Bushido - a Short Break

Painting is still going strong at the moment, though I've taken a short break of sorts playing Shogun: Total War 2 - I've discovered a love of the Ikko Ikki and inspiring rebellions everywhere.  I've done a lot of piecemeal work on a variety of models and just about finished Kazuhiko and the Temple Bushi.  If I pick up a 2nd Temple Bushi I'd like to give him one of those hats the Prefecture ashigaru wear, or maybe the same hat as Kazuhiko has - it all depends on whether GCT are willing to send me one of the hats when I order the model.

Kazuhiko is a tremendously easy miniature to paint.  I did the base coats and realised he was 80% done with that.  The Temple Bushi was slightly harder and I've been experimenting with Vallejo paints recently, they behave very differently from GW ones so there's been a disaster or two, but the Bushi has made it out pretty well.  For some reason I'm having a lot of trouble getting the eyes done on Bushido miniatures, maybe I'm just getting old and losing my eyesight (and having that piece of metal in my right eye last September didn't help).  Both just need some easy highlighting and basing, then I'll be that much closer to having a fully painted force.  Huzzah.  Then it's on to Sakura and Naoko to finish both options for the starter box.

Next week I'm playing against Martin 'the Swarm' Casey (top WM/H Mercenaries player 2011!) and his Savage Wave starter set (Zuba and six Bakemono of his choice).  I'm very curious to see how it turns out for both of us since I have a lot of trouble with the Prefecture so far, I wonder if it's the way I'm playing, if it's my army choices, or Prefecture are just good against the Ito.  The plan is to try out a different style of playing: rather than trying to out-activate my opponent and prevent them from scoring at any objective, I'll just pile onto an objective or two of my choice and attempt to gain a VP majority there.

I want to make some boards for Bushido, but there's just no space in my room to store all the art supplies I'd need to really do this, so I may hunt down Matt Reid again and commission a few boards if he's still in the terrain-making business.  Failing that, I can start my collection of samurai houses with the laser cut ones from Sarissa Precision.