Little conversion

The Officer is a Perry plastic ACW figure with a Bac Ninh head, simple but efective.
What do you think?

Fall of the Samurai, a Triumph & Tragedy Army List for the Boshin War

Finally I finished the T&T Army list for the Boshin War!
The list looks great and is a nice read too, also includes order cards with Boshin War designs.
The army list is available FREE to download from here, please enjoy it. 

For those who don't know T&T is a tabletop adventure wargame designed for a number of players, starting from two, but working just as well as a multiplayer game. If you can get a friend to act as an umpire, it can greatly improve the game by adding chance or unexpected events as well as having a ruling instance. It is not strictly necessary, however.
For more info, please visit Triumph & Tragedy website and T&T forum.

I want to expres my thanks to my wife, Björn and Chris for their help on this army list.

Encounter at Toba

This picture represent a scene of the Toba Fushimi  battle (January 27, to January 31, 1868), when some bakufu troops equipped to the old way charged against Satsuma soldiers fully modernized.

Satsuma troops painted II

Good news!

Paul's hand is completely recovered and will continue working on the new figures soon.
Let's cross our fingers...

Delay in the new figures

Paul broke his hand two months ago and has not been to work on the new figures so at the moment I don't have a release date for the new packs. 
We apologize for the inconvenience.

Boshin War army list for Smooth & Rifled

Boshin War army list is available free to dowload from the Smooth & Rifled site.

For those who don't know S&R is a game system designed to recreate skirmish games with 28, 20 or 15mm miniatures. This is a little review extract from Slorm Wargames:

The ruleset has 26 pages, where the rules only are in 16, the other are for cover, sample scenarios and markers, support addresses and quick reference sheet. The book is plenty of photos with very good painted miniatures, all the pages have a light brown/sepia colour that is very printer unfriendly.

 Let's take a look a on the wargaming system. The wargame have been thought to be played for battles between 1700 and 1900, but there are projects for expanding it to another periods. The troops have a combat stat called C, that is used for Close Combat resolution.

The turn has various phases:

1.- Action Points, that are rolled with three dices, adding the scores. Each player roll for his Action Points, getting a number from 3 to 18. Those points will be used on the next phases to activate the troops, no more than three times. The player with more Action Points starts to play.

2.- Movement, the players can choose his troops to move them, the troops can move in formation in a lower rate than the unformed troops. The movement rates are the same for every type of infantry, and a bit more for every type of cavalry troop.

3.- Firing, the troops that have an enemy in his Line of Sight, and are armed with a firing weapon can fire at the enemy. It is solved rolling two dices, and adding the scores, if that number is here than the established one by the range, it's a hit. The troops can aim their shoots, for rolling an additional dice when firing. The hits are rolled under a 4+, higher scores become a dead. After the firing, normally you have to reload your weapon, and it cost Action Points.

4.- Combat, the base to base contacted miniatures can start a melee, each miniature roll 3d6, and each score under his C value will be a hit, resolved in the same way than the firing hits.

The troops can be moved alone, or forming a group, the group movement let the player saving Action Points. Normally the first activation of a troop, cost less than the others activations.

There are a lot of special rules to upgrade, or downgrade the troops, creating different types of troops.

The army lists are being published for free from the S&R blog, with all the troops and weapon stats.

If we take a look on the troops stats, we can see:

Westernized Troops
AV=2/2/3; C=4
0-1 Officer (Leader), katana and revolver (10/0), 21 pts

6-20 Privates, Muzzle-loading musket (30/2), bayonet, 17 pts

Notes and options
You can swap all muzzle-loading muskets with breech-loading musktes (30/1) at +5pts per figure (bayonet can stay fixed during while loading).

AV= 2/2/3, means that the first activation costs 1 point, the second 2, and the third 3 points

C = 4, means that when the soldier is shooting you will impact in melee with a 4 or less.

0-1 Officer (Leader) katana and revolver (10/0), means that you can only have between 0 and 1 Officer; he will be the Leader (Special Rule) bearing a katana and a revolver. The katana is a melee weapon that allows to re-roll 1D6 in close combat. The Revolver (10/0), means that it haves an effective range of 10, so with a 7+ it hits inside this range. The "0" after the dash means that the weapon is reloaded automatically. The Officer costs 21 pts.

If we take a look on the Privates, we see that we must have between 6 to 20 soldiers, armed with a Muzzle-Loading musket that has a 30cm effective range, and that requires 2 action point to be reloaded. Each soldier costs 17 pts.

New dollies (advancing & charging)

Paul has finished the new dollies for troops advancing & charging,  besides he are working on other new dollies for the Shinsengumi...

Satsuma troops painted

Finally I have found some time to paint the Satsuma troops... 

Satsuma troops with his Officer

Bac Ninh Miniatures in Vae Victis Magazine

Nicolas, the editor at Vae Victis Magazine, sent me a free copy of the latest edition which included a nice review of Bac Ninh Miniatures.

Vae Victis present images of the figures with a little commentary and besides they do paint the figures up which is a nice touch. Readers then can make up their own minds.

Aizu troops

This time is the turn for the Shogunate forces, painted as Aizu clan troops. The Aizu was a powerful clan that supported to Shogun until his last days. The history of his Byakkotai (White Tiger Regiment) was that inspired the design of these figures.

French Officer during the Boshin War

The figure is from Perry plastic Zouaves, painted as a French Officer during the Boshin War. As you can see, he mix very well with my Boshin War range. :-)

Chōshū troops

This is my first unit to play with rules as Triumph & Tragedy and his Colonial supplement, Smooth & Rifled, Ronin or Sharp Practice. They are Chosu troops loyalist to the Emperor and as you can see, the separate heads really give a lot of variations. I'm planning to make a Boshin War army list for Triumph & Tragedy and a scenario based on The Battle of Bonari Pass. On the other hand, very soon we will see a Boshin War list for Smooth & Rifled. 

By the way, in this moment Paul is working on new figures. ;-) 

Satsuma head set are now available!

The casting of the Satsuma heads arrived today! They are available like head set or with the Imperial troops body.

BW Satsuma head set

BW-04 Satsuma troops firing/skirmishing

Satsuma Oficcer

I painted this figure as Chosu officer with his black wig (Koguma). He are waiting to command the next release, Satsuma troops. :-)

Satsuma head set greens

The new set of heads with tall conical hats are done, once again sculpted by Paul Hicks "the man that never sleep". This so-particular hat called hatsumurigasa were characteristic of the Satsuma clan (Emperor's follower), so only can wear it their troops. They will be available like heads set or with the Imperial troops body. 

 

We will try to send them to the caster as soon as possible.