Redvers and Son Get Into Bushido

Continuing with the Ronin theme, I’ve completed another of the starter set, Hozumi Maha. This is a two part resin model, with the scroll and ghosts being separate from the main body shown below.

In game, Hozumi Maha can fight for the Cult of Yurei or the new Kinshi Temple faction. He seems a wholly unpleasant character who has managed to find a scroll that summons ghosts, something he seems all too keen to do. These ghosts are excellent for slapping frightened markers on the opponents, which limits their ability to perform certain actions. He can also cast Obey which, if successful, allows you to take control of the target model and perform an action, which can include attacking former friends and allies. The Cult of Yurei is all about control…. But you do want to keep Hozumi away from combat – he’s pretty poor in that regard and likely to end up cut to ribbons.

I wanted a rich red for the robes and I have a couple of different shades in my collection that were used to put down a base coat and some highlights. I seem to recall that the key to a good red is to really darken the shadows. For this, I used a deep purple, gradually mixing it into the red and applying to the areas that should be in shadow. I finally applied some glazes of darker red to the shadow areas and an almost orange to the highlight areas to tie everything together.

Based upon the fact that this character has sold his soul to Yurei, I wanted his skin to be pale and a little grey. I painted the skin in my usual way but started with a much lighter base and highlighted up from there. I then used grey as the shadow and applied a thin wash to de-saturate the skin.

I’m going to use purple to tie my Yurei models together and so applied this to the hat using a couple of shades mixed with some off white for the highlight. The off white and the grey were used for the sashes.

I wanted the swirling ghosts to really be dark and threatening. Rather than have the ghostly mist being translucent and ethereal, I wanted to create a look of never complete darkness, so I ordered some of the really black paint you can get. This black was applied to the deepest areas to try and create an impenetrable look. The higher areas I highlighted with ordinary black and grey and to emphasise the purple theme, I tried to fade the ghost faces from black into purple. 

It was at this stage, I found out the the very black paint seems to have issues adhering to the model, with some parts flaking off, even after a varnish had been applied. This was frustrating as there were a few spots that required repair, even before the model was finished. 

Finally, the scroll was just a beige given a brown wash. I did translate ‘summon ghosts’ into Japanese to then write it on the scroll but the characters were quite complex and the angle of the scroll didn’t lend itself to such intricate pen work. I don’t think I would have managed to fit it all on either, so I gave up and, using a fine pen, made up some characters.

The ghosts/scroll then got glued to the body and based up using Vallejo acrylic dry earth. This was washed and flocked and job done.