Himiko and the Yayoi army list

Think about ancient Japan and the thing that comes to mind are Samurai and their followers, battling it out in honourable duels.  And rightly so.

But when I set out building a force in Fields of Glory of Japanese, I picked the Yayoi era though, basically the period of Japan before metal armour (and as such, Samurai) came into existance on a common basis.  The Yayoi where peasant forces, and this secerly limits the choices at your disposal.  The Empires of the Dragon book roughly spans 2500 years, going from 1000 BC to1500 AD, which is about equal to the ancient Greeks here until the dawn of the rennaissance.

While the Vikings where plundering our countries, the chinese where shooting with missile launchers at each other, so needless to say this book covers a wide variety of forces.  Thus taking Yayoi Japan as a force, this left me with a force having basically only spearmen, swordsmen (actually, dagger-axe men), slingers and archers armoured in a linnen wrap around cloth.  And that is it... no cavalry, no chariots, no armoured troops, limited tactical flexibility in one word, but a mass of troops of at average quality over the whole line.

Roighty so, I painted my general for my forces today, namely the (hotly debated if she actually existed) lady Himiko, a priestess Shaman said to have unified at one moment all of the ancient Japanese village states.

At first I thought of having her and her retainers in the camp, but decided against this to set out my general more.  If Alexander the Great can be present on the table, then surely this dame 'of magic' can.

Now my army list is going to be this at 800 points, and hopefully get it to a tournament once.  I have no doubt they would get slaughtered facing the more fancy armies, but like my quality blogpost a few days, I hope to swamp the enemy and overwhelm their flanks.

1 General and 2 Troop Commanders

5 Battlegroups of 8 stands each of Spearmen
2 Battlegroups of 8 stands each of Archers
5 Battlegroups of 6 stands each of Slingers
4 Battlegroups of 8 stands each of Dagger-axe Men

An unfortified Camp

This yields me with 3 command stands, a camp base and no less then 118 bases of foot troops, a true swarm compared to most armies... especcially compared to those people TEND to take (opposed to that what they could take...

I'm thinking along the lines of having the spearmen and the slingers in a checkered pattern, with the archers on 'assassination' duty and the dagger axe warriors as a reserve force to stem any breaks or exploit where the opponent waveres.

So I know what I'll be painting for a while yet ;-)

Yayoi Japanese commander

A small thingy painted in between my regiments, the first of the two sub commanders I will be fielding in the Japanese force.

The models are from Khurassan Miniatures, and have great detail, but painting free handly a dragon pattern on the banner wasn`t the most simple of things on those small 15mm blighters.

Once more in to the breach... Bringing the brushes out of retirement

It's a harsh reality, belgian postal services are so expensive that it is cheaper to fly in a model from the United States with priority shipping, then it is to even have the baseline belgian postage rate, and that is not even counting the models costs in it themselves.

Bit of a problem for poor blokes like me trying to clean out a few miniatures in order to be able to fund my Saint Seiya collection (one of my 'good intentions' planned for 2014 is to not spend more on hobby budgetting then I get together by saving small change for the Antwerp Convention and FACTS, and stop ordering masses without making room first, and hopefully fund it that way - new collection items or Crusade expansions excluded).

So I entered negotiations with the GF, to move a large part of my painting materials over to her place, in order to be able to paint up all the remaining stuff I have lying around from long dead projects and hopefully be able to trade them off easier that way, paint works maybe being a reason to get the models going, or at least be able to get potential intrestees into a trade even with the shipping rates.

The 'sexy' hopefully will overrule the 'expensive'...

But there is more, and I blame 'my Nemesis' for that.  I'm not going to rejoin a club anymore, as my social life cruelly put doesn't allow the spare time for it, but it starts aching again in my 'brush hand'.  I haven't even painted a dozen miniatures during this year, but after talks on two wedding parties in a month, I figured to 'go for it' and finish (well, actually, start should be a better word, they are all still blistered and packed), and combined with Tamsin's excellent AAR reports of Derby over at the Wargaming Girl blog, I'm going to bite the bullet and make my 15mm Fields of Glory army a reality.

From their ancients range, I had elected the Yayoi Japanese as the force I wanted to be build, with miniatures to be used from Khurassan's excellent range.  I've always been a fan of that company, clear and neat castings, easily paintable.

The Yayoi was an Iron Age period in Japanese history, from around 300 BC to 300 AD and named after a region in Tokyo where the first relics where unearthed.  Distinguishing characteristics of the Yayoi period include the appearance of new pottery styles and the start of an intensive rice agriculture in paddy fields. Techniques in metallurgy based on the use of bronze and iron were also introduced in this period. A hierarchical social class structure also emerged in this period. The Yayoi followed the Jōmon period (13,000–400 BC) and Yayoi culture flourished in a geographic area from southern Kyūshū to northern Honshū.

An agrarian culture, their armies where mainly foot forces of armed peasants, armed with the traditional weapons like spears, slings and bows, but also with 'dagger axes'.  It was also the last period in Japan warriors tended to tattoo themselves for the battle.  And there is the 'legend' of Himiko, a shaman queen that is said (but not proven and open to a lot of debate still) to have risen to rule all of Wa. Bit of eastern mystique mixed into an army of regulars, it is always a fun thing to paint and build around...

Now considering how I like all things Japanese, it ain't to much of a suprise I elected an army from the Far East expansion of FoG back then, even more then an Irish force as I fielded already in 25mm and 10mm.  So off we go by slowling transferring paint pots and brushes from the one to the other desktop, and start puzzling out the elements of my initially aimed at 800 points force.  I might even get that counter to a bit less of an epic failure this way.

And maybe, very maybe, if time, money and partner permits, I might someday travel to the UK for a tournament weekend like in 'the good old days', though I doubt that is going to re-emerge in my chaotic mindset again...