Hi Everyone,
Does anyone know of a good source for 28mm Yari? Really I just need the spearpoints and I could attach them to steel pins.
I thought Wargames foundry might sell them but no go.
A friend of mine gave me 12 packs of Old Glory Samurai/Ashigaru in return for some painting services. They don't come with spears though. I could use regular spear packs but I wanted to find something more Japanese.
Might be worth contacting Perry Miniatures, as they have a Samurai range. They have a stock naginata item, but might be willing to sell spears on an ad hoc basis.
Alternatively, a yari head is essentially a short, straight double edged sword blade. If you have spare sword arms of any era that have an appropriate point, cut those off at the approriate length and glue those to your pins, maybe? I would think Roman legionary, Dark Age warrior or even Napoleonic heavy cavalry swords would suit.
The Perry yari come separate, on sprue, with their yari armed ashigaru and samurai so good chance that it's a particular mould and that they can be sold instead of the naginata.
Alternatively, you might be able to create them from plastic card.
I did a quick Google of the yari spears. (Be careful typing, yaoi spears is a whole other thing.)
Maybe the Wargames Atlantic Orc spears with some cleanup?
Are you stateside? I have 3 extra I could mail you.
Thanks for the suggestions guys! Those Orc spears are definately close arent they? I think I will contact Perry and see if they will cast some for me. I need at least 50 so its probably worth their while.
There is also warlords plastic samurai and Ashigaru sets, the samurai set in particular comes with options to make everyone either sword or spear troops, so lots of extra Yari spears.
They might be a bit slender for Old Glory though, which should actually sell their own.
Those tripartate ones are a touch fancy, though. Mostly they're just single blades.
@Allan Lougheed I'd not say those are particularly close. A bit short and the wrong sort of spear head (lozenge instead of straight). Looks more like a cut down European boar spear to me.
@Mark Dewis well close but no cigar I guess.
I found a site called steelfist miniatures that sells cast Yari but they are low on stock. I wrote them to find out if they can cast some more.
I have 2 Samurai armies from warlord but I don't think there will be enough spares to do the job.
So in case you are wondering, I will be painting 2 full armies. About 240 Ashigaru in total. Something like 100 foot samurai and 50 mounted.
I should be done sometime next spring 😆
@Allan Lougheed ask around for people who have the WGF/Warlord Ashigaru kits. They'll likely have a a few unused plastic ones.
This item:
https://us.warlordgames.com/products/ashigaru-spearmen
They *may* look odd if mixed in with cast spears, but usually you can avoid that problem by making each unit homogenous.
Here's the sprue. Only one spear per model, but anyone that's made up armies probably has spares from the figures used for command groups:
There are shorter spears in the Samurai infantry and cavalry sprues that someone using these for an army may have spare, too. Especially cavalry made up as horse archers.
Edit: I may be out on my spear to model count. But I think this is only half the sprue.
@Mark Dewis Did mention those already.
@Allan Lougheed Sometimes close is close enough. Frankly you could probably just use some European pikes, though if you want to get artistic I suppose you could try either making them yourself out of paperclips or maybe even make some bamboo spears instead of proper yari, its not like they didn't use bamboo spears at the time.
I found these guys
The Dixon Yari I bought arrived today. I was pleasantly surprised, they are really good quality. Nice crisp casting and the metal is firm enough that it won't bend too badly. better than I was expecting.
Now to drill holes in about a hundred minis and give them spears...
