Impetus rules, Mohacs 1526 in 20mm (Part 1), The Hungarian army

One of the pleasures I have is to visit battlefields and then to model the figures, terrain and material for it aiming at wargaming the campaign. This Mohacs battle is another of these cases. I´m making these two armies (next is the Ottoman) for some years by now, using mostly conversions from Zvezda, Miniart, RedBox and Caesar copies. I also used some of Takács Krisztián excellent figures and hopefully will continue to do so in the future as this kind of army is never finished.

Impetus Rules - Mohacs 1526, part 7 - All arms Hungarian reinforcements in 20mm

Another batch of Hungarians finished. The Hungarian CP stands are now 11 and I'm done with heavy cavalry. Archers and Crossbows are also done with 2 and 4 stands each. At the moment there are 20 Impetus stands for this army but still I need another 20 for more Armati stands and to start the Clipeati (with those big tasty pavises), Hussars, Hungarian CL, Landsknecht and some heavier artillery.

The CP are RedBox and Miniart. The only addition was a plastic card shield of Hungarian design. 

I placed as much Hungarian heraldry as I could find but still this group looks like many European heavy cavalry of Early Renaissance. 

I made two Ribaudequins from EverGreen plastics and old wheels from the tail of the Airfix Mark I WWI tank.

The crewmen are converted RedBox figures. 

The Hungarian army had some 85 pieces of artillery ( against 300 Ottoman) at Mohacs so I still need to find a few more artilley pieces of an heavier type. 

 

The spears at the top of the artifact are made of stretched sprue. 

The archers are RedBox from the Men-At-Arms and Retinue box. The flag is a colour photocopy of my own hand painted designs.

These are the Armati from the same box with a flag given to me by Stephen Sheard.

Next: with the arrival of a batch of new Minigeneral models its time to go back to France 1940.

Daimyo set of Rules in 20mm - Japan's Sengoku period/Sekigahara 1600: Koboyakawa Hideaki's clan

Hideaki looks at at  valley below mount Matsuo still not knowing in which side he will fight on the 21 october 1600. This is the 5th clan I made for Sekigahara but with over 40 in the battlefield there is still a long way to go.

His army was the 3rd biggest on the battlefield with 15.600 men and its defection to Ieyasu's side decided the course of the battle.

For the first time I converted a few Ashigaru to use the ōtsuchi (big hammer). Recently I managed to get the 2017 Japanese movie Sekigahara, a brilliant movie which places Mitsunari as the hero of the story (and Ieyasu as the villain) where plenty of ōtsushi can be seen in action.

The ōtsushi in action hammering a few heads.

The mounted Samurai are the usual Zvezda. Its Sashimono  and Nabori also taken from the 2017 movie Sekigahara. They are completely different from the ones in Samurai-Archives and they look great on the battle scenes. Which of them are the true ones?

Koboyakawa Hideaki's model is a resin copy of the Zvezda General with another head using a variation of the eboshi-nari kabuto.

Close to the already painted Hideaki is a war drummer also from Zvezda.

I included some shields in both archers and teppo stands.

The foot Samurai are again the usual Zvezda. Is funny how these excellent figures put an end to other 20mm plastic Samurai being produced elsewhere.

Some teppo Ashigaru are conversions from those grizzly Zvezda  figures carrying severed heads. 

The majority of the Ashigaru are the usual Red Box.

The other group is mixed Zvezda and Red Box.

Here they go down mount Matsuo to hit Ukita Hideie in the flank. 

Next: more BEF or Punic Wars. 

Daimyo set of Rules in 20mm - Japan's Sengoku period/Sekigahara 1600: Otani Yoshitsugu clan

Otani Yoshitsugu was a very famous general of the period and a close friend to Ishida Mitsunari. He tryed to convince Ishida on not going to war against Tokugawa Ieyasu but as a true and loyal friend he fought at Sekigahara were his tactical skills were showed once again. He had a small army as his son was in charge of a much bigger one. Otani Yoshitsugu was also suffering from leprosy and his health was deteriorating forcing him to be transported in a palanquin. At the end of the battle he committed seppuku  and instructed that his head would be cut off and buried. Even today it couldn't be found.

The palanquin were Otani seats is made of plastic card. The Otani figure is the Zvezda General of the Samurai Army Headquarters. The head was worked with putty in order to make the white headdress that covered his sickness. The seated Ashigaru are conversions from the same box with new heads. All other figures are a mixture of Zvezda and RedBox as usual.

Next: Sturm-Panzer Abteilung 217 for Normandy 1944. 

Daimyo set of Rules in 20mm - Japan's Sengoku period/Sekigahara 1600: Ukita Hideie clan

At Sekigahara Ukita's Hideie clan was the biggest in the Western army of Ishida Mitsunari. With a total of 17000 men it had to be represented with over 200 miniatures - a bit time consuming.

Ukita and kneeling vassal are Zvezda with RedBox Ashigaru as standard bearers.

The mounted Samurai are also Zvezda. In order to speed procedures paint the horse's harness of a clan with the same colours and even the main details on the Samurai armour. For this group I chose blue. When we want to individualize too much a Samurai army the task becomes too long and you loose interest or don't even start. In the end you will have a nice collection of boxes ... to be open. So speed up things and dry brush all that lace and rivets!

Same for the foot Samurai. Here I even sprayed Brown in all of them to have a different base colour from black and then added some particular colours.

The Ashigaru (RedBox), fortunately seemed to have some uniformity so the task is easier. Most of the Sashimonos are hand made in styrene as the original figures don't carry them.

The Arquebus corps had a styrene shield to each man and, again as in other clans, an officer to each 5 stands.

The archers are also RedBox. Red Box may not produce the most handsome models in the market but there are plenty poses in each reference which makes the final result quite pleasant. Besides RedBox models are getting better and better. 

The full army of Ukita Hideie deploying at Sekigahara  ready to defend Mitsunari's interests in becoming next Shogun, a thing that will only happen in wargaming...

Daimyo set of Rules in 20mm - Japan's Sengoku period/Sekigahara 1600: Kuroda Nagamasa clan

Some 8/9 years ago I got hooked on Samurai. Zvezda released their 3 boxes on the period and RedBox followed with Ashigaru, Ikko-ikki and more. Zvezda figures were just incredible and RedBox followed in its funny but very 'wargamable' style.

I looked in the web and found loads of information on the period and some nice free sets of rules like Damyo from Ian Duncan. Here they are along with supporting material:

http://www.oocities.org/duncanis100/rules.html

I saw movies then (once, twice...) like Ran, Kagemusha, Furin Kazan and Ten To Chi To looking for inspiration along almost everything Osprey edited  and Stephen Turnbull wrote. Driven by usual madness I made a huge collection of boxes from the brands above.

As usual also after painting two clans I got fed up and I turned don't know were to... The damn samurai were far more complicated to paint than anything I had painted so far!

But the Sengoku period is just something so amazingly colourful that a few days ago the Bushido code banged my head again and here I am painting Samurai for the second time (and viewing the same movies, and books and web articles...).

My original idea was to portray all armies of Sekigahara 1600, the biggest battle of the Sengoku period between the Western army lead by Ishida Mitsunari and the Eastern army of Tokugawa Ieyasu but I think nowadays I will also do Takeda, Nobunaga and Uesugi clans, famous for previous battles and maybe I will leave some of the Sekigahara clans out. Its just too much.

Recently I found a pure gold mine, in fact 7 long pages with hundreds of clans and their flags:

http://www.samurai-archives.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1638&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Let's go to the figures. This clan is Kuroda Nagamasa's that fought for the Eastern army of Tokugawa Ieyasu against Ishida Mitsunari's western army in Sekigahara.

Kuroda's figure is the Zvezda general in the infantry box. He had to have a new head from another samurai. The top part of the head was then squashed after heating and his helmet bent to become similar to the original Kurada was using:

The Nobori bearer is a figure from the Zvezda command set.

The  kneeling Samurai  in not a lemon seller, no sir, he carries the Horo, the symbol of the messengers.

Zvezda Samurai cavalry. They are great figures whose painting I tryed to keep on the simple side but trying to give an individuality to each. The uniformity of the clan's cavalry is achieved by the horse's harness being of the same colour (which was mostly non-existing in reality) and one of two types of sashimono (flag on the back) this clan had.

Foot Samurai from Zvezda. I chose the blue sashimono this time. I suggest to you to always paint all samurai in one colour first - as I already prime them in black its easier - and then add small detail in different colours. This will speed your painting process and you will have an extra clan more rapidly.

The Ashigaru ranks: Yari (back), Teppo (arquebus) and bow, all Zvezda. The Ashigaru, foot soldiers from lower classes, were 70% of Samurai armies by the year 1600.

The Ashigaru were trained and lead by Samurai so I converted one Samurai as an officer of Ashigaru, one for each 5 or 6 stands.

Next: the Ukita Hideie clan (I know that because I already started it).