"Red Cliff and the Three Kingdoms period." Topic

"Red Cliff" is about to be released in the UK, the trailer looks very impressive;
YouTube link

Two questions;
The outside Asia version is an amalgamation of two movies, is there any chance of getting an English subtitled DVD of parts I and II?

In a broader sense, what is the period like to wargame? (with or without the more fantastical elements). How is it served in terms of sources on dress and weapons, material in English and wargames figures?
I am aware that the period is a big part of Chinese culture through "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and Cao Cao, et al may be familar in the West to players of "Dynasty warriors", but it seems a bit obscure in wargaming terms. Perhaps now is the time for it to come to more prominence?

I have the DVDs that I bought in Beijing. The English subtitles are very good making the movies easy to follow. Both DVDs run over 2 hours so I can see a lot of the battle scenes being cut, which are long, to make one movie..

My DVDs came from ZOKE Movies ( zokegd.com ) You may want to contact them to see if they have international distributors or search Hong Kong/Singapore sources.

The movies are visually spectacular with a lot of excellent CGI work. Some of the scenes reminded me of the battles in "Troy". There is more than enough eye candy from cities, fortifications, armoured warriors, ships and lots of battles to create interest. Plus the story is actually good as well as the acting.

As for war gaming it is a very interesting period but I see only a limited choice of figures (hint?) The discontinued range by John Jenkins would be great. There is a small range of hard plastic figures coming out in China based on the movie . I would call them a large 28 like Foundry and constructed similar to the Zvesda kits. They are hard to find even in Chin and pricey
See gu-zhan.com

I would love to get into this period but am hesitant due to what I see as a lack of good figures, the size of the armies required and the difficulty in getting them back home to Canada when we eventually leave Beijing. However as an earlier thread discussed this is my "lottery" project where if I had the funds I would gladly get figures, ships, terrain etc , made.

As to the actual gaming the battles as represented in the movie are very stylized as the novel itself is. A lot of the success depended on such things as changes in the wind which were anticipated by one side but not the other, tactical formations to counter certain tactics plus the superhuman battle moves and fighting skills of the "heroes" .

Warhammer Ancient Battles book "The Art of war" would be good start as it gives the ability to build armies using "Character" figures which are really needed in Red Cliff.

I got my Red Cliff DVD in Chinatown, San Francisco for $5.00. My copy had English subtitles although it was a bit difficult to locate on the menu since everything was in Chinese.

Very cool film with plenty of inspiration for gaming.

Note there are two separate DVDs Red Cliff part 1 stops before the Battle of Red Cliff but gives the background and early events. Part 2 is the actual battle. They were separate theater issues

I only have part1, haven't seen part2 yet. I have been looking for it thou!

link sell them.

Mapleleaf, thanks for the gu-zhan.com link. The english site is gu-zhan.com/en/en.html. I'm going to HK in August, and will take a trip to Shenzen to check these out.

If you check out Dragon Painting Service on eBay, they're selling painted John Jenkins units for WAB – top notch paint jobs. They have an eBay store. I've seen their work first hand, and they're one of the best painting services based in Asia. They also have John Jenkins on staff, I believe he's their production manager for the studio (?)

These figures though are more for the Warring States period, but would work fine for Three Kingdoms era wargaming. Problem with Three Kingdoms from a wargaming figure perspective is that all the movies, TV shows, comics and games use a hyper stylised version of the arms and armour. Red Cliff as a movie stood out for me because it ditched a lot of that stylised look (but still not enough for my liking). The JJ range of Warring States figures are probably close enough to how the rank and file would have looked, but they're not really Three Kingdoms era figures. I'm debating whether or not to buy a WAB army from Dragon, I'm hanging out for a bit longer to see if the line will come back. You won't be able to get any heavy cav figures though, and the JJ cav range with dagger axes are great however by this period most light cav probably would not be using Warring States style dagger axes. I think converting them to the cavalry halberd would be quite easy. And the Chariots, while great models, weren't in use by the Three Kingdoms period on a large scale as opposed to the Warring States period.

TAG do a very nice range of medieval Chinese figures (Song, Sui, Tang), and there are some models there that would make great character figures for the period. Curteys do a Han range, which is even closer to the Three Kingdom period in terms of the look of the figures, but I'm not a fan of that range.

In terms of what the period is like to game, it is probably the best period for action/adventure warfare where you want characterful hereos running around and decimating whole units of rank and file (so Warhammer Ancients is great, and the Art of War book should be a must buy – but beware the new edition of the main rules coming out). The Art of War supplement is one of the best value WAB books available and covers in detail the Warring States and Three Kingdoms period.

As for the movie, it's great fun but has the same problems with translation that nearly all Chinese movies have. Chinese narrative styles can be a bit long winded for a western audience, so I suspect the 2 hour cut down version (only seen the four hour version) may work better as a film in the west.

Both parts are for sale here in Singapore, with English subtitles.

My hua yu is not yet good enough to tell how accurate the translation is, but it seems to tell the story well and there are no major 'huh?' moments.

They are fun movies, with spectacular action sequences. But like pretty much all Chinese epic action movies I have seen, very stylised.

The armies of thousands train for months to perform absurd, over-complicated maneuvers – essentially forming the shapes of animals in marching-band fashion for no apparent military reason other than letting hte generals say stuff like 'prancing crane counters river tortoise.'

But all that does not really matter as the armies clashing is just a curtain raiser to the 'real' action – the heroes fighting each other one-on-one after each one has demolished a regiment or so of regular soldiers with their bare hands. Honestly I don't know why they bothered with armies at all – one General is worth at least 500 foot soldiers in personal combat.

But a lot of fun. If you have trouble getting them, drop me a line and I'll buy you copies here. You'll need a multi-zone DVD player.

I was looking through the gu-zhan site, and it seems they've found this post as they're quoting heavily from Mapleleaf's post, and are running a news item about it on their site, which is pretty cool.
link

Babelfishing it is fun, I'll leave it to you guys to find out what they're saying.

D**N I want those chinese miniatures…. I hope someone outside china will import them. I mean,, they do look for business partners…

I am very tempted to get parts I and II on DVD, but want to avoid the pitfalls of ending up with either burnt on subtitles, or worse still badly translated subtitles, which read like a bablefish translation and render it difficult to follow at all.
Anyone get a high quality DVD that avoids these issues?

The "Zoke" CD's I mentionned are fine – good readable subtitles that make sense

The ones I bought here in Sing are fine. Switch titles on or off. They read fine too. Though my Chinese is not good enough to tell how accurate they are, they tell the story coherantly, fit the action well and are not bable-fishy. My only irritation is they are smallish and appear over the action rather than in the big black space below that the letter-boxing leaves.

I ordered both movies from Amazon. Both DVD's have English subtitles.

Where can I find these figures in the states?

link

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spidersage.com/warhammer

TitanStorm,

nowhere AFAIK, and not for lack of trying on my part! I've a contact who does business with China, so I'm working that angle at the moment…

Stay tuned…

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

I translated the Taobao site to English using the Google Chrome browser. You can't buy directly from them since they only accept something similar to Paypal (Alipay). However, you can go through an agent: link

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spidersage.com/warhammer