Fire Forge Samurai Minis

 

After watching the new vesions of Shogun I was once again hooked in the Feudal Japanese history and the later Sengoku period 1540 -1600.

Ofcourse the FireForge plastic range  The Samurai Wars was the answer to give me my Samurai fix. I always has had a soft spot for the FireForge minis, the last I built was their Almughavars back in 2022.

I got me a few boxes of Samurais and Ashigarus,  I also managed to get hold of a preview sample of the new Samurai/Ashigaru Command Sprue that I thought I should share some pictures of below.

It is a really nice addition to all the other boxes that lack command minis, you probably want to get hold of several of them if you want Ashigaru command minis in all your units, I will try to do the most out of the ones I have and convert the other command minis needed.

The box have 3 sprues, samurais, Ashigarus and Horses that will give you 14 minis, 3 mounted samurai and 11 samurai/ashigaru on foot, including Samurai on a chair and 2 kneel down, as well as a mox of shigaru officers, musicians, ammunition handlers, banners and ofcoures the umbrella holder, a very important man in every Samurai army;) 

The command box are still up for pre-order on the fireforge website untill the end of November.

Now Im of to build me a Samurai force for The Pikemans Lament, more to come.

Almughavars and Catalan Company

Some time ago I got me a box of  FireForge Almughvars and as I already had some other FireForge minis in my pile of shame I thought it was time to make me a Catalan Company force that also will doubble as the base for a human Oathmark force. 

All minis are from FireForge, the 25 Almughvar minis have been mixed up with 15 Foot Sergeants and Scandinavian Infantry minis.  Infantry are based 5 minis to a 50x40mm base and the Cavalry are based 3 or 2 minis on a 50x60mm base. 

Desperta Ferro! - Fireforge Almughavars

Santa brought me some of Fireforge plastic Almughavars so I thought I shold share some pictures of the frames. The box have 24 minis with 6 different body poses and a lot of arming option spears, javelins, swords, shileds and of course the classic large knifes. There are also a banner and 10 different head options. you get 4 main frames and 4 weapon frames. and bases in the box

I like the minis very much, especially all the different options, so many they wouldn´t even fit on the normal frame but Fireforge opted to add a separate 1/2 frame with weapons etc.

I painted a lot of 15mm Almughavars some 12 years ago for my FoG Catalan Company army so it will be nice to be able to filed them as 28mm for a Lion Rampant Catalan Company warband, and the 24 minis is just enought for two 12 man units, just need to add 6 Knights, 12 Crossbowmen and 6 Light Cavalry for a full 24 point warband:)

Birger Jarl miniature from Fire Forge

As you surely know Fire Forge game has released a box with plastic Scandinavian Ledung Infantry as a part of theat release they also released a Resin cast mini of the Swedish Hero and Founder of the Swedish capital Stockholm, Birger Jarl.

Birger Magnusson from the house of Bjälbo was  Jarl/Earl of Sweden from 1248 untill his death in 1266. From 1250 he was  regent of Sweden with his son Valdemar Birgersson that was elected King of Sweden in 1250.

I painted the mini on a command base with one of the Plastic Ledung infantry minis.

 

Got some Fire Forge Scandinavian Ledung minis today :)

Today I got some pre-release samples of the new plastic minis from Fire Forge, the Post-Viking Scandinavians or as you all know they are Swedish Ledung Crusaders :)

This release have I really looked forward to as I was contacted by FireForde about 18 month ago and was asked if I thought their plastic Medieval Russian minis would be possible to be fielded as Scandinavians and if so, could I help out to suggest new weapon, shields and heads for them, the bodys needed to be the same.

I thought the bodys worked good as Swedish as well as  Danish/Norwegian post viking ledung soldiers. Chainmail are generic and the lamell armour was used in scandinavia to due to all contact with Novgorod, Bysan and the Baltic area.

I put together some background text and a bunch sample pictures and sent it to FireForge and during Salute last year we had a meeting and decided which to use. So really nice to have a chance to influence a set of minis representing minis from my region, thank you very much Fire Forge:)

As Scandinavia was a backwater much arms, armour etc was old style so a mix of Viking and Medieavl equipment as well as influenced by eastern style, like lamell armour work well. They fought in Shieldwalls with support archers in the back of the formation. As well as skirmish archers on the flanks. Bow used was Longbows, some men would also have had crossbows, especially if Danes as they hired german crossbowmen as mercinaries.

The main weapon used was the spear as it was cheep to produce and the main hand weapon would have been an Axe as Swords was quite expensive so most soldeirs probably would not have had one, also was twohanded axes and other polearms used due to the power of them and relativly low production cost.

Below you can see some of the pictures I sent to FireForge,  you can probably reccognise some of the parts on the sprue:)  The pictures are a few from museums, but most are Scandinavian reenactors pictures, mainly from Gotland.

my suggestion... from the Swedish mini tv-serie Arn

Box art... :)