From Curt: Female Samurai and Japanese Buildings (75 Points)

Several months ago I saw these female samurai (Onna-Bugeisha) from Warlord Games and immediately knew I had to pick up a set. Funny enough, there's a bit of synchronicity involved as well as I've had a Samurai-themed game rattling around in my head for a quite some time now and these figures fit the bill perfectly. 

I think these are some of the nicest castings that Warlord has produced. They are beautifully crafted, have realistic proportions and are elegantly posed - you almost think they are from a larger-scaled range. Just exquisite.

I have to admit I was a little intimidated when I first set off to paint these figures as I wanted to avoid just knocking them all out in solid colours, instead wanting to try a few patterns that would (very) loosely convey some of the amazing textiles these women would have worn. But, as many of you know, patterns can be tricky, and after a few tests runs on a piece of card, I found that the simple triumphed over the complex (thankfully for me, this is a mantra followed by Lady Sarah in her choice of men). To my eye at least, these fairly straight-forward patterns seem to do the trick in not overpowering or 'muddying' the figures' inherent great lines.

The central figure, about to draw her bow, is my favourite of the set.

The flowers on the bases are perhaps a little excessive, but they were such pretty figures that I thought they deserved the extra bit of ornamentation.

I also managed to get some buildings done for this period as well. These are all from Sarissa Precision. Nice kits and very easy to assemble and paint. Here we have a temple shrine, a modest village house and two rice storage sheds.

I have a few more items for this project to get done but we'll see where the brushes take me.

As to points, the female samurai will give me 35 and the terrain fills about two scoring cubes for another 40, so 75 in total. Groovy!

So that should be another pip for the Squirrel Challenge and (with a bit of cheek) should also score for the Renaissance Challenge as well. Too bad I can't run in the 'Sarah's Choice' as I think she'd quite like these gals.