Miniature Gaming in Japan

It's taken a while, but I now have a base of gamers firmly established in Japan. First of all is JIGG - short hand for the Japanese International Gamers' Guild - for my general board game fix. These guys and gals are numerous, hold four events per month, and play the latest and greatest board game releases. My favorite organizer is Mandy, a fellow Aussie from Melbourne, and I try to make it to Okusawa where she hosts their monthly events. Brian is a close second - he's a North American (can't remember if he is a Canuck or a Yank) - he also happens to be the organizer of PubCon and the West Tokyo Wargamers, a group of friendly expatriates who play Bolt Action on a regular basis. Among their number are a number of disenfranchised ex-Warhammer Fantasy players, who, like me, got badly burned by GW when they killed the game. As a consequence those guys will probably never buy or play GW stuff again, with the exception of out of print versions of past GW games. For the most part they play Warlord Games titles like the aforementioned Bolt Action, Blackpowder and similar 28 mm skirmish games. I am sorely tempted to start a Bolt Action force. It would be nice to have a group of English speaking players gathered around a single game system, and as an added bonus they play the odd tournament as well. Another bonus is one I could try to subvert to my own advantage - since many of these guys are ex-Warhammer Fantasy players, I could try to get them to flip to Kings of War. Or start a retro Fantasy group. Either works for me.

The Walking Dead. Sandra escapes certain death using her special evasion ability. 

Speaking of Kings of War, the Japanese Koganei group has proven to be my go to for Kings of War. After being initially unimpressed by Koganei and the venue, I found three more Japanese people who play the game. Takatori-San, Omata-San and Ronnie-San (I don't know his real name, only his Twitter handle) have been added to contacts, and the addition of Sakurai-San, another Koganei player, makes four KoW players in Koganei. I played my second and third games of KoW in October there, and it was excellent fun. I felt guilty for taking a "beardy" all cavalry list which ended up steamrolling Takatori-San. I felt so bad that I lent my army for Ronnie to use, only to watch with chagrin as he rolled Omata-San with multiple cavalry charges in not just one, but two games. He even let the cavalry get charged in the second game, which just goes to show how hard cavalry units are in KoW. Sorry, guys! Next time I'll bring something a little fluffier. Maybe my Dark Elves? Or Tomb Kings? All my miniatures are here in Japan now, so I can field four armies now, and another two given a bit more work. I'm just happy they have a new lease on life. Yay Mantic.

My first KoW doubles game. Omata-San and Takatori-San vs. me and Ronnie. Dwarves and Neriticans (along with a Steam Tank... em Beast of War mercenary) square off against an Undead and Kingdoms of Men coalition.

My third gaming group is the gathering at Nerima. Initially I thought these guys would be my main group since they are the closest to me, but the last few times I've been at the club it's been a bit disappointing. I went in September and didn't end up playing a game, despite posting my attendance ahead of time on their bulletin boards. The only time I have fun is when Yuasaki-San and his buddies roll up, but since these guys don't use the boards I have no idea when they are coming or not. My August visit to Nerima taught me a valuable lesson - always plan a game instead of just rolling up. I'm going to keep going to Nerima but next time I see Yuasaki and his mates I'm going to exchange contact details so I don't have to pray for an opponent. In October I was able to play three games of The Walking Dead with these guys, and had a real blast.

The final group I discovered in my travels is also close to where I live. The GMG club is based in Nakamurabashi and hosted by a friendly Spanish dude named Manuel. He's very nice but unfortunately his group plays Privateer Press games mainly, like War Machine/Hordes. I have no interest in learning this system so GMG is not an option for me. It's funny how the miniature scene splinters itself further by the wealth of gaming systems on offer nowadays, making a niche hobby with a high entry cost even more insular and impenetrable. The days when GW ruled the gaming scene had its downside, of course, but it made the community larger because everyone was playing either Warhammer or 40K. Now everyone is playing their own thing, and it makes it harder than ever to find other players. You also end up being an ambassador for your own games - you have a vested interest in having more players convert to your system. I miss the halcyon days back in Oz when we had lots of tournaments averaging 50 or so players all year round, and we knew everyone. Sigh. But through hard work I've slowly built up a roster of like-minded people, and if I can get 10 to commit to an event, I would like to organize the first Japanese Deadzone or Kings of War tournament.

In other news my first order of Raging Heroes' miniatures have arrived. I've been threatening to buy these for months, but a sale on their website finally made me bite the bullet. I ended up spending a pretty penny, encouraged by the words "final" and "discount", and ended up purchasing enough minis to field Deadzone forces for three factions. After an anxious two to three week wait where I berated myself for not getting registered post, the little female soldiers finally arrived. As stated earlier, I'm going to use the Jailbirds as Rebs. As for the Kurganovas and the Iron Empire, I'm going to think about it for a while. In the meantime, the toughest girls in the galaxy are sitting in my display case, as white as snow from the primer undercoat and just waiting for me to touch them. With the bristles of my long brush.

Eeeewwwww. I've been hanging around Sakurai-San too long. He's weird. I mean, we're all fucking weird - we collect little toy soldiers - but he's openly hentai. Japanese gamers keep in touch through a network on Twitter, and while 99% of them keep the tweets about miniature painting and gaming, Sakurai-San spams my Twitter feed with pictures of anime girls in their underwear, as well as censored tweets which are blocked by Twitter on the grounds that they "may contain sensitive content". I hate to think what these might be - I've had to resort to checking Twitter furtively, just in case a picture of cartoon schoolgirl getting fucked by a tentacle death monster appears in polite company. I would have removed him from my feed, but he's one of the organizers at Koganei, which means  I have to keep him on so I can keep up with announcements and meet times. The fact that I'm now buying Raging Heroes miniatures is a little worrying. But in the same way I like my male miniatures to be heroic, idealized and exaggerated applies equally to female miniatures, and I think the stuff made by Raging Heroes looks cool. I'm just worried that people might not get the distinction. Maybe there is none, and we're all just freaks. Oh well.

Moving on. With the arrival of my miniatures from Australia I've been busy repairing and completing little side projects, some of them started over two decades ago. I finished assembling and undercoating Bretonnian knights from fifth edition Warhammer released back in 1996. They'll go into a Brotherhood, League or Kingdoms of Men KoW army. I did the same for a regiment of High Elf Silver Helm knights, and for a troop of Dark Elf Cold One Knights. The Silver Helms will go in as is into an Elf army without any problems. The Cold Ones will be mounted on 40 mm bases and turned into Abyssal Riders for the Twilight Kin, but I may lay off on that until an official army list for the Dark Elves (known as Twilight Kin in the Mantic universe) are released. I'm in the process of basing my entire Dark Angels army, an army which I've never fielded on the tabletop. To be honest I've never played a single game of 40K in my life! I hope to rectify that one of these weekends. But all things considered, miniature gaming is alive and well in Japan. It just takes a little time to find it.