Redvers and Son Get Into Bushido

More skeletons, in this case an Ashigaru called Akoshi.

In game, like the other skeletons, this fella gets Durable (just a single wound at a time), Regenerate (1 wound back at the end of the round) and immune to most states (like fear, dazed etc). Akoshi also creates Fear but at a lower level, so unlikely to impact anything but the weakest of foes, but still useful to have. Akoshi does have armour, which reduces any damage rolls, so lower success attacks may not even wound at all because of this. Finally, Akoshi is armed with a yari, giving him (I’m assuming Akoshi is a him, I’ve not checked the pelvic bone to see whether Akoshi is a her) reach and granting the first attack in the first round of any melee. And with 3 melee dice, Akoshi should be able to hold their own in combat.

For the painting, the bones were painted in exactly the same way as the other skeletons. As was the purple smoke. I’ve chosen just a black armour for Akoshi – I’m assuming that as they were an ashigaru, their armour would be less ornate. I’ve started with a dark rubber base and given this a very heavy nuln oil wash. Then taking the base and gradually adding Luftwaffe grey and then light grey, I’ve shaded up the higher areas to create the highlights. Once done, I gave it a final nuln oil to smooth it out.

The red cloth started out as Aldabaran red mixed with a little red leather. Then using the Aldabaran to build up the highlight. Before adding a little orange for the top highlight. Scrofulous brown for the stitching and rope belt, given a strong tone wash. The trousers were khaki given a wash and then highlighted back up with khaki and increasing amounts of off white. Same approach for the banner.

To complete the banner, I’ve got my hands on some nail art transfers and just applied a suitably sized flower transfer.

I got a golden button for this. Go me.

I believe that my Bushido efforts have now won three golden buttons, making this the multi, multi award winning project.

We continue with the Gashadokuro (skeletons) theme with Warui. This fella is a little cheeky on the table. He’s got reasonable combat ability and his weapon gives him Reach, allowing him to hit first in the first round of combat. Like all skeletons, he gets Durable (so he can only ever take 1 wound per combat round) and Regenerate (gets a wound back at the end of the round). He also comes with Fear and Dread, meaning that anyone passing their fear test first time around has to re-roll it – and models who become fearful become a lot less useful in combat.

He has no special Ki abilities but should he be killed, I get to replace him with a Kami model for free. This can be any Kami I want and some of these Kami can be quite powerful, so this creates the problem for your opponent, do they want to kill Warui or not…

Painting wise, it’s the same bone effect as for the other skeletons before, German Black Brown base, a wet brush of light brown, a light dry brush of bleached bone with a final highlight of Iraqi sand.

I opted for speed paints for the cloth and rake. I’ve then dry brushed this with Iraqi Sand and then applied a light wash to tie it together.

The purple didn’t come out as planned on this model. It was the same approach as before, with a mid purple base, a light wash to get into the cracks with a darker purple applied to the thicker areas of smoke. Then some glazes to try to tie it all together, but for some reason, I just couldn’t get a smooth transition. My patience ran out in the end and I gave up!

Working my way through my skeletons (or Gashadokuro) we have Eiko. I like this model in the game and have used him quite a lot. For a reasonable points cost, he adds a bit of punch to the Cult of Yurei’s front line. He has no Ki abilities and only has 3 melee dice but his axe gives him brutal that provides a +1 to the attack roll which is almost as good as another melee dice. He’s also durable, so he’s only going to take one wound at a time, regardless of how many wounds the opponent does, so you can put all your melee dice into attack knowing that the worst downside is he takes a single wound in return. And he has regenerate, so he’ll get that wound back at the end of the round. Being a skeleton he is immune to all states and he causes Fear, albeit at a low level.

To paint the bones, I took the same approach as Satou Hatchi in a previous post. That’s German Black Brown base, a wet brush of light brown, a light dry brush of bleached bone with a final highlight of Iraqi sand.

The armour was painted a base of dark rubber and given a nuln oil wash. I’ve then picked out all of the non recessed areas with dark rubber again before adding light grey into the dark rubber to begin highlighting up the raised parts. I’ve finished with a light dry brush of light grey. The blues started with a base of Prussian Blue with a nightshade wash. Then gradually mixing ice blue into the prussian blue to highlight up.

The metal axe was given a base of gunmetal with a couple of nuln oil washes. The edges were then picked out in gunmetal and then the very highest points given a touch of polished metal.

The purple smoke was the same as for Satou Hatchi. This was multiple glazes to try to tie everything together.

I picked up some new dry grass tufts at UKGE, so I’ve added these to the base. I think I’ll now have to go back through the rest of my collection and add these to the older models to tie everything together.

I’m not the only one being busy with the paint brush, my son has also been working on his Temple of Rokan faction. He’s not that bothered with the painting and so is quite happy with the speed paints and he seems to get more out of them than I’ve managed so far.

Here’s what he’s finished off. Firstly, the Kitsune sub faction for the Temple. No idea of their names apart from the Nine Tailed Fox on the left

For some reason I have two of these models, not sure why as you’re only allowed one. Satou Hatchi is the first of my Gashadokuro (meaning starving skeleton) and decided to paint all of my skeletons together to get a similar bone colour.

In game, he’s a high value model. He comes with 4 melee dice which is very unusual for Cult of Yurei models but also very handy. He does not have an special Ki abilities and does not generate Ki either. His strength lies in combat, where he can use either his Katana that provides a reroll to his opponents defence dice (handy for getting rid of any 6’s that were rolled) or he can use his Yari that gives him Reach (attack first) and gains a +1 on his defence roll.

In addition to his combat abilities, he comes with Armour (reduces the damage roll) and Fear. Like all skeletons in the game, he’s immune to just about all states (like blind, disease, poison etc). He has Prowess in Melee, so he can re-roll one dice of his choosing.

He only comes with 4 wounds, which is normally a problem but like all skeletons, he is Durable, meaning that he can only ever take 1 wound at a time, regardless of how many wounds are dealt. He also regenerates 1 wound at the start of every turn and an extra wound if you win the tactical roll at the start of the turn.

I painted all of the bones first (not just here but on all of the skeletons I have). Base cost of German Black brown followed by a wet brush of light brown with the idea of just leaving the very deepest recesses with the black brown. Once dry, I then applied a light dry brush of bleached bone followed by Iraq Sand on the highest points. I’m quite happy with the effect that it has created.

I spent some time looking at pictures of Japanese samurai armour. I really like the black/red effect, so opted for that. The black was firstly a dark grey given a couple of washes of nuln oil. I’ve then picked out the higher points with dark grey, dark grey/light grey and then and then just light grey. The red was a crimson then highlighted up using scarlet and orange to finish. I picked out the cord with scruffulous brown.

The purple smoke was a base of imperial purple followed by a wash of purple/off white mix (smoke is lighter in the thinner areas and darker in the thicker areas). I’ve then glazed the thicker areas with a dark purple glaze to get the contrast. Final step was to apply a mid purple glaze over everything to tie this together.

The rest of the model was made up of some gold, light brown with a wash for the Yari shaft and gun metal with nuln oil for the steel areas.

To get into Bushido, we initially picked up the starter set. This came with 10 models listed as Ronin. Ronin can fight for any faction listed on their card, so whichever faction you decide to opt for, there’s at least a couple of the starter box models that you can draft into your warband. The starter box also has a Romes and Juliet love story between the two factions.

I’ve painted up three of the models but the rest had sat unpainted since. Time to correct this travesty and get the painted. And an opportunity to try some speed paints out to see if I can figure out how to get the best out of them.

I’ve really taken the quickest approach to painting these with a white undercoat and then just a quick speed paint over the top. I’ve picked out the smaller details with ordinary paints and then given the model a quick dry brush, but otherwise these were finished in a couple of evenings. The basing took almost as long!

Annoyingly, I had a paint accident while they were sat on my painting table. A pot of paint splattered while I was squeezing some into a palette and some of the splatter went over the models. I could clean these up but I’m not sure that these models are going to be used enough to warrant the time.

First up, we have the Hozumi Family. The first three models I had painted previously and aren’t speed paints.

And then we have the Kiyozumi family

I’m still not sure about the speed paints. The green worked quite well, as did the hardened leather I used. Some of the others not so well. I can’t decide whether it is my application or my expectations being too high. Jury is still out for me.

Josei is the last of the four sisters to be offered power by Yurei and one of the three that accepted the power. Josei synergies well with the zombies (or Kairai) that Yurei can field and any such zombie in the army gets a regeneration bonus of +1 every turn that Josei is still around. Otherwise she is much like the other sisters in that she shares her Ki with a common pool card and can use any of the shared abilities on it. She also has the Death Magic ranged attack as well.

In addition, she has her own Ki feats. First up is Sacrifice that allows you to remove a friendly model but gain 4 Ki tokens – very useful if there is a decisive moment where a well placed Ki feat will swing the game. Seed of Destruction places a ‘bomb’ on an enemy model. After their next two activations, they explode and all enemy models within 2″ of the exploding model share out 8 wounds, so your opponent has the choice of almost certainly losing one model or taking damage across a lot of models.

Finally, if this model kills an enemy model with a ranged attack, the enemy model can be replaced with a zombie.

Painting wise, as I wanted the sisters to be colourful, I opted for blue as the main colour here. One of my favourite blues is Periscopes which formed the base coat. I’ve then used a nightshade wash to darken the recesses and gradually mixed in ice blue to the periscopes to get lighter shades that were applied as glazes. Skin tone was as before, a light skin tone given a wash followed by highlights of pale skin tone. The dismembered body parts started as pale skin tone and then I’ve applied a grey wash as I wanted to make the skin look decayed.

The wicker basket started as light brown followed by a dark brown wash. I’ve then highlighted with light brown before adding an Iraqi sand highlight. The white, including the masks, were a light grey followed by off white and then a white highlight.

As Josei likes zombies, I assumed that should would have been wandering around digging up old bodies. I therefore thought that some mud and dust applied to the lower regions would reflect this. I’ve used enamel mud effects from MiG for this, firstly a wet mud splatter and then dry dust thinned and washed over the top.

That’s all of the witches completed, so here they all are together