The Samurai Get an Outing

Today the samurai army and their Korean opponents were allowed out of their boxes for the first time since June last year. 

The rules were To the Strongest and it was a bad day for the army of Toyotomi Hideyoshi which was severely thrashed by the Koreans.

Here are a few images of the game.

A view across the field of battle on turn three

Those menacing Korean infantry...

...close in on Kato Kiyamasa's command

The Korean heavy cavalry form up...

...and clash with Ahimszu Yoshiihisa's samurai contingent

Il Naomassa's 'Red Devils' surge forward

The Korean's approach a village...

...but soon clash with the Red Devils

The Korean cavalry smash into the flank of the last of Ahimszu Yoshiihisa's infantry...destroying them and ending the game.

Making the Korean Game Terrain - Part 2: The Buildings, Bamboo Groves and Paddy Fields

Making the mountain pieces was a considerable effort, but it was only the start of the story of the terrain for the Imjin War game. There was also a need for a large number of bamboo groves pieces, paddy fields, more than a dozen houses and a fortress.

The first thing I attacked was the bamboo groves. These I wanted to be built in small blocks - maybe 100mm x 60mm - that can be put together in various combinations. I had decided to use some commercially available model bamboo that I saw on WISH for a few dollars for 100 pieces. Each piece is 150mm long so it can be cut into different lengths to suit. I ordered a pack and three weeks later it arrived.

Quite

To mount the bamboo I chose to use MDF off cuts that I cut into a variety of shapes using a jigsaw and shaped the edges. After texturing and painting  the top I drilled a series of holes with a 2mm drill then applied a droplet of superglue to the hole and pushed in the bamboo. In no time I had a collection of pieces, but realised that it wasn’t going to be enough, so another order was placed for bamboo models and more pieces made. Here is the collection finished.

At the same time I was working on the fortress. 

From the descriptions in the books I have read on the Imjin War (and the best, by the way, is Samuel Hawley’s “The Imjin War”) Korean fortifications were not like castles as we know them, rather they were fortified towns. The whole town would be surrounded by a series of walls and towers designed to keep out marauders. The walls themselves were not particularly high and the garrisons were never sufficient to man the entire wall so the fortresses so they were relatively easily stormed by a determined enemy.  Fortunately a number of the fortresses are in place today, although largely reconstructed and their websites were a good source of reference.

Although the fortress would have significance in this game, I didn’t want to go down the track of building a hugely detailed structure that would have limited future use. So I chose to use a simple construction method. Rather than a sculpted stone wall I chose to use a printed stone face glued to foam board and then mounting that on an MDF base, with the firing step being made from a piece of polystyrene. I couldn’t find an appropriate patterned paper at the local model railway supplier so I created my own from a photograph I had taken of a schist stone wall I had taken on one of our visits to Central Otago and then processing it through PhotoShop and a couple of other specialist drawing applications.

I decided that the wall height would be 45mm high with the firing step being 25mm. The walls would be made in sections and I would use rare earth magnets again to hold them in place. The fortress would extend 500mm into the table and have a width of 500mm. As such there would be two 200mm sections on each side,  two 95mm square towers (one on each of the corners) then two 130mm sections and a 140mm gate section.

The first thing to do was cut the bases. As usual I used 3mm thick MDF  The end pieces that would hold the magnet were cut using template so that the edges would match. I used a piece of 12mm squared timber to provide strength to the corner.

 Once the basic form was made I cut the foamboard and glued on the stone paper.

The more complex task was cutting the polystyrene and making it fit tight into the MDF form. When that was done the surface was textured and painted.

The wall was then fixed to the firing step and some texturing put on the front edge.

Then two pieces had the steps to the rampart added and some plug in flags were added to give some colour.

The towers and gate were a little more complex, but the same method of construction was used. Below is the tower, with and without the removable roof.

The gatehouse.

Here then is the finished item with a temple from an earlier Russo-Japanese game in the centre.

Next were the village and farm houses. A quick search of the internet for “traditional Korean houses” turned up a series of images like these:

My interpretation of these were very quickly made from foamboard, brick paper, a few bits of twig from the garden and matchsticks. The thatch effect on the roofs was created with carved foamboard and coarse sand.

One of the objectives of the game was to secure the rice harvest. This players did by taking control of the race carts laden with rice bales. For each one captured they gained victory points. There were to be ten such carts scattered around the table. For these I first made a green stuff master of a rice bale, from which I made a couple of BlueStuff press moulds, into which I pressed some air dry clay. 

Before too long I had 50 bales that I then glued together into stacks of five.

The carts themselves were just a matchstick frame glued together with superglue. Then I added a couple of small wheels and undercoated then in black.

The carts and bales were then quickly painted and in no time ten carts were completed.

The final pieces that were needed were the paddy fields. I had some made for that earlier Russo-Japanese War game and I used the same technique, laminating 3mm MDF, to build the remaining pieces that I needed. The cut outs from the top layer of the laminate were used for the bases of the bamboo groves.

Making the Korean Game Terrain - Part 1: The Mountains

For the Samurai Invasion of Korea game I wanted the terrain to be spectacular. Part of the spectacle that I envisaged was to cover between a quarter and a third of the table in mountains through which three narrow valleys would wind. These valleys would be packed with a village, a stream, paddy fields small woodlots and bamboo groves, all carefully designed to channel players through an area that was perfect for guerrillas to lurk.

The first thing I needed to do was to decide just how to represent the mountains. Putting something under the cloth just wasn’t going to cut it because it just wouldn’t have the impact I wanted. So I would have to make something that would sit on top of the cloth and it would have to be modular and have a use beyond this game. 

I needed to figure out how to make the modules and then I remembered this post in the Shed Wars blog from back in 2014. Now Eric’s construction was robust but likely to be too heavy to be carted around and would require a workshop to which I do not have access. I needed to adapt the design so that I could create it with a simple set of tools and using the same 250mm x 250mm squares of 3mm MDF from a local craft store that I have used for a variety projects recently. 

After a bit of design work on the computer I came up with a template that I could easily use to cut the MDF with a jigsaw. There were to be two basic pieces: end pieces that were set at 90 degrees, curves if you like, and straight pieces. Into that template I incorporated a feature that would prevent the modules from separating or drifting during play and that was to embed rare earth magnets into the sides of the pieces to hold them together.

So over the 2020-2021 Christmas break I made use of my new template and setup and cut out six pieces, four ends and two straight pieces. The end pieces were to be the proof of concept.

The MDF components for an end piece, the holes in the sides are where the magnets will be located.

The pieces were easily assembled using a short piece of 25x25mm finished timber to reinforce the joint.

The basic structure 

The two pieces together, held in place by rare earth magnets.

The next thing to do was to fill the space with polystyrene, but rather than just fill the whole space I just cut and laminated strips. This allowed me to use the polystyrene more economically. The first part of this process was rough, just looking to ensure that the edges of the template were covered and the basic shape was defined.

The two pieces held together with their magnets.

The polystyrene was then carved, making sure that the edges conformed to the curves of the MDF. The carving didn’t have to be precise, just the basic shape, and where gaps appeared on the edges they were finished with filler.

The carved item that her indoors refers to at the Pavlova (or merengue cake) 

Again the two pieces joined with magnets

With the basic forms created I needed to create the final texturing and for this I chose to use two tried and tested techniques. The first involved coating the surface with PVA glue onto which toilet paper is applied, and while the glue is still wet the surface is stippled with an old paint brush so that the surface wrinkles and distorts. Additional glue and paper is applied to accentuate the wrinkling. When painted this will give the effect of a rock face, or eroded earth, and creates quite a durable surface. The second technique used is the application of coarse sand and road gravel to represent rock slides or broken earth areas.

But having completed this work I wasn’t happy with the still step like appearance and went back and filled in many of the ‘steps’ with some air dry clay. When the clay was dry I applied toilet paper to provide a consistent appearance. Then I painted the pieces black then various tones of gray with a dusting of Burnt Sienna and green for additional tone.

Next I applied some flock and grass tufts. The lower image has a bamboo grove tho cover the place  where a waterfall tumbles down the face of one of the pieces.

With the concept proven I noted a few points for improvement and prepared to work on one a week for the next ten weeks to complete what was needed. But my enthusiasm got the better of me and I finished the first six in the time I had off work over Christmas and made the rest in short order, completing them all before the end of February.

Some of the other pieces in various stages of construction...

And the finished sections.

I also needed two special pieces in which the Temple of Infinate Harmony would be situated from which the Monks could emerge yelling and screaming, or rain arrows down on unsuspecting Samurai. The same basic forms used for the mountain blocks were used, so that they would conform with the others, but two sides were altered so that they could be used side by side. Of course this limits their use in that they will pretty much always have to be used as a pair. My first thought was that the temple buildings could be replaced by other mountain buildings for other games (I am thinking of alpine villages here for the Suvarov campaigns in the early-Napoleonic Wars), but this idea died an early death. The temple itself was built into the mountain, as though built as a part of a cave system, and is accessible only by a stairway and bridge, with a fortified gatehouse at the foot of the heights. Here is the finished product.

About half way through the build I realised a problem with the overall table design. The original plan called for the design below with 250mm high mountain modules shown in dark brown. 

I realised that the pieces on the long edges of the table were going to inhibit players reaching figures on the table because they would not be able to reach over the pieces that stand 250mm (10 inches) high and then another 900mm (3 feet) into the table.  But I still wanted some sort of restrictive terrain along the edge otherwise the players would just skirt along the edge of the table to avoid any ambush spots...you know what wargamers are like, right? Plus I wanted that visual impact. So I decided to make some smaller pieces, rising no more than 125mm. I decided not to make specific end pieces for these, but rather made some special bamboo groves and here is the result.

And now with all sixteen pieces layed out on the garage floor...

...the test layout...

And just over six weeks the project, that I thought would take three to four months, was complete.

Part two of this post will cover the construction of the other items that were required for the game - the fortress, the buildings, bamboo groves and paddy fields.