because i'm a good guy...

Hi all

on my last post I said "you wouldn't want a picture of  ALL my Bushido collection to date....would you?"

It would appear that the majority of you would, those who regularly comment on this blog anyway.  So for them and as I'm a team player I've tried my best to get pictures of literally everything that I have finished for this awesome game.

my Yagura, dojo, 8" control zone, bamboo grove, Prefecture of Ryu faction

my buddha shrine, shinto shrine, 4" control zone and multi-faction models 

dice trays and faction dice, homemade status tokens and card box

my temple board and Temple of Ro-Kan faction

all of my Bushido minis together

There are some works in progress and my next post will show a few new things that i'm working on and i'm scheduled to face off against Damon next week for my first competitive games, so expect an AAR in the near(ish) future - these things take time to write up.  Friday of course is the concluding part of our "Tale of 4 Gamers" at least for the painting part, again there will be AAR's to follow and all of that stuff.

I'll leave you with a quick video of the collection in it's entirety (if it works, it didn't in the preview) you won't need sound as I do not talk at all. I hope this is satisfactory to those who wanted to see the lot....

But for now -
hope you enjoy!

dGG

The Dojo - finished

Hi all

as regular readers of this blog will know I've been building terrain for my Bushido, a few days ago i posted WIP on my dojo and i'm happy to say I finished the piece recently, well I say finished what i mean is that it is playable now! I need to add some kind of curtains to the pagoda as it looks really odd sized in order for it to be playable as a piece, with curtains it should make it look a bit more acceptable.

rice bowl and pottery

As regular readers of this blog know I like to add some homemade details to my builds just to add some realism to the table and satisfy my sense of cinema.  The vase, cup and rice bowl were made out of putty and shaped (poorly) by me and painted to represent Japanese glazing, I went for Kanji (Japanese symbols) representing the five elements in Japanese culture - Earth, Fire, Water, Air and Void (or heaven) The bowl was filled with ballast that i painted white after it was glued in and the chopsticks are made from a split matchstick.

movable doors

The doors, as always, gave me some trouble, I wanted them to be fully moveable so they had an impact in play, I could have glued them in place and they would have looked great but played poorly. I did play with the idea of putting them on rails and i might do that in any future build (if any) but felt that it looked a bit odd with bits of matchstick sticking up from the floor which would have been my only option at this stage in the build.  Instead then I just mounted the doors on balsa bases that can lifted and put in place, a bit basic but hey it works!

full on shot, the pagoda roof is deliberately high in order for a fig to be placed in it! needs curtains

As i said earlier the pagoda is a little tall looking but I wanted to be able to put minis in their as the model needs to be fully playable, but i may stick some curtains on it to give it some class...lol

The pagoda is marked with Kanji for the elements with one on each aspect of the walls and Void facing the heavens i.e on the roof. you can just see a "poster" by the entrance to the dojo with the word Bushido in Kanji written on it and again the elements (this is a recurring theme).  In the picture below you can see the door in place more clearly.

Seiji turning up early for his training

early morning sun

the interior is a single room or "Moya"

With the roof off you can see some of the interior detail and more of the Kanji scattered around the walls.

Seij working out, not sure why he brought the bamboo in with him...

Master Po's master-class in session

some detail note the spilled Saki from the overturned cup

The pic above shows more of the interior detail in better light! For the posters I soaked white paper in used tea bags (plenty of tea drinking when i'm building..) to give it that time worn look before painting on the Kanji, in this case it once again spells out Bushido as well as the elements and the Temple of Ro-Kan.

The Tatami (or mats) is made from an old, out of date (but not used) crepe bandage that I found in my first aid kit at home, coloured with Vallejo Khaki.  The pottery was added and i used a puddle of PVA glue to represent the spillage of Saki (rice wine).

Master Po knows how to fill a classroom!

so that's it, another fun but time consuming build completed. I need to get some objective markers sorted next so I guess it's time to exercise my web-fu and find some interesting pieces for conversion.

hope you enjoy.

dGG

The dojo - WIP

Hi all

Over the last few weeks (it's taken me a while due to a long run of nights) I've been making a building for Bushido.  It's still a work in progress but I thought I would show you the basic building to give you a flavour of what it will look like.  I wanted to try to stick to some kind of historical accuracy, so googled Japanese feudal buildings for reference material. I also looked on the Bushido website and there was an interesting building(s) by one of the forum dwellers there.

So here we are, Japanese architecture was heavily influenced by the Chinese and other Asian cultures.  Partly due also to the variety of climates in Japan and the millennium encompassed between the first cultural import and the last, the result is extremely heterogeneous, but several practically universal features can nonetheless be found. First of all is the choice of materials, always wood in various forms (planks, straw, tree bark, paper, etc.) for almost all structures. Unlike both Western and some Chinese architecture, the use of stone is avoided except for certain specific uses, for example temple podia and pagoda foundations.

The general structure is almost always the same: posts and lintels support a large and gently curved roof, while the walls are paper-thin, often movable and in any case non-carrying. Arches and barrel roofs are completely absent. Gable and eave curves are gentler than in China and columnar entasis (convexity at the center) limited.

the main building, sorry about the photo, but it was a rare bright day! 

For the main building, which will consist of a single room called a "Moya" I used foamboard for the walls, although a little thick for traditional paper construction Japanese builders also used other materials for the walls as they were more often than not non-weight bearing (the weight of the roof taken up by specialist support brackets called a "Tokyo") I used coffee stirrers as the frames for the walls. Houses were commonly raised off the ground with large verandas and an all encompassing roof which is often half the size of the building. So I reached for the coffee stirrers once more and laid out a floor space supported by balsa posts. I wanted the roof to be detachable so the interior is fully playable so I hot glued cross beams on the support posts to form a frame. I then made a corresponding frame for the roof. Using coffee stirrers to form a curved roof to give it a Far- Eastern feel, I then cut rows of tiles and laid them across the beams.

the floor plan

cutting the floor planks

ready to go (this was not enough....d'oh!)

the veranda and main floor

the roof frame work, note the curve of the tile supports

cutting the row of tiles was the most laborious part

progress

a curved roof tile, this would be covered in filler and shaped

the finished roof and pagoda that will cap the roof.  Master Po and Kintaru also being based show size comparison

I made a little set of steps for access to the building before making a little platform/pagoda on the roof for a lookout, I know this is a little less traditional but I wanted to add a bit of da Gobbo's character into it and in all honesty I wasn't sure how I was going to finish the roof (a plain cap was just too boring!)

So far, so good? Thoughts and comments welcome.

dGG