Steel Fist Samurai

More batch painted ashigaru, armed with yari (spears). Again, keeping the armour and weapons relatively plain as per the other ashigaru.

Another set of ashigaru painted as a batch, this time armed with yumi (bows). I repeated the more plain armour colours as used on the last ashigaru, but couldn’t help myself from picking out the odd detail.

One of the joys of Steel Fist range is the slightly more unusual sculpts, with armour styles and weaponry not commonly seen in other miniature ranges. This model is a good example, wearing fur covered armour, and a stylised helmet (kawari kabuto), and wields a huge two-handed iron club (kanemuchi). He’s also got a lovely beard, characteristic of the Aniu people of northern Japan.

I really like the pose of this model, katana raised high to strike. The samurai has fairly tall kabuto that mimics the style of hats worn at court, although there are more extreme examples within range produced by Steel Fist. Colours for this one were inspired by the woodblock print used as the image for this project’s header.

Next model was another samurai, this time armed with a yari. I picked out another colour scheme from a woodblock print, this time with mainly purple armour, but with plenty of other colour details.

I’m quite enjoying the approach of finding a colour pattern from a woodblock print, as it ends up with some very impactful results. However, if I was trying to put together a reasonably sized army, I’d have to reign in on it a lot.

This was also a milestone model for me, marking 200 painted models in 2020. I don’t really do speed painting, so I’m pretty chuffed with turning around that many models, and with a few weeks left to go for the year yet.

I did these four ashigaru armed with teppo as a batch. Although there is still some variation in styles of armour, they are not as individual as the samurai. Despite there not really being anything like a uniform for ashigaru, I figured that having similar equipment was not too unrealistic, and just varied the clothing underneath to keep a sense of a non-uniformed unit.

To get some inspiration for different colour schemes and patterns, I have been looking at various woodblock prints of samurai. Some of the detailing is beyond my skills, but there are a great source to get some ideas of broad colour schemes for individual samurai. For my next model, I used the image below as a starting point.

I stumbled across Steel Fist Miniatures a while ago, and their ranges of models are fantastic. In particular, their samurai really grabbed me, with really detailed models and well researched armour and weapons. I picked up a few to have something fun and interesting to paint, before storing them away and forgetting about them.

Steel Fist Miniatures were recently featured as an Indi of the Week, which prompted me to dig these models back out and get to work painting them. I’m tackling them individually, mainly as something different to take a break from batch painting other models. Eventually I’ll get enough finished and ready for some skirmish games like Ronin or Test of Honour, but this is more about enjoying painting some stunning models than the gaming side of things.

First model I turned my attention to was a samurai with a no-dachi. I went for a fairly plain blue armour with orange edging in places, and added some freehand flowers onto the scabbard. When it came to basing, I had just been stomping around a woodland with all the fallen autumn leaves, and decided I’d lean heavily into that for a scheme.