Hello all. I have been re-watching the american ninja movies and i have been bitten by a bug. I need to get my hands on some ninjas. a lot of them. I cant seem to find anyone who makes them and I do not own a 3d printer. If wargames atlantic team see's this, please please make a box of them. use them in modern times just like the american ninja movies or for feudal japan. I would love to recreate scenes from the movie or just wargame random nonsense. If anyone knows a manufacturer please let me know and wargames atlantic...if you see this please...please consider it!
Ninjas
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I'll second this - I would buy a box of action-movie-style ninjas immediately, on instinct!
But to whet your appetite for now, Crooked Dice sells ninja figures individually or in sets of three:
https://crooked-dice.co.uk/product/ninja/
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Perry have some:
https://www.perry-miniatures.com/product/sam41-ninja-various-weapons/
Warlord have these (I think repurposed to "Warlords or Erewhon" from thier OOP "Test of Honour")
https://us.warlordgames.com/products/warlords-of-erehwon-ninja?_pos=1&_sid=ee24f7b43&_ss=r
These are the Test of Honour ones, but you may need to look around to find stock:
https://www.karwansaraypublishers.com/blogs/wss-news/28mm-ninja-test-honour
Noble Knight has this entry:
https://www.nobleknight.com/P/2147569240/Ninja-Warriors
Personally, I favour the Perry ones.
They're not a difficult conversion project from Persian or Afghan models - anything sculpted in loose tunic and trousers will do. I made a batch up using the old Wargames Factory Persians, using any old head wrapped in putty and various weapon arms. Spare bald heads from Cannon Fodder would be ideal for this.
The WGA Boxer kit has some suitable bodies and weapon arms. The butterfly knives and polearms in particular. Straight bladed Ninjato are a fairly simple scratch build from plasticard and putty, or you could cut another sword's blade down to shape. Kama are a REALLY simple conversion (cut a hafted weapon back to a stick and attach a triangle of plasticard). And don't overlook unarmed figures, or those using gunpowder weapons (grenades, matchlock pistols, even arquebuses) or more traditional ranged weapons like bows and thrown ones.
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I think a ninja box would be fun, but I really like the kitbash/proxy suggestions by @Mark Dewis - those ideas all sound great to me.
Reaper has a couple Bones plastic figures that ought to work, and I'm sure there are others in metal. As always, the Bones plastic guys generally kitbash nicely with e.g. Wargames Atlantic arms and heads: the "Bones" plastic is pretty easy to work with, and binds nicely to the hard plastic that WGA mini kits are made from. There was a couple ninja figures in the Chronoscope line, a couple ninjas from the Pathfinder line, and a couple of fantasy monks that ought to work fine for ninjas or other martial-artist figures.
Anyway, I love the suggestions for the Boxer rebels, Afghans, and Persians. I bet some of the Dark Ages figures would work well, too - the Irish, Goths, and Franks would have some loose belted tunics and trousers, some shirtless bodies, and so on that wouldn't look at all outof place on pulp ninja, kung-fu, and other martial artist characters..
I've never seen any of the dedicated kits from the companies mentioned by Mark, but I'm sure they'd work great.
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Fireforge games will be having a feudal japan kickstarter... was supposed to be in May but it got slightly delayed until they shipped their dwarves (which are shipping now). While no ninjas have been shown yet, I wouldnt be surprised if ninjas were included.
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As someone who has bought a persian box, they would require very extensive conversion. I would not convert ninjas out of them unless you already planned on buying them or have a box.
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@Estoc The WGA Persians, yes. Only one of the bodies is close, really. It would make more sense to use Boxers out of the WGA kits. But the Wargames Factory ones looked like this:
I'll see if I can find the ones I did and upload a picture. I ended up getting a LOT of those Persians back in the day, because they were super cheap (25c a figure at one point, I think). They continue to be useful now and then.
If you want Space Ninjas, I reccommend GW Tau Fire Warriors as base figures. I made up some years ago as Scouts for my Samurai-themed Space Marines. For that project they used Space Marine guns, mostly bolt pistols, but I did do a batch with martial arts weapons.
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@William Redford if the ninjas are any good, you wouldn't expect to see them, would you?
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@Andrew Stoeckle HA!
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Yeah. Just model a few bushes and rocks. Maybe a paper screen.
Perry also have some Japanese civilians. Anyone can be a Ninja!!!
Note that the first set has a Shukke priest and the second set has a Komusou monk, both classic Ninja disguises, often seen in film. But any of the peasants could be Ninja.
Also possibly useful here:
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True about not using Persions unless you have some around, but then, we should all have a box or two of the Persions hanging around - it's a cool little set with a bunch of figures that can be mixed into all sorts of crowds! :D But, I wouldn't buy a box specifically for ninjas, either.
Lauging at the "anyone can be a ninja" thing, and it's true!
The story (as I hear it) is that in the real world, there wasn't a real ninja costume, they really did just dress like anyone else, or dressed the part of servants like gardeners or cooks or manual laborers or whatever that would be so far beneath important people that their targets wouldn't notice them - the modern equivalent would be that they'd dress like janitors or just faces in a crowd or whatever - "grey men".
The ninja costume as we know it is supposedly an artifact of opera and theatre, as the costumes worn by stage-hands so that they would blend into the background - they were such a routine part of the theatre experience, audiences had learned to tune these stagehands out and pay attention to the play's characters. Some genius playwrite or another needed ninja assassins to spring out of nowhere to murder an important character, and decided that, rather than doing something obvious like make the assassins spear-carrier or servant characters in the play, the assassins would instead spring out of the shadows dressed as the stage hands that the audiences had learned to ignore, and thus the ninja costume was born!
One can only imagine the surprise of the audience when the ninjas turned out to be those lowly stagehands that nobody pays attention to. ANYONE CAN BE A NINJA! :D
So, I guess the stereotypical ninja costume is more fantasy than history, not that there's anything wrong with that! The more "accurate" costumes would be something that would look like the costumes of common men of their historical era, and anything that looks "close enough" to the period costumees of Japanese peggars, farmers, servants, bureaucrats, messengers, laborers, and the like ought to work. (But, they maybe wouldn't be quite as cool as the fantasy ninja costume we all know and love!)
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Not just "common men". Female ninja aside, drag is an option. Any of those female minis could be male ninja in disguise, and many of the male ones could be lady shinobi. Probably only the bare chested guy is totally off the cards there.
And don't trust the kids, either...
Slightly off topic, but if you're looking for figures to base Japanese peasants on, the Perry Madhist kit is really good. Couple of bare foot and loincloth bodies, some with monk type wrap around body cloths, all bare foot. Many useful bare heads. This picture gives some idea what I'm talking about:
I've also used old Wargames Factory Numidians to good effect here - simple short tunics with bare feet. Open hands you can fill with farm tools. Just need more appropriate heads from somewhere.
(Note that those picrtures are the kits used as intended, not kitbashed Japanese. I'll try to upload some examples from my projects on the weekend).
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Could also be ninja... ;)
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These too.
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@Mark Dewis Donatello, Raph, Mick, and Leo, Wehhh, It works for me, Green Teenage fighting, Ninjas.
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LOL - I bought a big grab-bag of several dozen Heroclix minis a couple months ago for about 30 cents or so a piece, which included two full sets of 28mm ninja turtles - I gave the turtles and most of the others away to my sister for use in her role-playing group, but now I wish I'd snapped a photo of them before giving them away!
I did, however, save a bunch of the figures that I thought I could make good fantasy, pulp, horror, and sci-fi use of, and among them were maybe a dozen or so ninja minis that I forgot all about until now.
So, if you guys can still track down a bunch of inexpensive grab-bag Heroclix figures, you might end up with dozens of duplicate superheros that may or may not be useful to you, a few characters that might pass for modern and sci-fi figures, a few characters that will work for fantasy characters, and (if you're as lucky as I was) maybe a bunch of pretty good ninjas with assorted weapons, along with a few ninja-like superheros, and some ninja turtles!
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@Michael Scott
https://crossoverminiatures.com/product-category/minions/
I used the Crossover Miniature ones when Test of Honor first came out.
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Here are old WGF Persian based ninjas I did back in the day, prior to green stuff:
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