Tekumel has slipped into a Bethorm again

I am hoping to conjure it back out, but, gaming time has been so limited of late. I am trying to sort and purge stuff to make room, which may also make time, as I won't have to climb over piles to get to things. But, while I do that, I am also expanding some areas of my collection.

I have been puttering about with terrain, primarily for Japan, because I have painted samurai that can be fielded to the the table, and because much of it is has an exotic feel that can fit in Tekumel. Mostly I am building simple, generic terrain pieces, hills and rock outcroppings and such. But, specifically for samurai, I started a bamboo thicket, based upon the tutorial here... which I found via the Ronin Skirmish rules forum here.  I started the project a while back, but stalled while trying to find the appropriate leaves for the bamboo stalks. Then I found this thread on the same forum.

Seemed a simple solution. So I ordered a pack of the kind that comes in four sizes, and accidentally ordered a second pack. Which, as it turned out, was fine. It is going to be one big field of bamboo. And got a few Woodsies cut outs for basing.

snip off the top close to the leaves.

A few quick holes and some glue, and I had a few of these...

snip the subsequent leaves close and at an angle

 But I didn't want the original bamboo project to go to waste, and, even the tallest of these isn't really tall. So, I took some left over from the smallest, and snipped and cut and glued. This gives all the bamboo the same generally look.

Scoring and painting the skewers is covered in the blog post I linked to above. The top bit of the plastic bamboo is cut off and hot glued to the top of the skewer. I probably should have painted the ends of the skewers, but they are mostly covered by the plastic tops.  Then cut the subsequent leaves each just flush with the top at as steep an angle as possible. This gives you a little pile of leaves with stems. I found it quickest to simply snip, spin the "plant 180" and snip. Careful not to loose the bits.

Bamboo can thow out short branches where it sprouts leaves. Some you will shorten to be flush with the leaves, some will end up with longer stems glued to the side of the skewer.

With a bit of work you end up with these. My original project had bases that were way too small, and the bamboo wouldn't stand up to a light breeze. So I glued them down to larger  bases and added a few of the plastic bamboo pieces to fill them out and tie the two bamboos together. I found this allowed me to get away with being fairly sparce with leaves on the skewers, as the shorter bamboo adds a good deal to the sense of Foliage.

I will update this post when I get the bases completed...

Minor progress this evening.. I got some vinyl spackle and a stirring stick and textured the bases.. waiting for them to dry..
If I do more, and I probably will, I will do this part first, then drill and place the bamboo. I had to be careful not to get spackle on the plants..

But it should give me a good earth texture that takes paint and protects the thin wood bases from warping, if all goes well.

This is a repost of a topic I posted in the Ronin Forum. Ronin is a ruleset from Osprey, set Feudal Japan.

well, I managed to pull it off, not entirely gracefully, but it looked good. I dropped all the factions to 100 pts, had three players so one ran 200 and 100 each for the other two. (I was one of the other two - running the bandits.)

My grand plan would be to have 4 players, two sides, but issues that could lead to internal fightin on both sides, but with three players, I simplified that, and allowed, for example, both the Sohai and the Bandits to gain pts looting bodies. It didn't matter, since they mostly ended up as the bodies.. but I get ahead of myself.

The  Sohai/Bandit, psuedo Ikko Ikki (we will use Ikko hence forth, now that it clear that this is not using the Ikko buntai rules) side had the goal of killing the Daimyos nephew. His side had to leave from a specific point on the map,  preferably with the hostess, to get back to the village where his troops were stationed.  They start at the Tea House.  I had  a house rule that they must complete the ceremony, or loose VP (honor) so each turn he would roll a die, and if he got a 6 the Bushou, Sensei and Hostess could leave. Add one to the roll each turn, so he would automatically get to leave on turn 6. He rolled a six right off.. 

The Ikko split his forces and tried to  defend the bridge with a Senior Sohai, Sohai and Initiate and the Hatamoto and one Senpai moved to take it and he sent his other two initiates to cross the river. 

My bandits worked on fording the fast moving early spring (very muddy) stream to meet his Bushou, Sensei, Senpai, and a Yumi samurai.  A lot had hung on the idea that he would be stuck in the tea house, so I need to mod that house rule some. 

I also ruled that my one Teppo Bandit could have a +1 on his first shot - a rule that shows up in a lot of civil war and Napoleonic. He didn't want to waste it. So he jockeyed for position to shoot at the only armoured enemy he could get into range, the Hatamoto on the bridge.  But before he could get a decent shot, the two sides met on the bridge, and a Ninja popped out on the opposing side and started making for the Teppoman.

Here is the battle on the bridge. After that I didn't get any pictures.

If i do this scenario again - and I probably will - I will drop the Bandit with the Yari in favour of another Teppo-man. One of our big problems was initiative.. the opposition would generally strike first, and toast our units before we could counter.. I need to see if I was doing that right.. (update- I wasn't)

It wasn't pretty anyway. The Bugai/Koryu combination toasted the Sohai/bandits. One Senpai dead, and not a man alive on my side. I admit this was partially our weak strategy. We split weak troops and faced strong troops.. I mis-judged how much weaker we were, despite our greater numbers. I may also have mis-played some rules.. I will be looking at that more closely.