this is a terrain piece and life is too short. So I repainted the stones grey and applied the wash just between the rocks rather than all over. I’ve then carefully dry brushed with a light grey and the end result was passable, at least from 3 feet.

Final step was to apply some flock around the stones to hide the worst of the stepping and job done.

Returning to the MDF buildings, we set to work on the rice stores. I looked up some pictures for reference and found a Yayoi historical museum in southern Japan that has built some of these as part of the exhibits. These are all thatched and our MDF building isn’t so we need to rectify that.

There’s a few ways of making thatched roofs and there’s even a Gerry Can on it as well but here’s how we tackled it.

Heading to our local Poundland, we bought a wallpaper brush for £1 (who’d have thought?). Removing the metal rim, it was easy to take the bristles off ready for adding to the roof.

The roof was then smeared liberally with PVA and the bristles applied. Fortunately, the bristles are about the same length as the roof, so there will be minimum trimming once in place. Once the PVA dried, we then added two separate applications of terrain cement, just to make sure that everything stayed in place.

Once this was all dry, the whole thing got primed and I then set my son to work painting it. We’re using cheap acrylic paint from The Works for this – no point using the good stuff on MDF terrain!

The wood was painted a dark brown and the thatch black, just to make sure that there were no light patches.

The thatch then got a dry brush of grey.

To finish things off, we gave the model a dry brush of Iraqi Sand before applying a coat of gloss varnish. Once dry, I broke out the Mig enamel panel liner and applied this into the grooves of the wood planking and door, just to really bring out the shadow.

This then got a final matt varnish to lock everything in place. Quick and easy but quite effective.

The month of May is birthday month for myself and my son, so a good opportunity to get a faction starter set. This does mean that we both need to pick a faction. My son found this easy. As soon as he found out that the Temple of Rokan can have a bo staff wielding panda, he was all in on the monks. He was also delighted to find out that he can field an old man riding a tortoise. So his birthday presents were duly lined up and he’ll get these at the end of the month.

I was torn between several of the factions. I particularly like the Savage Wave, mainly for the idea of massive oni crashing around the table top. The Prefecture of Ryu with their samurai also look particularly enticing. But in all my years of gaming, I’ve never had an undead army, so I’ve opted for the Cult of Yurei and I’ve duly asked for the starter faction set for that.

With the factions chosen and on order for our respective birthdays, we’ve both been looking at the options on what to field and how to expand our start forces. For the Cult of Yurei, I noted that I could field rat swarms and plague rats. Digging around Thingiverse and MyMiniFactory, I tracked down some stl files that I’ve adapted and 3d printed. So I now have some small rat swarms, some large rat swarms and three plague rats to paint up

For the Temple of Rokan, they can field what I can best describe as temple statues in the form of characters called Shisa and Oki Shisa. Thingiverse contains a number of stl files of temple statues, so I printed these out as well for my son.

So while building some MDF buildings, we’ve also been working on painting up some of the 3D prints that I ran off. When it comes to terrain, some detail is good for immersion, but don’t over do it – time is precious.

So, first up we have the stone lanterns. This was very quick and dirty. A grey primer to start followed by a heavy wash of nightshade blue. This was then topped off with a dry brush of some old GW dry brush paint – Longbeard I think (it’s a very light grey). Very quick and very easy.

I then thought, let’s try an OSL for good measure. This was just a quick spray of a light yellow via the airbrush. Doesn’t look brilliant but good enough for terrain and the tabletop.

Next up are the wooden items. Again, simple is best. While I know worn wood isn’t brown in real life, for the sake of speed I applied a flat earth. This was then followed by an Army Painter dark tone before a heavy dry brush of Iraqi Sand. Probably no more than an evenings work in total.

The carts got a little more attention with some gun metal applied to obvious metal aspects with a nuln oil wash to these. The pots were painted a cavalry brown and highlighted with a light brown glaze. The rope is scruffulous brown with a strong tone wash applied. Finally the linen tops were cammo biege. Looks fine from 3 feet away.

So my son and I have been busy with the MDF terrain from Sarissa. Armed with a sharp knife and a pot of wood glue, we’ve been busy sticking the buildings together. This is definitely a part of the hobby that my son really enjoys and immediately grabbed the Dojo as the building he wanted to tackle first. I took on the less ambitious rice stores.

This lot then needed to be sealed ready for painting. I’ve just used a commercially available MDF sealer for this and liberally slapped it over the models. My son doesn’t enjoy the painting side of the hobby but (literally) throwing the sealer onto these was right up his street. I had a lot of clearing up to do after…

The only terrain I have for 28mm is old 40k stuff which won’t really work. The MDF buildings from Sarrissa will cover the building needs but I now require some other terrain pieces and ‘dressing’. I’ve therefore fired up the 3D printer and gone shopping/scouring My Mini Factory and Thingiverse for useful stuff.

I downloaded a lot of stuff and the 3D printer has been working overtime, with barely a minutes break. Here’s what I now have ready for clean up, priming and painting

So plenty to get painted but hopefully will be fairly quick as it is terrain and I think you can get away with a slightly lower quality paint job when compared to the actual miniatures. At least that’s my theory.

The downside is that I have ruined my attempts to reduce my pile of potential. I have a progress update on this on my other project here:

Stuff what I been painting

The game is played on a 2′ by 2′ area and requires some terrain to block line of sight etc. I don’t have any Japanese/Eastern influenced terrain so something I need to correct.

For the buildings, Sarissa make some options for Bushido, Test of Honour etc that fit the bill. For other stuff, I will fire up the 3D printer and either buy the STL or design them myself in Blender.

Here’s what arrived from Sarissa

So we’re now the proud owners of,

2 x Rice storage huts

1 Dojo

1 Simple house

1 Samurai measuring sword

2 lanterns

Time to get building

Overall, it’s a really nice starter set and a very reasonable price entry point. The faction starter sets also look excellent as well although we don’t yet have any of those (not yet at least!). The models within the box are Ronin and are considered mercenaries in the game, with each model being an individual character. While you can’t play Ronin as a faction, you can recruit individual Ronin into your faction if they align with that faction. Each faction can recruit at least a couple of the characters in the starting set, so you should be able to get mileage out of this set whichever way you go. However, to get you going, the 10 characters are built around two warring families with the younger member of each family being in love – it’s a story I’ve heard somewhere before…. This setup will allow you to play a small game right out of the box.

I’ll start with the (minor) negatives first. The rule book is a little unclear in places and could do with some additional examples. Some parts require reading a couple of times to get the full understanding. And I think that in a couple of places, there are minor errors. Nothing significant and common sense should reveal the correct answer. I also don’t like the token set. It’s printed on thin card rather than the thicker card stock you find in most board games. This makes the tokens very bendy and less durable. And I struggled to pick them up with my fat fingers. I appreciate that this was probably a cost decision, but thicker, better quality tokens would have been nicer. Finally, there are also a lot of special rules that requires a lot of diving into the rule book. I’m sure that after a few games I will learn them, but our first game was a little slow.

Otherwise, this is a great game. The rules, once learnt, allow for a great skirmish. It’s alternative activation but with the option to activate the same model in two consecutive turns (if it has the counters to do so) so both players are always engaged. Individual turns are quick and the game develops rapidly. I like the options to enhance certain attacks/defences through use of ‘Ki’ (in game currency generated by some characters for spending on such things) or to use Ki for special moves, magic etc. There’s a lot of flavour here.

It’s also worth noting that the game is scenario focused although we have yet to try any of those. Our games so far have just been about learning to play.

The models are also lovely. The ones included in the box are resin and the blisters are either metal or resin. They all come with their character card as well. Most are single piece although a couple in the starter set were two part (which I’ve not stuck together yet to make painting easier).

Getting into the game is reasonably easy, with a newish starter set available, Bushido Risen Sun. This contains everything you need to get playing and also doesn’t force you to pick a faction. Here’s what’s in the box,

A5 Rule book

10 Miniatures and bases

30 cards (10 detailing each miniature and the rest as upgrades etc)

Token set

I also purchased another three ronin models and the ronin card deck to provide a little more option and variability.

We like a good game in our house and I’ve always enjoyed gaming since I was knee high to a grasshopper. My son also seems to enjoy gaming, with Star Wars Imperial Assault being one of our go to games for some fun. He’s currently 11 and board games provide some structure for him to game within. We’ve tried WHFB before and while he enjoyed it, the rules, free form elements of the game and the time to play the game didn’t gel fully with him. Digesting all of the meta-game, army design and rules was also something not that interesting to an 11 year old.

I thought it was time to try something new and look at a smaller, skirmish style game. Something with a low model count, an interesting setting and rules that could be picked up reasonably easily. I was also hoping that we could both get involved in the hobby side of building/painting the models. He was on board with the idea.

We looked at Saga, Frost Grave/Star Grave, Bushido and Battletech. My son is more into the fantasy gaming idea but was certainly drawn toward Battletech – the idea of big stompy robots appealed to him. Frost Grave was also an option as he has recently started playing D&D with his friends and he really enjoys the character progression side of the game. But the option to have ninjas, samurai and angry animals attacking each other was the winner – Bushido it was.