The Potentially Simmering Rivalry of Ping-Xi and Pong-Li

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"They're just the latest fashion. Everyone, and I mean everyone at the Imperial Court has taken a pair of Chinese bodyguards into their retinue. They're just the most adorable addition to the Castle. They're strong, totally unemotional and just completely uninterested in calligraphy or the tea ceremony. They just... stand there and....and stare at me, all day long.  I tell you, I feel completely safe with Ping-Xi and Pong-Li in my apartment."

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As part of Analogue Hobbies Painting Contest XV, I needed to paint up an entry under the title "Lust".  This being a family-focused Blog, I was unsure what to prepare. I did have a lovely pair of Games Workshop Chinese (or maybe Japanese) bodyguards based up and undercoated, and a Citadel female Samurai to accompany them. And, Ladies and Gentlemen, the attraction of figures undercoated and ready to paint won the day.

So here we have Ping-Xi and Pong-Li, experienced and no doubt well-travelled Chinese bodyguards brought to the Imperial Court of Japan by Lady Machiko. Ping-Xi, Pong-Li and Lady Machiko should be perfect for another frivolous game of "When the Last Sword is Drawn", my skirmish game of swordplay in medieval and Edō period Japan. Maybe they'll prove to be dedicated and selfless guardians of Lady Machiko's honour.

Or, just possibly, there might be something in the way that Ping-Xi and Pong-Li both look at Lady Machiko as she pours some tea from a beautiful pottery tea service? I always felt there was bound to be some kind of romance lurking with two bodyguards and an attractive female noblewoman. One wonders if Ping-Xi or Pong-Li, or maybe both, have fallen for the unusual allure of Lady Machiko's blackened teeth?

I also added a 3D-printed large Japanese-style tree to the submission. There was no reason for this, other than it gave me a setting for this post, as well as another new tree for a gaming scenario. And, of course, it allowed me to take some ABBA-style "Knowing Me, Knowing You" photos of Ping-Xi and Pong-Li in front of the tree, looking in different directions before they slaughter each other in a deadly context for Lady Machiko's hand.

The figures for Ping-Xi and Pong-Li are about forty years old, being from the "Oriental Heroes" range originally created to accompany the AD&D "Oriental Adventures" supplement published in 1984. They've spent the years since 1984 in bubble-wrap until I finally painted them. The metal studs on the leather armour of Ping-Xi and Pong-Li were horrifying to paint. All of 58 tiny studs on each of the figures. Good job Lady Machiko did not employ a whole regiment in studded leather armour.

I think the sculptor may have been Aly Morrison.  How Aly sculpted the studs on the leather armour is probably a secret known only to the Sculpting Gods!

I did remember to paint one base with black edging, and the other in brown edging. Otherwise, Ping-Xi and Pong-Li might get mixed up. I hope Lady Machiko can tell them apart. Or, maybe, its more entertaining if she can't.

And finally, as this is me, here's two more ludicrously self-indulgent character cards to add to our "When the Last Sword is Drawn" card collection.  And yes, they are different figures in the Characters' photographs. At least I think they are...!

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The Joy of Bad Footwork: creating Off-Balance markers

“In the carriage of the feet, you should float your toenails in a little and step strongly with your heels. In the use of the feet, you should walk as usual, whether the case calls for large, small, quick, or slow strides. Feet that seem to fly, float or be immobile are, all three, undesirable”.

Miyamoto Musashi “The Book of Five Rings”: The Water Chapter

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Good footwork is one of the key elements of fine swordplay. And bad footwork is something which can be introduced into a miniature wargame of sword-fighting to try and add to the fun.

In both “When the Last Sword is Drawn”, and the Three Musketeers-inspired companion ruleset “With Flashing Blades”, one of the consequences of combat can be a miniature figure becoming off-balance.

Initially, I used to mark the off-balance status on the tabletop. But with a small playing area in these games, this became unwieldy.  I then moved to marking the character card of the miniature figure which has become off-balance.  I added a place on each card which could be covered with an off-balance marker.  

As being off-balance is a circumstance which is temporary, the off-balance markers could be added, and removed, as the game progresses.

I had a lot of fun making the off-balance markers for both games. Of course, I didn’t need to make any markers at all - a simple counter would have sufficed to place onto a character's card. But part of the pleasure in creating a smaller foot-printed game is that the time saved on not needing to paint lots of figures can pay dividends elsewhere.

I hoped that smaller 20mm MDF bases, of 2mm depth, would be enough to allow some modelling opportunities. I had a number of spare metal swords, scabbards, tessen (a Japanese armoured metal fan), and fallen sashimono banners to get me started. To those items I added small dōsojin stone shrines made from green-stuff, tiny geta wooden sandals (which are quite clumsy and look a bit like wooden flip-flops), small 3D printed bonsai trees, a 3D printed Buddha, and some Zen-like towers of prayer stones made from modelling putty.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve created a “summer set” and a snow-bound “winter set”, with the same items.  Two sets were not necessary, but were certainly fun to do.

I felt that the extra work in creating these items help spread the fun from the playing board and onto the wider table.  The entertainment around the table in awarding a character a set of clumsy wooden sandals when that character becomes off-balance is more than worth the additional effort.

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Let the Blood Dice roll...

One of the pleasures in designing a wargame is being able to create tangible things which add to the fun and theme of the game.

A key themes of the swordplay in “When The Last Sword Is Drawn” is having miniature warriors wielding iconic Japanese katanas, wakizashi, no-dachi and naginatas.  Who doesn't want to have the chance for their miniature heroes to wield an array of sharp edged weapons from Japanese cinema, manga and samurai literature?

To preserve that theme into the game, I wanted each miniature figure wielding a razor-sharp weapon to get to roll a “Blood Dice”.  Only one (or sometimes two) of the sides of the dice has a symbol - being a cinematic blood spatter.

If a miniature in combat rolls the blood symbol on their blood dice, then their opponent has suffered a debilitating cut from the razor-edged blade. The effect of that is to increase the severity of any additional hits on that opponent. The blood dice therefore gives a different dynamic to just inflicting casualties in a combat round.

The more we used the blood dice in the games, the more players seemed to like the effect of the blood spatter face appearing in a cluster of dice results.

I had to work out how to incorporate the idea into the dice I already had in my dice-bag. Of course, I could have just given a differently coloured dice and used “6” for a blood symbol. That’s perfectly serviceable, but seemed to lose a bit of the drama of specifically designed dice.

I therefore bought a few handfuls of blank dice and painted blood spatters on one (or more) of the dice sides. I started with D6s, but also tried D12s (painting two sides), a couple of D8s (painting one side on one, and two sides on the other) and even (purely for laughs) a D4.

I kept the scarlet “blood” paint as thin as possible and lightly gloss-varnished the whole dice to make sure all sides were evenly painted.  Maybe a statistician might report that the micrometer depth of paint on a face of the dice makes a difference to the various rolls in a game, but so far I think that the blood dice rolls have come up as unpredictably as normal dice.

Thirty of so games in, the blood dice have been causing mayhem, as was the intention.

Indulgent?  For sure.  But certainly fun.

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The Limbo of Sorcery: An entry for Challenge XV

Shinkurō, the former ronin, had never heard of "toad magic" until the moment that Lord Ghoda mentioned it. The ancient sorcery that Lord Ghoda claimed he had been studying sounded to Shinkurō like the ramblings of a drunk, at best. Or the ravings of a mad man at worst.

Sorcery and spells to turn a magician into a toad, and to enable to the spell-caster to weave magic and enchantments? It sounded almost heretical to voice the thoughts in his own head, Shinkurō warned himself. What nonsense!

But then, the demon had appeared. A powerful Dai-Oni, armed with a huge war-mallet, javelins and a famous sword stolen many decades before from Lord Ghoda’s grandfather. Against such an adversary, both Shinkurō and his new Lord would be helpless. It was just a matter of time before the demon would overwhelm them both.

At least it had all seemed gloomily inevitable until the moment that the magic transformation which had been promised by Lord Ghoda, actually worked.

It was beyond Shinkurō's belief, but.....it was happening before his eyes. Lord Ghoda’s webbed feet were starting to cast the spell to banish their adversary.

Shinkurō just hoped that the incantation didn’t require fingers.

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Happy New Year, everyone!

Over the last few years, I've taken part in the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, a global community painting-a-thon over the winter months.  This year is Challenge XV, and along with the other challengers I'm looking forward to three months of frantic painting and blog posting.  

The last couple of Challenges, I've added some figures to my Japanese figures for my game of "When the Last Sword is Drawn", and to get me started, I added a couple more.  

The figures were a lot of fun to do. The demon and rōnin are both Dixon Miniatures sculpts by Mark Copplestone. They’re quite venerable, being first produced in 1984, although I bought them both earlier this year. The gigantic toad is from Crooked Dice, one of a couple of large specimens I purchased last year and hadn’t yet used.

I added some of the GW “Barbed Bracken” to the base of Shinkurō. I admit the spikey leaves do look, if you're a fan of manga, a lot more “Wicked City”, rather than strict Edō-period Japan. But I’ve enjoyed using these plants on various terrain bases, and hopefully I can use more of them as the Challenge progresses.

The bracken painted up very well, even though they are quite “flexible” (a.k.a. “bendy). I coated the plastic with PVA-glue beforehand, to add a little stability. But so far, in the games we have played with terrain and bases featuring barded-bracken, the paint hasn’t flaked off the razor-sharp thorns. A minor miracle worthy of Lord Ghoda himself (in toad-form).

I painted the submission as my entry for "Limbo". How else can one describe an indefinite transition to gigantic toad-form? Knowing this is Limbo also allows me to add a totally indulgent in-game character card for Lord Ghoda in his mythical-Japanese fauna-form, with two slightly more sensible cards for Shinkurō and the demon. If, of course, one can ever claim anything to do with demons is ever sensible or simple.

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