Basing Samurai for Skirmish and for Impetus

I recently came across  "Song of Blades and Heroes" by Ganesha Games and having played a couple of games I have been inspired to dig out and all sorts of old figures that have not seen the light in years.  Song of Blades is a fantastic system for skirmishing and you only need about eight to twelve  figures a side for a good game.
 
Among the figures that I've unearthed are these Dixon Samurai.   They have  been sitting in a box for somewhere near twenty years while I  tried to find a decent set of samurai skirmish rules to use with them.    The Song of Ninja and Katana variation found on the songofblades Yahoo Group fills the bill and I  have played one game so far.  Fantastic fun. 

The foot figures are based on two pence  pieces while the mounted figures are based on 25mm x 50mm ovals of 2mm mdf I had custom-made for me by Martin of  Warbases.co.uk .  Warbases don't advertise the fact on their web site, but they'll custom cut just about any base you want.   

I also want to use these Samurai to play the excellent Impetus, from Dadi & Piombo so I got Martin of Warbases to make me some custom sabots.

The sabots are 12cm x 6cm and the holes for the figures are 26.5mm - that's 0.5mm bigger than the two pence pieces I'm using for the  bases.   This leaves enough room for me to paint the edge of the bases.  Here is one of the sabots once I've finished it.

I have had similar sabots made for the cavalry, again the holes in the sabot are 0.5mm bigger than the bases.

The custom sabots cost me £1.20 a go with 60p for postage and packing.  That's the same price as Warbases charge for the various stock movement trays they make.  A bargain as far as I'm concerned.

I seem to be on an Italian kick at the moment, both  Song of Blades and Heroes and Impetus come  from Italian publishers.

 Credits:  Most of these figures were painted by Jack Glanville of Pioneer Professional Painting, though some were (badly) painted by myself many years ago and then extensively touched up by Jack.  I did all the bases myself.

More Wee Samurai

More of the Bacchus 6mm samurai from the talented Jim Louttit. Some more infantry, generals and cavalry.

I've got this lot sitting in my study at home so I hope to be taking some better pics over the weekend. In the meantime feast your eyes on these.


General in Maku. Click on the thumnail to look at a larger pic and you'll be able to see the faces on the severed heads on the viewing platform at the back. Awesome work from Jim.







Generals with their retinues. These are based on 2" squares rather than the 3" squares used for everyone else.

A cavalry stand.

Jim's whole army deployed for battle.

Jim's Wee Samurai

Jim Louttit, one of my mates from the South East Scotland Wargames Club, brought these 6mm Samurai along to Show and Tell at the club last night.

Jim and I first started this samurai project in the summer of 2005 when we both bought some of these lovely figures from Pete Berry at Baccus Miniatures. Originally we intended to use them for Warmaster Ancients, after a lot of reading, Jim decided that Warmaster would not give a game that would accurately reflect the way they fought. So he's now working on writing his own set of rules, based on Sam Mustapha's Fast Play Grande Armee Napoleonic Rules, which will use these 3" square bases to represent around a thousand men.

I'm looking forward to playing this game immensely, but I'm not looking forward to having my figures compared to these beauties of Jim's.






Only these five stands done so far but Jim's promised Cavalry and a General in his Maku are next. I'll post some pictures as soon as he's got them done.