Another little bit of work on these. Had a bit of an eventful day… more on that later…

All the skin tones are done (the white ones are face masks with moustaches)now as well as most of the boots and gloves (I say most as I am bound to have forgotten some). onto the trappings tomorrow. These will need to be painted white first then some bright colours added.

The eventful day was caused by the ball cock in the header tank of the hot water boiler snapping.. snapping is too strong a word, it fell off when I went to adjust it. Thankfully the overflow managed to cope and one of the local shops was open on a Sunday and thankfully had plumbing supplies… amazingly replacing it went pretty much without a hitch… apart from dropping my phone down behind a double wall. Thankfully it had the torch on so I could work out where it was and miraculously I could actually reach it without dismantling the kitchen.

Being stood on a ladder did not help the sprained ankle which is still bloody hurting a week later. 😢

We have been out in the sunshine With the bows the last few days and have broken this side of the target box…

I have to go into work to tomorrow to let in one of my staff to get a school iPad to allow her to work from home. I will get some more work ready to send home for the kids.

This evening my eldest daughter didn’t fancy another night in the caravan so being the doting father that I am I returned the massive distance of 15m back into the house.

On the upside it means I got to paint things..

Still a long way to go on these but they are getting there. I think they are looking rather colourful even with all the unpainted bits.

The village buildings are sprayed…

Today I gave the old longbow and airing… the blue one on the ground has a 24lb draw on it… the long bow is nearly double the draw weight at 47lb. I nearly ruptured myself drawing the bloody thing.

Tomorrow I hope to get some work done on the cavalry and maybe the buildings too.

Well I decided to go for the 3,2,2 formation on the cavalry and went red, green and black.

Still a bit to do on them but I am pleased with the colours chosen. I might repaint the trapping on the nearest rear horse. I went for purple and it didn’t show up. The other two are done in orange. We had a club discord tonight so spent a good while chatting with other geeks about random gaming crap.

Once these are finished then I have four more bases of cavalry to finish… and then onto the additional ones.. but my original DBA army will be done 😉.

So tonight I started on the cavalry. Gave one a start as a test to the single armour colour for a base and I think it looks ok. Still a fair bit to paint, but it is a start.

I decided on different colours on the clothes, scabbards and horses as it gave them a bit of a different appearance. The Sashimono, once painted, will have the same pattern for each sub unit. Red would seem a suitable colour at this point 😂.

Next conundrum is whether I split them into two or three smaller clans.

I really can’t decide to be honest so any help greatly appreciated.

Tomorrow I am back to work after the Easter break. I am going in to sort out packs to send home to the kids. Most of my teaching will be done from home.

Tonight I just did three minis from start to finish. I have decided that these would be some ronin. Not sure why, probably because they aren’t wearing helmets.

I painted each in different coloured armour, but made the clothing shades of grey to sort of down play the colours a bit. As for armour, one is in black, another in green and the one with the funky hairstyle is in red.

As can be seen I also finished the hero, apart from his second Sashimono which needs another coat of purple and then some form of mon on it.

All in all I am quite pleased with how these turned out. Tomorrow I will hopefully get some more done. Still undecided on all one colour or multi coloured armour like those above. The quickest will be all in one, but it may not be that historically accurate. Decisions, decisions… not sure which way to go.

I have the cavalry to paint now and as such there are pretty much half with bows and half with yari. I could do them as two different clans either as the same colour or just through their Sashimono…arrgggh I hate making decisions!

So tonight I managed to get the archers finished. My original plan was to have them all different colours but in the end the bows, quiver and swords were all the same. Each has a red scabbard and blue quiver. I worked on the principle that the local lord would supply the weapons.

So I now have the horde of peasants and the archers finished.

I have nine monks on foot and three on horseback and another eighteen Ashigaru with yari. Add in a few bases of Samurai as Ronin and then I have a nice rebellious force.

The other thing I managed to do tonight was to get the hero nearly done…

Speaking of archers…

Another exciting bit of news… I passed 4000 visitors today. So thank you to everyone who has visited. Totally blown away by that.

I managed to get some paint onto the peasant archers. Okay they are Ashigaru, but they look a bit more rag tag than ‘uniformed’ warriors as seen in the films…

These still need the swords, quivers, hair and sashes done. But they should be done by tomorrow night.

The next problem I have is to decide on how am I going to paint the Samurai. Do I go for the random bright colours or do I go for the film version and have various groups in the same coloured armour. Any ideas greatly appreciated.

So whilst watching Big Hero 6 this evening I managed to get these pretty much done, well apart from the bases.

I also managed to print the small farmhouse. It does look a bit on the large side, but I will show it tomorrow when the roof has printed overnight.