Hello and welcome back dear reader!
This week I had some time off work (1 week of overtime in 3 weeks of work really warrants some time off..) and me and my SO decided to visit my family’s summer cottage in the Finnish Archipelago.
This of course threw a wrench in the hobby time I have. Or so I thought!
In a flash of genius I thought to myself:”why not take the hobby with me?” And so I did! Taking an old CPU-fan cardboard box I managed to pack with me a little neat package of everything I needed. Of course some things had to be left home as painting, 3D modelling and terrain crafting really were out of question.
What I packed with me was the following:
- Crafting knife
- Pliers
- Super Glue
- Liquid Green Stuff
- 1 sprue Spear Ashigaru
- 1 sprue Missile Ashigaru
- 1 Sprue Samurai
- 1 Sprue Mounted Samurai
- 1 Sprue horse
- 2 sprues of bases
As you can see I managed to get a ton of stuff with me to assemble miniatures. Unfortunately the actual time I had to assemble the miniatures was hampered by the usual summer cottage activities ( sauna, fishing, working etc..) and my own problem of making up my mind to what I was supposed to assemble.
The first model was easy, as I was lacking a bannerman for my forces. Unfortunately I had only taken one sprue with the great banner, and thus had to settle for only one model. I’m guessing I have to make another one when I’m home. Then the problems began. As I only own the base game, I had already made all of the base troops and samurai that I could make and had the cards for.
Fortunately for me, Grey For Now offers a lot of bonus card for free on their webshop. So I downloaded a couple and had a little look. The particular cards that I found the most interesting (and doable!) for me was the Bandit units. They are easily made with what I had brought with me, and thus the easy choice of what to try assemble.
Made by bits from the samurai and missile ashigaru sprue, one Armored Bandit Musketman and one Armored Bandit Bowman was assembled. One note I made was that the samurai body seem to be a tad bigger than the ashigaru body, as the arrow just only touches the bow. This is important to know, as this makes swapping arms between the sprues not as easy as I had hoped! This problem only occurred with the bow arms, as the teppo arms fit perfectly.
Then I made a group of Armored Bandits, and a Chief to command the group. Here I got a Little bit fancy, as pieces are from the Samurai, ashigaru and mounted Samurai sprues. The mounted Samurai sprue is a treasure trove of bits,as it holds a lot of alternate heads, weapons and bits to stick on the miniatures.
Finally I found a use for the sword with ball piece, as my Chief can be seen being in the process of sheathing his Katana. I also made my first “can count as no-dachi” as the original katas grip was too short to be used in the model to the right. I had to make a new grip from a spear, and I think it worked out great! Only thing I am probably going to do before priming the is removing the bow from the no-dachi guy. I hate the thing on the sculpt and I don’t think that a bow is going to give a bandit much credit in the bandit world.
And there we have it! Total of models assembled was 7, and I could probably have knocked out 1 or 2 more, but why stress with these things. If you are going somewhere for your vacation, you might think of bringing your hobby with you as I did. I can really recommend it. And for gods sake, don’t assemble outside! I already lost one Katana, and I was assembling the thing inside the whole time!
Cheers!
-Marc
Good Enough Hobbies 