Redvers and Son Get Into Bushido

Kaidan in Japanese is two words, kanji, that means mysterious apparition and dan, which means a narrative. But generally, it relates to horror and ghost stories and the creatures in those stories. In this case, Fuwa Kaidan is a ghost and the model comes with a terrain piece, the Tsuridourou or pot. You get to deploy both in game.

FK has some drawbacks, notably speed which is only 3″ but this can be boosted by spending 1 Ki for each extra 1″. FK also only gets to roll 1 melee dice, which is frankly dire, so you don’t really want to be getting into combat. The model is also a Kami which means that FK doesn’t have a wound track but instead it’s Ki is effectively its wounds. It always deploys with full Ki (in this case 4) but of course any Ki feats it uses burns up this Ki (and therefore its health!).

So why take FK? Well there are plenty of upsides here. Firstly, when FK reaches zero Ki, she re-deploys in BtB with the pot or any friendly scenarion objective. Only if the pot is destroyed, can FK be destroyed. So she is a gift that just keeps on giving. She also has a 4″ ranged attack that, if successful, removes a Ki from the target and FK gets it. She;s Durable, meaning that she can only ever take 1 wound per damage roll and is intangible, allowing her to move through terrain and leave BtB without penalty.

But you really want her for her Ki feats. Firstly, if she does get engaged in melee, she can spend 2Ki to cast Mirage that, if successful on the die roll, she gets to deploy 2″ away and the attacking model finishes its turn. She can cast Blind – normally, such Ki feats require an opposed roll but not here, it’s automatic. The enemy model gets a Blind marker which means that it should be surprised by any incoming melee attacks and will therefore lose 1 melee dice. So a great way of debuffing an enemy model before you bring in your heaver hitter.

I’ve saved the best to last though. For 1 Ki, you can cast Ire on an enemy model within 4″. Like Blind, this is automatic, with no dice rolls! The enemy model gains the Impetuous and Berserk traits. Impetuous requires the model be activated before any other model on the enemy warband. Berserk requires the model to attack the nearest enemy model, but here’s the good bit, Ire makes all models on the table enemy! Assuming you get your positioning right, the berserk model will attack one of its ‘friends’, so both models will lose an activation and you have the possibility of one causing damage to the other. And the fun doesn’t stop there, any damage caused, FK gets to restore 1 Ki! FK is rapidly turning into my favourite model.

Painting wise, the pot was fairly straightforward. I’ve used a silver grey as the base and then applied some light brown glazes under each rim to create shadow. The smoke was painted a very light purple (to tie into the faction theme colour) and then I’ve layered increasingly darker purple over the ‘thicker’ parts of the smoke. Smoke should be highlighted in reverse. The rim is brassy brass.

For FK herself, I wanted to try to create a translucent, ghost like look by trying to have the robes fade into the purple smoke. For this, I painted the smoke as above and then used off white and grey to paint the robes, with the grey creating the shadows. This was applied as thin glazes that I reduced in frequency as it got closer to the smoke or where the robes were thinnest, to try to create a fade.

The hair was a simple dark grey given a nuln oil wash and then dry brushed. The skin is a pale skin tone mixed with a light grey and then shaded with grey – I don’t want it looking too lifelike! I’ve finally added a red glaze around one of the hands and some purple glaze around the eyes.

Overall, a fairly quick (for me, it still took a couple of evenings) paint job. I’m a little annoyed that the purple of the pot is not the same purple of FK, but that’s what happens when you paint them separately. The fade looks OK but something that I definitely need to work on.