Showing posts with label kendo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kendo. Show all posts

Thursday 8 March 2012

Wraithlord - Seigan-no-kamae

My Son has had his Wraithguard since Christmas and as I've booked him a ticket to the GW North West gaming tournament in June he has to get 1000 pts painted by June 6th so we decided to put together his Wraithlord. Originally he wanted a Shuriken Cannon and Multi-laser but at the last minute decided to go with a Bright Lance and Sword, well that was it, I got very excited. I may have actually took over at this point I'm afraid to admit because I had a plan. In my defence putting the arms, hands and weapons on at the same time is quite difficult and he would have struggled greatly, I did.

Anyway the kit comes with a couple of foot and arm options which are nigh on the exact same positions that make up the basic kendo stance so I beseeched my son to allow me to replicate the pose. The basic stance is called chudan-no-kamae [there's pictures at the end to illustrate what the hell I'm jabbering about] this position is both defensive and offensive with the tip of your sword aimed at your opponents throat. Right foot forward, left foot back with your heel off the ground putting pressure on that left leg waiting for the moment to strike where all the forward momentum is derived from pushing off from the left leg.


Unfortunately I couldn't quite get the pose perfect without extensive cutting of the arms so instead of the nice relaxed bent arms which would make the kensen [tip of the sword] point at the Wraithlords throat height I've used the straight arms. In actual fact this is another stance called seigan-no-kamaeseigan is a modified chudan, in that the kensen is raised slightly and to the side. This stance is used against people who adopt jodan-no-kamae, a purely offensive high stance, or nito, two sword technique. When your opponent is in jodan their left hand is raised and much closer to you than any other target so by adopting seigan you are much closer to cutting that hand off or alternatively thrusting for his now unprotected throat - a tsuki.



Chudan no kamae - nice and relaxed posture, left heel raised, seigan is higher and to the right.
Jodan no kamae - note the left hand to which your kensen, in seigan, would be 'covering'.
One other issue was the deal with the twin Shuriken Catapults. I didn't want to clutter up the Wraithlord's arms with guns so I devised a twin catapult mount. I took a flamer, cut the flamer bulb off, trimmed any mounting slots on the catapults and glued them either side of the remaining flamer mount. At this point a small piece of plastic shot off into my eye which prompted a couple of minutes of delicate wiping to remove the offending article. Perhaps I need to invest in some safety glasses...


The mounted twin Shuriken Catapults. I also took the two arm vanes and in contrast to the examples on the box reversed them so they had a more aerodynamic look to them.


I'm pretty pleased overall, so pleased I want to paint it but I will try to let his nibs do it, hopefully he'll take some advice and time over it so we get a decent result, I really want it to be a centrepiece to his army, especially now it's factually correct, a bit at least.


Meanwhile, I didn't go to gaming night on Tuesday, I got a sweat on for some painting. 'Tackled' a new thing, which I still have to share and finally decided to do the heraldry on the Deathwing and eyes on folk. Suddenly all that procrastinating so I don't screw up didn't seem so bad as the end results are not what I'd hoped for :( Still, it's not finished yet I can keep them as is and if I really do hate the heraldry I can always go over it again. Damn those Deathwing freehand badges for making me think I could paint neat and tidy!

Monday 30 January 2012

The objects of my obsession

If you may recall when I 'celebrated' the blogs Birthday and treated it to more sporadic posting and less content [what a gift] I revealed a little about my passions, nay obsessions, nay addictions! Which came in three flavours:
  1. www.pitchshifter.com
  2. Kendo
  3. Games Workshop
And these addictions have come about and chopped and changed for priority over the last 20 or so. Each one having it's time to shine. My favorite band Pitchshifter is still very much under the radar, a new album is in the works but the guys are taking their time as there's no pressure in their lives for it at the moment. Which left me with the other two. GW which I think about an awful lot, even though I'm in that floundering period between completing projects and being inspired to get stuff done. And lastly kendo, the martial art I gave up for nine years only to regret every lost second.

If you reread my post on Hoshi Komi you will get a bit more insight into where I was at with it. For the past five years I've been an active member of Liverpool Kendo Club and due to the usual loss of members etc. I was elevated to the position of Sempai, that's the guy below the Sensei who runs the class, not teaches the class. I was all set to attempt my 3rd Dan this March but due to some changes in the symptoms of one of my persistent injuries I went back to see the consultant.

Long story short [too late] as of last week I had to retire from kendo. Well, retire from being hit at least. It was possibly the hardest thing I've ever had to do but we shall have to move on and with all things the waning of one thing brings about the waxing of another and it appears I now have a free evening a week that I've secured with the good lady wife to indulge my hobby. So, next week I will be sloping off to my local gaming club in Ainsdale, a small village not far from where I live where both my Grandparents and my Great Aunt used to live. Coincidentally the club is held in the same church hall my Grandparents used to attend and my Grandad did the quantity surveying for. Destiny? or the ruinous power exerting their will over my life?

How this will impact the blog I don't know. I'll certainly be more hobby orientated, maybe have tales to tell of the new 'gaming crew' I've joined. Can't say I'm not just a little nervous, it's been a long time since I was 'the new boy at the club' especially when I was essentially 'top dog' at kendo, although my sparring never reflected that, ha, ha! Anyway I'll keep you all updated on my jaunt.

PS, you can see which one is me in the pic right?

Saturday 2 April 2011

Terrain is everything - Honoured Imperium pt3.

Back to the old Honoured Imperium terrain. I'd be remiss if I didn't point out I actually got to this stage in around 24-48 hours, I'm not sure. I pretty much got carried away with it, really enjoying the process, again, because I knew what I was doing. This was because it's all just Red Planet basing up to here, click on the link if you want the full details.

As you can see the Aquila has also benefited from a Leather Brown base coat which I'm going to build up to Bonewhite.


The ruin is pretty much done, I'm not sure whether I want to pick out too much detail. I like the GW buildings but most of my buildings are scratch built and I don't want this to draw attention to the fact it's clearly not of the same design aesthetic. So long as I just stick to the same colours I should be able to let it blend in seamlessly with my other building/ruins.


Oh Lordy, that Red Planet effect is 'sweeeeet'! It's come out so well I can't believe it. Additionally I've added a thin coat of Black poster paint to the Statute. The Matt Black was a bit too smooth and I wanted to add a bit of texture for the verdigris to cling too. I think I also glued him together at this stage. Everything is looking rosey.


Meanwhile today is the day of the Kendo Seminar I've organised and tomorrow is the day of the British Kendo Association Kyu Grade [beginners] competition [although I'm too experienced to enter, I'll be refereeing]. So I'm gonna have sore feet and a sore throat and probably all sorts of other sore things!



Tuesday 18 January 2011

Hoshi Komi - oriental gaming fusion

When I first started gaming many of my Citadel Miniatures were Ninjas. I say 'my' but what I mean is my brothers. I said to him one day while walking home from school I'd quite like to try Dungeons and Dragons. I don't know where the idea came from. It just popped fully formed into my head, it may have been inspired by the Warlock of Firetop Mountain books I don't know.

He actually found someone in his year at school who was into role-playing and it was a Ninja based game. I was too young and he certainly didn't want me hanging around with his new mate so he went and played a game with him. I remember interrogating him ruthlessly on his return  about what it was like. So he bought a load of Ninjas and I still have many of them today, hey, I could dig them out and photograph them.

Anyhoo BloodBowl introduced it's Star Player's and one I had to have was Hoshi Komi, you can see him in all his toxic lead glory below.


Actually there's a french website with loads of info on him here and some painted shots too. This guy was cool, aside from Frank N'Stein, the coolest star player there was. But what was the coolest thing about him? His Ninja claws, his pose or his Ninja mask and armour? Well it ain't his Ninja mask because that isn't a Ninja mask, it's a Kendo helmet [known as a 'men'], it's a Kendo chest protector [known as a 'do] and part of a Kendo groin protector [known as a 'tare'].

Funny thing is over the course of my initial gaming affliction we went from GW battles to role-playing aand eventually Live Role Playing, something I actually did with my brothers Ninja-gaming friend. When I went to University I stumbled across a poster in the local Post Office window advertising a local Kendo club. I popped down the next Tuesday hoping to gain new skills to use in LARPing. Call it destiny, fate, whatever but it was their last night in that venue. From then on they'd be in a school a couple of miles away and if I hadn't have gone then I'd never have got a lift to future practices and probably never checked it out.

Over the course of the next four years I went regularly every Tuesday. I continued to paint my figures, made a chainmail vest for LARPing, by hand, from scratch but as time went on those hobbies lost traction. I had no one to game with and role playing wasn't real, Kendo was. When I came home from University without transport to the local Kendo club in Liverpool I stopped practicing. For nine years I gave it up, along with those other hobbies. Practical reasons - transport, children, cost and more pathetic reasons - laziness and fear stopped me from going. When I did return, in part due to threats from my wife to throw away my Kendo armour I realised those nine years were a complete and utter waste, what had I been missing?

Four years on I'm still going. I still love it but a number of persistent injuries impacted my enjoyment levels. Particularly last year when I took a few months off. At those times my 'addictive' aspects went looking for new obsessions and thats when 40k caught me at my weakest ;) Anyway I'm carrying on through the pain and there's big things coming up next year for our club which is why I mentioned pressures on my time. You may even have seen some of this if you checked out my Blogger profile and saw my other blog for the Liverpool Kendo Club


Suffice to say I see Kendo as some kind of weird gaming extension, I doubt anyone else will. But, it's the closest I'll get to being on a battlefield, actually that's not entirely true I went to the Gathering in Derby. 3,000 LARPers and I stood in the front of a massed rank of tower shields facing a huge opposing force, I quickly found a nice spot at the back of the formation! Kendo can be the physical embodiment of some of the battles we play out, just so long as you're not getting your dice and tape measure out in the middle of class! It's a total challenge, many aspects to master and a learning curve like no other, after eight years I can be as clueless as the day I started. At least I'm glad it's not the only hobby I brought back into my life.

Anyway Hoshi Komi's a cool figure, I have one 'cooking' in some Dettol, a purchase from my old friend BiG Pete, he's even got bits of Middenheim Marauder paint bonded to the lead still!