"Which Detailed Samurai Figures to Buy?" Topic

My dad has been interested in painting Samurai miniatures for a skirmish game for decades. He has finally finished his thousands of Napoleonics and is looking forward to a new project. However he wants nicely detailed Samurai miniatures.

Which, in your opinion, is the best 25-28mm figures for him to buy and paint?

My dad has been interested in painting Samurai miniatures for a skirmish game for decades. He has finally finished his thousands of Napoleonics and is looking forward to a new project. However he wants nicely detailed Samurai miniatures.

Which, in your opinion, is the best 25-28mm figures for him to buy and paint?

Perry

Agree. Perry by far for both sculpting and completeness of range. Regards Alan

+1 for Perry

Steel Fist has also a small but finely sculpted range that might be of interest:

link

I would expect them to fit well with the Perrys (like their late medieval range does), but you might want to double-check from people who have seen both ranges side-by-side.

Perry +1

Steel fist are even better…

There are other good figures out there – look at test of honor, kensei. Fireforge have just come out with a range of plastics

Look at rules as well, determines how many figures and some have associated figures

Samurai are some of the hardest figures to paint if you want to get all the details. I would start with a very small number

John

Fireforge have just come out with a range of plastics

I have not seen those, but there is an earlier range of Samurai/Ashigaru plastic, originally released by Wargames Factory and later licensed to Warlord Games.

My army is 15mm Two Dragon. About 399 with each different.

For 28mm Perry is you can get them.

If you want to be historically accurate, during the Shingoku Jidai, samurai had largely abandoned the bow on foot and on horseback. In fact, cavalry became fewer during the period.

Ashigaru still had bow, yari and arquebus. It can't be said definitely that no samurai carried arquebus, but they wouldn't have been common. No honour!

But still figure manufacturers produce samurai bow armed cavalry and foot samurai with firearms. Your choice of course.

This is a promising Samurai game….Sidney does a fabulous job.

link

Don't forget Old Glory, if for no other reason to fill out the ranks of the ashigaru.

One mistake I've seen with getting started with samurai armies is collecting far to many elites (samurai) and not near enough line troops.

One mistake I've seen with getting started with samurai armies is collecting far to many elites (samurai) and not near enough line troops.

However, in this case the OP was not talking about armies, but of skirmish forces, in which case it might be viable for both sides to consist of mainly or purely of samurai. That said, having a versatile mixture of samurai and ashigaru on both sides might make for a more interesting game than one of purely samurai – and having some more plain looking ashigaru on the table could make the samurai look even more splendid in contrast.

As for Old Glory ashigaru, I would not probably recommend them for skirmish gaming – they come in large packs of 30 figures, but only with a limited number of variants. Perrys have quite a number of ashigaru packs in their range, allowing one to put together a more diverse force for the same number of figures. They also do some other kinds of non-samurai models, such as ikko-ikki, for more variety.

There are a number of good options, I'm going with a mix of mostly Perry and Bad Squiddo, plus some others for pose variety to use with Test of Honour skirmishing.

Perry are great sculpts with really good variety. Even with shipping from the UK added in, they're about 40% less expensive than other metal ranges available here in the US (haven't found anyplace that stocks Perry's metal Samurai over here).

Bad Squiddo are great sculpts of female figures with good pose variety; but limited weapons, particularly short on missile weapons, but Annie is likely to be adding more in the future. Arcaheological evidence suggests that up to 30% of the dead were women, in field battles as well as the more expected castle defense. So for a small skirmish force, any or all of the figures could be women.

Test of Honor has great figures but be aware, they are fiddly to put together.

Zvezda.

Old glory packs are good if you can split the troops for two armies. If you have a member card you can not buy anyone else's cheaper.

These are very nice. I had some painted up. A bit bigger. The game is good, but you could use as minis for any skirmish rules.

link

Yes, my thought on Old Glory is that anyone with thousands of Napoleonics is not likely to stop after painting up a few figures. At least that has been my own experience.

They may be a little pumpkin headed but I love Dixon.

Thank you all for your responses. I think that I will probably buy him Perry with some Steel Fist and a few Test of Honor thrown in.

Do Test of Honor match Perry in scale?

As for armies, he just wants to paint some for skirmishes maybe 20-40 a side. At 80 years old he is not looking to paint thousands or even hundreds. Just enough for some skirmish games.

Regardless of what you hear on here?
You owe yourself a look at the OG American manufactured figures.
They are very high quality.

Regards
Russ Dunaway

Two packs to look at are The 7 Samurai and the villagers.

Tag has great sculpts

No love for Dixon's Samurai?

Fireforge makes some nice plastic Samurai for lots of variety and kitbashing. These are quite new, detail is good and they paint up well.