Chaos Samurai Army & Ashigaru (Chaos Marauders)

Note: the first part of this post is a bit of an essay explaining the concept behind this army. If you're only here for the pictures, just scroll down until you reach part 2.

Part 1: The Army

For years now, I've been toying with the idea of starting a Warhammer Fantasy army, inspired mainly by the array of custom-themed armies I have seen; such as Lord Dan's Empire-themed Skaven; tension's 'Gobbotonia' Brettonia/Goblin hybrid and Lew_b81's Ogre army, which borrows designs from just about every faction in the Old World.

Since virtually every faction in Fantasy is based on a historical culture of some description, I decided that when I got round to making my own army, it would be based on an unrepresented culture.

By the start of this year I was getting the itch to play Fantasy again and I narrowed my ideas down to a shortlist of two: Greek themed Tomb Kings (think phalanxes of skeletons and various Greek mythological creatures as Ushabti etc) or Samurai themed Chaos Warriors. If you read the post title, you'll know I went with the second option (although I haven't ruled out doing the first in the future)

The Warriors of Chaos are essentially based on Vikings, with a bit of plate armour and daemonic influence thrown in as well. For my army, I will replacing the standard historical influences with ones based around medieval Japan. All the rules will stay the same, but the models will be converted with Green Stuff and I'll be associating each unit in the army book with a historical counterpart, as follows:

All Chaos Warriors and related units (Knights, Chosen, Lords) will represent varying types of Samurai. All 'human' units (Marauders and Marauder Horsemen) will be Ashigaru, and the various monsters will if possible be changed into Japanese mythological monsters (Oni and so on). Magic users will be converted to resemble Buddhist monks and other characters will be converted to better reflect Japanese arms and armour.

I'll be going into detail about the various armour and weapon styles in a later post, which will also contain some unpainted pictures showing the sculpting and possibly even a tutorial.

I will be sticking with a traditional Chaos palette of red, black and brass - red cloth and banners, black lacquered armour and brass decorations.

Part 2: Ashigaru

I started this project before Age of Sigmar was announced, so I went with square rather than round bases, and I've stuck with traditional Fantasy organisation in my plans.

This model is the unit's Aspiring Champion. He demonstrates all of the features of my converted Marauders. He wears a lamellar breastplate (dou), conical helmet (jingasa) and thigh guards (haidate).

He also retains the braces and greaves from the original model, as well as the round stomach plate. All the Ashigaru will have some combination of helmet, breastplate and thigh armour, with most of them having two out of the three. These will be combined with the original armour in a variety of ways.

In addition to the standard armour, the Champion has a pair of shoulder guards (sode) and a sash around his waist which holds his scabbard, as well as a katana style sword, which mark him out as the leader of the unit.

He also bears the tattoos that decorate all of the Ashigaru, although they're mostly hidden by the shoulder guards.

All of the lamellar plates used by the Ashigaru are of a standard design, which can be seen most clearly in the picture below. I will include a tutorial on how to create these plates at some point in the future.

This model is the unit's musician. Like the Champion, he has both the helmet and breastplate, but only has two of the three thigh guards - the third being replaced with a Roman style 'apron' of leather straps.

I kept the standard drum from the box, rather than convert it to a more traditional Japanese style.

The standard bearer has the breastplate and all three thigh guards, but lacks a helmet. He is armed with a katana sword and carries a Japanese style nobori banner.

This set of armour retains the straps from the original model over the lamellar plates, along with the bracers and greaves.

The banner is in the traditional Japanese style, with a crosspiece at the top to keep the flag visible even without wind. The design is the eight pointed Chaos star.

The pole is made from brass rod, the flag itself from champagne bottle foil and the straps from green stuff, cured and superglued in place.

This regular soldier wears the breastplate and thigh guards, but again lacks a helmet.

He is armed with a naginata halberd. I plan to give the unit a mixture of polearms and use them as halberdiers.

The final one of the first five models has a full set of armour apart from the central groin plate, which is instead replaced by some fur.

He is, like the previous model, armed with a halberd.

All of my Ashigaru have tattoos. This close up shows a design based around the Chaos star, with a variety of simple geometric shapes around it. Other tattoos use different Chaos symbols, or designs taken from traditional Japanese tattoos. The dark turquoise colour matches the highlights on the armour, and contrasts with the skin.