"Building a Warrior Monk Army" Topic

I have been working on my army for a few months now, and I would like to thank those who helped me along the way, and make some comments. I was a pain in the butt to some stores but they helped me any way and I appreciate it. Len@Wrgmrshdqtrs,Mark@Sclcrp,David@Kngsfrd,Pete@TAG.Others have helped me w/o making any purchases yet. My on line thread buddies who have helped tremendously, Kenshin(words can't express it),Setsuko, and JRachel. MY opinion if you want to start a Sohei army the only place to start is TAG. They have more naginata armed figures than any one else.Since my army is made up of 90% pole arm figures this was the only way to go. They have mounted, archers,followers, peasants about ten sets I think all with naginata. I added some unarmored samurai from Black Hat, the Sohei from Kingsford and I'm on my way. Next will be the Ashigaru from Museum Miniatures and the Monks from Perry. They are painted in shades of yellow, tan, orange, and black. I have found that building a Sohei Army is going to be tougher than building a Samurai Army. Pictures will follow when I can get the digital camera from my son. Comments and advice are always welcome. TIG (Pete@TAG have you thought about a set of monks with katana to round out the already great sets of monks you already have)

Congrats Tig and glad to have helped in any way. Monks are on my "to do" list, both Sohei in 25mm and Ikko Ikki in 15mm

I can't wait to see some pics!

Cheers.

Me too!

David
kingsfordminiatures.org

I'm working on a small band of warrior monks for our "pulp samurai movie"-style Mordheim campaign, so I'll be happy to compare my robed warriors with yours. :) I'm also using TAG and I like them, but I might expand them with some PM peasants.

Have you based them for a specific game?

At this point I haven't decided yet. What I was thinking of was a last stand scenario at Mt. Hiei, with the monks getting slaughtered in the end but putting up a fight to the last man.I think that this army would be the only one that the people who use only Perry figures would not be able to to put together.

It depends, if you go the historical route then the armed forces of the temples would be far from the stereotypical bunch of hooded men with naginatas and rather look more like any other army at the time. So a rather historical reenactment could be accomplished with the Perry Miniatures.
But if you go for the hooded "Sohei" type so that people actually realize that you are fielding a warrior monk army, then it would be more difficult.

The fall of the Enryaku-ji temple at Mt. Hiei sounds like a really good departure point for making your army. Does this mean you'll make some temples for terrain too? ;)

I'm going to try to scratch build a temple, observation tower, and a bell or drum tower. Funds for buying figures aren't in the budget right now and I think I have enough material to get started on the temple. I'm going to try a gate also. Nothing elaborate just something simple to start. Turnbulls castle and temple books have given me some good ideas on an all wood temple. I thought that I had read that at one point the Sohei could put as many as 13,000 men in the field at a time. I only have about 50 figures right now.And I'm going to go for about half and half withe the hooded figures, but, most of the others are going to be lightly armored unhelmeted ashigaru with yari or katana. TIG

Not to toot my own horn, but I'm currently trying to figure out how to make Japanese terrain, and perhaps some of my attempts can be useful for ideas:

link

I'm am impressed by the buildings they are some really great stuff. I just started to put my ideas down on paper. Height and depth of the temple are going to be my first challenge. I was thinking of a wood roof(popsicle sticks)for the temple, but the cut straws for the roof of the bell tower would look good. I see I have some work ahead of me if I want them to look good. How are you going to paint your monks, multi color robes or all in black?

Since they are for Mordheim I'll vary colours to easily keep trace of who is who. So say saffron robes with white cowl for one type of fighters, black robes for another etc. That game really makes it important to keep track of each individual fighter.

I started building a temple yesterday, I'll take some pictures once I get some progress done.

Turnbulls book on Castles and monasteries should give you some good ideas. There are also some good pictures in his warrior monk book. Good luck on this project I can see how building a temple could run in to some problems if you want to keep the dimensions true to scale. TIG

Visit the Viking Forge website at vikingforge.datasquire.net
We produce one warrior monk figure and many other early Japanese. High-resolution photos are provided.

Ah, Hospitallers, the only "real" warrior monks; all the others are copycats or mere heathens by comparison….

Tumbleweed: So is your 25mm warrior monk a Sohei or is it one of those wussy hospitallers.

tigrifsgt, how about an O-mikoshi portable shrine? Stronghold/Village Green do a quite impressive model with 8 figures:

PDF link

Durrruti: That would probably look good in the middle of the last stand of the warrior monks. Thanks for the suggestion. I have a list now of all the sites and figures that have been suggested to me. I just wish that I had the funds to aquire all of them at the same time. Thanks, TIG

Ah, Hospitallers, the only "real" warrior monks; all the others are copycats or mere heathens by comparison….

Oh, now you've done it! I won't take that sitting down. Wait, I AM sitting down. Never mind that part. I won't take that from you! There, Hah!

Durruti: is there any way to actually see those miniatures? I've very wary of buying miniatures without getting a fair peek at them first.

Two things: Templars and Hospitallers are just a bunch of guys in shiny suits with pretty shields, and nothing like a Sohei. The figure companies that just have one or two warrior monks, by the time you add in the shipping it makes each 25mm figure at least 5 to 6 bucks each, way out of my price range, and some of these don't even have pictures of the figures.

Does anyone have pictures of the Viking Forge 25mm warrior monks, or the Stronghold shrine?

Knight Templar is a skosh fundamentalist about this: but I for one will deny the "shiny suits" bit. The Military Orders were uniform, dull as dishwater fanatics who killed enemies, including rivals, at the drop of a lance. KT and I are, I trust, united on one point: mounted knights in full armor will ride down YOUR infantry monks and their silly dueling weapons like a stampede through a cornfield :)….

My infantry monks were also experts with a little toy known as a bow and arrow able to take down cavalry at LONG distances. Up close and personal a chain mailed knight on foot couldn't match the speed of a Sohei with a twirling naginata. Also, you may not know this but many of the monks were Samurai who took the vows.

The Samurai bow was impressive in size, not penetrating power. At a rapid closing speed, massed cavalry would flatten the archers before they could get off three shots apiece.

Twirling naginata? Wouldn't that mean the monks fighting in a loose or even open order? That would invite being run over by close order cavalry. If used in close order, standing to receive cavalry, how is this different from a spear in close formation?

The confrontation then becomes the difference between infantry (maybe) standing firm before knee-to-knee CHARGING horsemen in full armor, and the knights (maybe) pulling up to avoid becoming impaled on waiting sharp stuff.

A wargame set-on seems in order. Too bad we have c. 2,000 miles between us :)

Thats why Sohei Monks often fought behind rows of pavises or ditch and banks. You have to remember also, pre-1500 Japanese Cavalry did not charge like impact/ shock cavalry. They advanced at the trot or slow gallop to shoot bow, or attack with naginata themselves. Cavalry was also from the Noble elite and therefore would have been seeking personal glory, so single actions would have won out over cavalry unit cohesion. A Monk in the open with a naginata would have stood a fair chance against a single mounted samurai. Each Cavalryman at this time would have likely had two foot followers with them as well who they would not have wanted to out-distance in a headlong charge.

All in all, both the Sohei and the Ikko-Ikki were powerfull forces to be reckoned with by their contemporaries in their day…

not like wussy Hospitallers ;-)

Not like Hospitallers, how very true. Something about a dense line of stark, uniform mounted lancers in full mail charging knee to knee just stirs my chilli. You can have your brand of lowly infantry monks; I'll take mine mounted, thank you :)….

How does a massed charge of cavalry advance when the horses in the front rows are all dead. I would think that a cavalry charge would be slowed to a crawl trying to jump all of the dead animals. Just as more arrows kill the back rows and the infantry had to climb over the dead horses and men, just to become more arrow foddder.

You have a different picture in mind about Japanese archery than I do, then. The bows are not impressive, kinetic energy-wise (no better, and probably not as good -- but we don't want to be lynched! ;) -- as English longbow); and a mounted charge gets "there" very quickly. If you can stop or slow down the closing speed, yes, you will feather the knights' horses into a shot down mass. But then, I would not even launch the charge unless I knew I could get at ya: keep me off and you win: allow me to close at a charge and yer dead….

Very true about the Japanese bow Doug. It took a large amount of arrows to take a man down, let alone a horse (not counting the well placed shots!). This is proven by the numerous woodblock prints that show both samurai and horses festooned with arrows like pin cushions.

Doug:So if I keeep you off and you retire freom the field, that means you have to give me land. I'll take Bordeaux and Normandy. Good wine and the beach, what could be better.

Normandy, meh, you can have it :). Try and take Krak Des Chevaliers, and you will have a big fight on your hands….

Uesugi, the same phenomenon is typical of Crusading warfare: the Turkish arrows "pin cushioned" Frankish armor.

But in the case of the Samurai bow, it becomes a problem of bigger isn't better: basically, the stiffer and larger the bow, the more powerful it is, but with less return for the increased size and stiffness: less percentage of the energy is given to the arrow, because more of the energy is lost just moving the limbs of the bow. And the Japanese bow is BIG! It had a short range, compared to the "warbow" of England, and even more so compared to the composite bow of the Steppes nomads (a very small, light and efficient design which returned more of its stored energy than any other bow in history till modern bow materials and construction)….

*Nimbly dodges "Knights vs Samurai" topic hijack with legendary, shinobi-like agility*

For those who asked for a glimpse of the Stronghold mikoshi, here it is unpainted and hastily tacked together (really must get down to all those unfinished projects…)

picture

Not a great fan of the sculpting style of the hmm…Village Green/Bushi/Stronghold early samurai range – I can't tell them apart from the anatomically-challenged Dixons (same sculptor?). But, all swaddled in robes, I think any sins are obscured.

Resin and metal, fairly obviously, it captures the basic shape quite well. One thing I want to do is replace the creature on top (facing the wrong way here probably) with the traditional phoenix plus a few other enhancements.

Durruti:Thanks for the picture I think it will fit well with what I am working on. Don't worry about hijacking the thread, it went way off track days ago.What the Templars and Hospitallers want with us is beyond me. When I started working on this I took a informal survey from a group of High School students and the overwhelming opinion was that Samurai are much cooler than Knights, at that point I was undecided as to which way I was going to go.Now I have a major project on my hands which will probably take months to complete.

The hijack is just boredom, Tyler, boredom. I make no apology: my participation is deliberate.

Something about European infatuation with Mongols and Samurai amuses me. Japanese tend to like knights and Western gunfights. Funny, huh?

Carry on….

Thanks to Durrutti we have a picture of the mikoshi. Does anyone have any pictures of the Viking Forge warrior monks or Samurai?(25mm)

tigr: I finished painting my warrior monks today. I still have to put static grass and stuff on them, but if you are curious you can see them here:

link

next up I'll add some peasants and ikko ikki to them.

Setsuko: Those are really beautiful. With the painting skills that some of you guys have mine look like a rank amatuer. I found a good price on the TAG mounted Samurai Archer set so I think I going to go after those next, then back to the Monks. I mixed some of the naginata ashigaru with my Monks and I like the look, a few of the naginata wielding Black Hat unarmored samurai were also added. I haven't bought my Monk archers yet, but those are high on the list.Is the enclosure going to have your Temple inside it, it looks really good so far? Had to come back to add this: I just went through all 100 of your photos and I will NEVER post any of mine. How do you find the time? My village is still in the thought process, with just some ideas down on paper. Oh, and the pictures of the little guy look good. (Setsuko Junior and the Mrs. Setsuko?)

Setsuko; One more question. Did you have to buy the entire army to get the TAG warrior monk with katana? If not, how did you get it?

Heh, I'm still a university student, and even though I work part time by the side there's always room to squeeze in a night of painting here and there. Sometimes it's just an hour or so after or before work, but it all adds up. The luxury of not having kids yet (the picture is of my niece, actually.) ;)

And don't be afraid of quality, everyone starts out producing . The main thing you need is an interest in trying to locate your flaws, read up on techniques and try to make your next model better than the one you did last time. It is true that talent makes the difference between a good and an excellent painter, but most of it it just a craft, and that means that most people can learn it if they just try often and hard enough. A lot of the stuff is actually far simpler than you might think when you see the final results.

The enclosure is supposed to get a temple further on, but for now I'm sticking to making the actual compound around it. The temple itself will be far more tricky…

The pointing monk is actually not wielding a katana, he is wielding a naginata but holding it almost by the blade, obscuring the handle with his body. It is one of the bonus miniatures you get for free if you order several blisters (33 pounds or more) at the same time.

link It's the "Warrior monk with Naginata pointing"

I had some dealings with Pete at Tag and he really helped me out. I can only order one to two blisters at a time when funds allow. I sent an E-mail to Pete to let him know to take a look at this thread as it was going to high light the best miniatures to use when starting a Sohei army. MY flaws in painting are old eyes and an unsteady hand. Before this I was painting 54mm American Civil War generals. I have gallery of about twenty right now. 54's are just too expensive now,so I went to 25's, the reason is stated earlier in the thread.