Fishponds Wargames

Sunday, 11 January 2026

Sengoku Japanese Progress

I've not eased up on the Japanese painting since Christmas with several units being added to the painted armies. The most recent of these are some of the last of the planned foot Samurai with Yumi and Teppo armed units joining the hosts. I've got one more unit of Yumi Samurai being painted and then it's time to get stuck into the Ashigaru.

The Mori host so far.

I've not got as far with the Shimazu.

Nightstalker DZ Ravager

Test model complete for the NS DZ/Firefight Butchers and Ravagers. There'll be some minor variations on the subsequent models but the overall colour scheme will be the same. Now just a few more to paint and importantly - base!

Hush, don't have nightmares....

Sunday, 21 December 2025

Sengoku Japanese: Shimazu Yari Ashigaru

And finally for what has been a busy week of painting and gaming we have the first of many melee Ashigaru. Mostly armed with yari but with the odd naginata thrown in as well.

In total there will be three of these units painted up for each side, all paired with a unit of yumi Ashigaru. So there's a fair few of these left to paint but I have already painted up two of the yumi units so at least I've got a start on those!

Saturday, 20 December 2025

Fox & The Rat: Day 4 Every Object Counts

With the 8th Army assault stalled on the coast Capt. Rohrstock was determined to press home the advantage of the lightning victory the day before and fully breakthrough the enemy lines.

Looking through his binoculars he could see the ground he needed to capture and in the distance the colonial defenders rushing forwards to try and stop him. Once more the Stukas had been called up to wreak havoc in the enemy lines but he had not expected the enemy to be able to muster an artillery bombardment in return. Whilst this mostly went astray he was aghast to see the truck pulling their precious anti-tank gun do up in flames with the crew mostly bailing out alive.

With the preliminary bombardments over, both sides picked themselves up and advanced towards the enemy. This was mostly made up of cautious advances by the infantry on foot until Rohrstock unleashed the 3rd section in their Sdkfz 251. Guns blazing it rushed the central objective under the very noses of the enemy and disgorged it's passengers. The initial target was a Sikh mortar section which had unwisely crested a nearby sand-dune and it was quickly reduced to a single crewman. The men of the 3rd section also unleashed heavy fire into the advancing Sikh infantry, cutting a number of them down.

This boldness brought about an immediate reaction from the enemy as a Humber armoured car rushed down the road and opened fire on the 251, fortunately the shot was wide of the mark. This in turn signalled the time for the Panzer II attached to the attack to venture forth. The first shot from it's auto-cannon was wild and off target but the second struck home with deadly effect, causing the Humber to burst into flames.

During this armoured battle the infantry fight had continued in the centre with the Sikh's coming off the worst under accurate fire from the DAK 3rd section. The Sikh's had also made an effort to bring their own anti-tank gun forwards and into action. It also shot at the 251, and again the shot was wide.

Not wishing to give the 6pdr another shot at him the 251 sped forwards whilst it was reloading and opened fire on the crew to cut some of them down. Their was a brief assault by some Sikh infantry on the 251 but this was driven off with no damage done.

By this time the Sikh attack had largely bogged down but they did launch on last ditch assault on the central objective but whilst this caused a couple of casualties on one team the Indians had no support so had to withdraw. This allowed a different DAK team to retake the objective whilst the LMG team of 3rd section shot the Sikh's down.

With night falling and no chance of rescuing a victory the Sikh's decided to withdraw from the field of combat leaving it to Capt. Rohrstock and his men to celebrate another decisive victory.

Friday, 19 December 2025

Sengoku Japanese: Yumi Monks

Here we are with the last of the Sohei warrior monks (for the moment) from Fireforge games. I have two boxes of the monks each of which will be turned into a unit of melee, archers and skirmishing gun users.

Having spent the week painting up nothing but Sohei I've gotten into the flow of their scheme so these chaps came out relatively quickly.

Here we have the entire box in one shot (with an extra banner bearer from Perry) and that means I only need to paint up some melee Ashigaru to complete all the different box sets I got from Fireforge. Those are up next and have already made their way onto the painting table.

Thursday, 18 December 2025

Sengoku Japanese: Yamashiro Fortifications

I do have a weakness for a castle or other nice buildings so when I was looking around for some terrain to build up for our Samurai games I came across a nice tower from Oshiro model terrain I was immediately interested. As part of a larger range of walls and buildings the tower looked to fit in with the buildings I Kickstarted with Oshiro already and the more rustic setting I'm aiming for. You can buy STL's to print out massive stone fortifications but I was looking for something that didn't require an entire table to setup something reasonable looking.

There where however two issues, the first of which was that they didn't produce 90 degree corners and the second of which was using the other parts available you couldn't make an enclosure that joined up properly. I mentioned this on a Facebook group and James who runs Oshiro reached out to me to say he would create some 90 degree corner pieces and he could help with a castle setup by modifying the pieces he supplied to me.

So only a couple of weeks after that initial conversation I received my castle in the post today, James has trimmed down the wall parts on the tower to allow everything else to connect up properly. I also have an extra corner piece in case I want to leave the tower out.

I've also been working on my Fireforge Sohei, this time the monks with teppo. As with the gun armed Ashigaru I've already done these are five to a base to act as skirmishers.

Tuesday, 16 December 2025

Sengoku Japanese: Sohei Warrior Monks

A week off means more time for painting and I was eager to get these new models onto the painting table. These Fireforge Games Monks are fresh from being Kickstarted and I've only just received my box.

The box comes with 24 models and a mixture of Naginata, Teppo, & Yumi, eighteen of each to be exact. This does mean you can't arm the entire box with one weapon but that wasn't an issue as I planned to make up troops armed with all three weapons from the box. The only issue is that I wanted 10 melee, 10 bow and 5 gun armed monks so I needed to add an extra model in somewhere. Fortunately I had some Perry banner bearers so I decided to add one of them into the melee group, size wise he fits perfectly.

The models themselves are of a different plastic to the other Fireforge Games kits being darker and slightly more shiny than the older kits but they cleaned up well enough and the melee troops went together ok. You can also use the arms from the other Fireforge kits as they fit the bodies so I used a couple of the Samurai sword arms to make the leader and as the basis of the tetsubo.

Next up are the Teppo Monks and then those with Yumi, after that it's probably going to be some Yari Ashigaru as I don't have any yet.