It's odd - when my painting mojo is missing, my 'wargaming brain' doesn't seem to think straight. It's only when I'm enjoying painting, and can sit there, cheerfully slapping paint on lead/plastic, that I have 'good' thoughts. So...
As you can see from the previous post, I have finished the first two groups for the Ronin game. I had a slight 'issue' with highlighting the armour - my first highlight didn't show up at all over the (black grey) basecoat once the Dull Cote was applied. So I went over and highlighted 'by hand' with a mix of black grey and Vallejo's 'metallic medium', which looks okay! Typing this whilst waiting for the first lot of flock on the bases to dry.
Whilst painting these first few samurai, and thinking about the buildings, a board, and stuff, I've also found myself thinking about another, not dissimilar, project - the Old West. And I think I've made a decision or two. In a break from Simon's Thapsus game at The Other Partizan, I had a long and careful look at Great Escape Games's 'Dead Man's Hand' game. I'm not sure I'm going to use their rules - good though it appears, 'The Rules With No Name' seems pretty good to me too - and I've already got that. BUT, I am going to use Great Escape Games's figures. I think I'm going to compromise on my 'need' for a mounted equivalent to each foot figure - I'm not really sure mounted figures are going to be all that important. And the Great Escape Games figures do seem very nice, and to match well with the 4Ground buildings...
4Ground are, in my opinion, the 'Rolls Royce' of MDF buildings. They're not perfect - the cut edges need painting for one thing. But they have detailed interiors (ok, sans furniture, but that's not a big issue - I have a variety of tables, chairs, beds, desks, etc, acquired and painted over the years for RPGs), which none of the others do. That's the one drawback of the Battleflag stuff - the outsides are great, but once you pop off the roof, unless you do a *lot* of work, you've got a brown wooden box. And it strikes me that for skirmishes 'around town', combatants popping in and out of buildings is a must. I'm going for a fairly definitely 'cinematic' game here - think Open Range, Young Guns, Tombstone, etc.
So, I think I'm going to sell the couple of Battleflag buildings I've made already (links here and here), and go over to 4Ground. It's not that I couldn't detail up the Battleflag ones, but I don't want to - it'd be a real fiddle - some of it (wallpaper and the like) would have been far more possible before assembly. So if anyone wants to make me an offer for either or both buildings...