I'd been put off by all the stories I heard about them - no back budding, long internodes, need very dry desert conditionds, etc - all BS. My mind started to change when I saw one at Bonsai Northwest two years ago with great ramification, well-reduced needles, etc. A large shipment came in to the local nurseries here shortly thereafter, and a bidding war ensued, and I picked up a nice one cheap. What I can tell you is as follows.
Rich is right - they follow Vance's mugo strategies as far as timing goes.
They back bud like crazy all over the place, even way up onto the old wood of the stump I left when I did my initial chop beneath a major whorl!
They have short internodes when trained.
Like so many plants that thrive in desert conditions (my Mondell and other desert pines come to mind), they don't necessarily NEED such conditions to thrive, and are very pleased with the wet Northwest climate here, and mine came to me in a ten ton impenetrable clay root ball in which it was thriving, and hardly missed a beat semi-bare rooted into bonsai soil. I mostly ignore it, and it rewards my benign neglect with vigor.
Looks to me to be a five-needle pine, but whether one needs to follow JWP techniques strictly is open to question. Mine's a long-term project, and I'm still just in the early phases of getting to know how it responds to various techniques. I think they have a lot of potential.
Some guy from Colorado posted elsewhere that there are two major varieties with different characteristics, but I can't recall the specifics - hopefully someone who knows about that can fill us in.