Redvers and Son Get Into Bushido

I’m very behind on keeping this project up to date at the moment. But before Christmas, my son had purchased some reinforcements to his Temple of RoKan warband and these proved to be quite handy (see some previous battle reports). I also need some reinforcements so added some more models to my collection. First up to be painted is Ikiryo.

In game, Ikiryo is a glass cannon. She’s not cheap and gets to roll a single die in melee, so you really want to keep her out of BtB as, with only 4 wounds, she’s going to get minced pretty quickly. But you don’t take her for her combat abilities.

She does come with the Fear special rule with the highest challenge rating. To add to this, she also comes with Terror (anyone succeeding their Fear roll has to re-roll it) and Dread (anyone taking a Fear test does so with one less dice). So there’s a pretty good chance that anyone trying to enter BtB is going to end up with the Frightened state (which applies a bunch of de-buffs). So she has some defence if she does find herself in combat.

Her main abilities are the two Ki feats that she has. First up, is the Touch the Void ability. If she activates this before a damage roll is made, for each Ki point spent, 1 wound is cancelled. In addition, the attacker takes 1 wound. Handy.

Her other main ability is Look into the Void. For 3 Ki points, she can target anyone who has line of sight to her and within 8″. The target must take a Ki Challenge test against Ikiryo and if they fail, they take a damage roll. Basically, she has laser eyes to blast away at the enemy from behind the front line models.

The model itself is a simple two piece, with the parasol being a separate cast piece. This was easy enough to attach to the model but I did paint it up first. For the paint job, I wanted to aim for a Geisha look and aim for an ornate kimono. Basically, very different to the rest of my warband.

The kimono is a base of deep sea blue and I’ve shaded with a nightshade wash. I’ve then highlighted up using deep sea blue and increasing amounts of ice blue. The edging and belt (called an Obi I think) is purple with off white/purple mix for highlights.

I’ve opted for a pale skin with a light brown mixed in for shading. Once completed, I’ve painted over the face with a thin off white glaze before applying a red lipstick and makeup.

The parasol is a crimson red, highlighted with a mid red. Off white for the rest of the parasol.

I wanted some Japanese influenced design on the kimono. I would like to claim that my free handing skills are good enough to paint this on, but they aren’t. Kimono transfers aren’t really found in the wargaming world, so I turned to the world of nail transfers and, after a lot of searching, found some flower based transfers that looked close to a cherry blossom look. These were carefully applied to the sleeves and the rear of the kimono.

Basing was once again an acryllic dry earth given a brown wash. Then flocked with a dead grass.