A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…. No, that's not right. Anyway, it was quite a long time ago, and some distance away (but not far at all in galactic terms). I had some Samurai. This was the 1970s, and the Samurai came from a very nice man, Trevor Dixon, of Dixon Miniatures. I painted them up, quite simply (I was a schoolboy, and a lot worse at painting than I am now). I had, probably sixty figures, and I enjoyed a lot of games with them - of a 'large skirmish' sort. I can't remember now whose rules I used. Then, in the late 1980s, the Samurai bug bit again, and I built up quite large armies in 15mm, using Two Dragons figures (now owned and produced, I believe, by Caliver Books), to fight battles between two famous Japanese characters, Uesugi Kenshin and Takeda Shingen. Again, I had a lot of fun. I seem to think I used a home-brewed variant of WRG 5th edition.
And now we come thundering up to date. As you know, I've been 'out of the loop' for a bit, and have missed out on various developments. One of these is 'Ronin', written by another nice man, Craig Woodfield, and published by Osprey Publishing. Nick Eyre, of North Star, is selling the books, and also producing the officially licensed range of figures. He is a very nice man, and cut me a nice deal on the 'full works' - rulebook and all four factions. The main reasons for doing this are the nostalgia factor, and the idea of painting small numbers of figures to a fairly decent standard - I enjoyed painting all the 'twiddly bits' on my Sassanids, and fancy doing something similar. Not quite an impulse purchase - I'd read a wee bit about Samurai in a recent issue of Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy, which had made me wonder whether I fancied getting into the period again.
I've only just started reading the rules, so am not yet in a position to comment on them. The figures though, I have looked at fairly closely. The packaging, as you can see, is attractive. Simple to produce I imagine - it's just DVD cases with full-colour inserts. The drawback is that the figures aren't very well protected. The figures are inside a grip-top poly bag, which is inside a sealed 'bubble-wrap' bag - but that, in turn, is free to 'rattle around' inside the DVD case. Consequently, the figures have gained quite a few bent parts.
The sculpting, by Steve Saleh, is excellent - the figures are well-proportioned, well-animated, and characterful. They look like what they're meant to be. They're 28mm foot-to-eye and should be fairly compatible with Perry Miniatures' range (which will be a good source of additional figures - particularly 'oddities' like villagers, which may come in handy for home-grown scenarios). The swords are rather thick (but that's inevitable), and somewhat stylised - I may take a file to them to make them a bit thinner and more 'katana-like'.
Moulding is of acceptable, but not outstanding, quality - there are visible mould lines on almost all figures, and some have flash. One has evidence of a small amount of displacement between the mould halves, which will require careful fettling. There are a lot of moulding tags. Scabbards and sashimono are separate items, and the location points are just that, tiny depressions - some careful work pinning them in place may be needed to make them robust enough for the average wargamer. They will look gorgeous once they're fettled, assembled, and painted though.
Later…
I have read the rules. They're well-presented, with plenty of colourful 'eye-candy' photographs, and the design is classic Osprey. They're well-written, with very few noticeable typographical errors. The writing is very clear, and they're easy to follow - only in a couple of places did I need to re-read a section once or twice to make sense. The layout is quite logical, in that the section on the rules follows the turn sequence, which makes it easy to follow. The examples lack diagrams, which would have helped follow them. Lots of nice little touches, which add to the 'flavour'.
The section on factions is clear and interesting, with just enough history to whet one's appetite.
Overall, the rules look very promising. More once I've painted the figures and tried the rules 'in anger'.