Ninjas (Jade Cult III)

My third Minion Card of Ninjas for Jade Cult, and my 7th and 8th Ninjas so far.

These were supposed to be finished back in August for the Minion Month Painting Challenge I had with Rob, but I fell at the final hurdle. While painting various Zombies for Zomtober on one of my other blogs (click for link), I finally regained the motivation to get these finished.

So these are done, which is a 'good thing' as far as I am concerned. I have now painted 116 minis for Pulp City, which I find pretty pleasing.

I still have plenty of Pulp City minis to paint, and hope to get stuck into them over the next few months: Green Serpent; Pulp Monster; 3 x Terror Cotta Warrior; Slug Muldoon; Papa Zombie; Comte Vendredi; and some other stuff...so watch this space!

Finally, yes, I did manage to catch the base of the lamp in the picture of the backs of the minis; oh well, I am too preoccupied to take any replacement pics...I have painting to do!

Ninja Sensei (Jade Cult II)

Click me! Make me bigger!

Well that did not go as planned. This was supposed to be my 'week 3' entry into Minion Month, and it slipped badly - it wasn't completed until last Friday. As for the 'week 4' entry, well that is underway, but I have blown the deadline.

I am pretty disappointed, as so far I have pretty much achieved the challenges I have done with others, but not this time. While I have so far painted 4 Minion models as a result, I was really hoping to have done more. Still, I intend to finish the other Ninjas I have started, and I did some more on them today, so all main colours are blocked out, and have worked on the green areas with shading and some highlighting.

This model is to be a Ninja Sensei for Jade Cult; all my Ninja Sensei will use the body featuring the tabard as well as the bald head, so that they will be more distinctive among the eventual hoped for ranks of Ninjas.

Also note that I have changed my lighting set up a little, adding two additional lamps, so that may see a little bit of experimentation with future photographs; I am simply hoping they will be brighter and crisper, but we shall see.

Anyway that is all for now. I have more Ninjas underway, and have started work on the Primate of Mystery, so that may get finished in the next couple of weeks, if motivation is there.

Ninjas (Jade Cult I)

My latest set of Ninjas, and the first ones completed for the Minion Month Painting Challenge.

The previous Ninjas I painted were done last year, in a colour scheme intended to accompany the Way of the Fist and Blade, while this year I plan to start amassing painted Ninjas for the Jade Cult. Things have gone a little slower than I hoped (and this is the second deadline that has slipped a day), but I reckon I will have painted 4-5 Ninjas/Ninja Sensei at minimum this month, with one more already underway, and others awaiting assembly.

Ninjas are a Level 2 Minion card, and my plan for the Jade Cult Ninjas is to do sets of Ninjas and Ninja Sensei, with each set having a characteristic weapon. So this set and their upcoming Ninja Sensei are armed with kama, originally a crop reaping tool. Other options with the minis include sais, swords, and nunchuku. If I can, I will avoid the swords as the Way of the Fist and Blade Ninjas have those, but we will see.

After photographing these I notice a bit of the base of one was still unfinished, so that has been rectified- I just cannot be bothered taking the pictures again!

Well that is week two of the challenge down, and 3 minis completed, with 4 Pulp City minis completed this month already. Not my smoothest painting admittedly, but done nonetheless. So keep checking by the blog to see how I get on. Rob's initial progress can be found here.

Shadow Double

Click-click

This was not the first mini I was expecting to finish for the Minion Month Painting Challenge, but it is done, and it is a mini I have wanted to be finished for rather quite some time! In fact, it is over a year since I finished Shadow Mask!

So now it is done, although it is a day late.

Those Ninjas are still in the queue mind you.

So how does Shadow Double qualify for Minion Month? Well, in the SE rules, the Shadow Double card is a Minion separate to the Shadow Mask card. You could represent Shadow Double however you want to, but to me it made sense to use the Shadow Mask mini with what I hoped would be a suitable colour scheme.

Shadow Double starts in play, and if he is KO'ed, he can be Summoned back into play again by Shadow Mask. So the only way to keep him down is to keep the Green Emperor's own attack dog (a.k.a. Shadow Mask) down for the count.

On the painting, I kind of knew what I wanted, but I did struggle a little at times with this one, so it is far from my best work. On the other hand, I think it does what it needs for the tabletop, so it will do.

This is the 110th mini I have painted from the Pulp City range (of course some are duplicates, as this is to Shadow Mask posted a while back). I am not sure I will ever paint as many minis from a single range ever again, except possibly Anima Tactics (as blogged here - and even then I still expect to be painting more Pulp City as I add to the current number, so Anima Tactics might never exceed the Pulp City line-up I have, even with a larger numerical range of minis).

My first Jade Cult-themed Ninjas are underway, so I hope to hit the next deadline properly. Stay tuned to see how I do!

Shadow Mask and his Summoned Shadow Double

BTW, Rob is away, so his first Minion Month minis will be posted when he returns.

Green Emperor

The Green Emperor twisted his broken sword in the chest of the Phoenix and the fire died in her eyes. Indeed, the times had truly changed. He turned around looking for the Tiger, but she was nowhere to be found. It mattered not, for they were writing a completely new history this time.

Click to embiggen my imperial majesty

Okay, this was a pleasant surprise to myself - started last Saturday and finished within a few days, which does not follow my usual pattern M.O.; that usually means starting a model, blocking stuff out and moving only to return weeks, months, or even occasionally years later...

So Green Emperor is done. I purposefully used a very limited palette: 5 base colours including 3 greens, each highlight in a different way; blue-green (sword), with some thin glazes; and dark grey for the hair.

While not my best work, I am happy with how it turned out, especially given the time I took for turnaround - it has helped stoke my enthusiasm more, so much so that I am determined to finish my 3 Terror Cotta Warriors and maybe my Shadow Double this month.

Green Emperor's game rules for the current edition have been released (here), but suffice to say he comes with the usual plethora of rules that one expects for a Level 3, and one of the cool things is he unlocks the feature to allow up to 3 Terror Cotta Warriors to be taken in a Jade Cult Team.

However, in the upcoming SE I think he comes into his own; Actions that required a lot of text have been translated into our new Action Bar approach. In addition, we have taken a more comprehensive view when revising everything to hopefully make everything have its own relative worth. Well for me Green Emperor will offer not only a Leader, but a very capable front-line combatant, with the opportunity to unleash truly overwhelming attacks in the right circumstances and with the right choices; those choices mean accepting he cannot do as much as could otherwise, but offers him a brutal way of influencing the battle directly.

Anyway, enough words, I hope to post something else quite soon so watch this space.

Tanuki

Outside of the closed ranks of the Jade Cult, Tanuki’s origin is veiled in secrecy, and even within that terrible society few know the truth. One of the Jade Cult's mysterious spirit-oni’s, Tanuki is probably the least loyal of that kind, even if ultimately he is the only one that recognizes that fact.

My third of a planned four Super-November minis, Tanuki has been a long time in coming, although not so long in painting!

I started this just after the launch of this shared challenge with Rob, and the bulk has been painted in the past few days. I found it quite an enjoyable mini to paint, with nice areas and textures to work on. That said, with my new job (I say new; been in post two months), I do not get much day-time to paint in, so Tanuki has mostly been painted at night, which has played havoc with the dark greens, so if anything looks a bit ropy, I blame the lighting! Ahem...

This is the first Pulp City mini for my own collection for quite some time. In game-play Tanuki is very much a Support Supreme, there to help his Team-mates through his unique Actions; he certainly has his own little niche, and is quite unlike any of the other Jade Cult.

With the Terror Cotta Warriors and Green Emperor on the horizon Jade Cult is near to be able to field a sizable Team.

I do think this is a really fun mini, and one I probably enjoyed painting and that I am happier with than any other this year.

I have veered away from my usual Villain colour motif (good old purple!), but hey, the Team is called the Jade Cult after all!

Next up for Super-November? Well that would be telling...

Shadow Mask

Chronin still keeps the Shadow Mask’s finely crafted blade. She is fully aware that in the Green Emperor’s court, there is always a Shadow Mask and one day, he or she will come to reclaim the sword along with Yuriko’s life. But she will be more than ready.

In the background of Pulp City there have been many Shadow Mask's, personal agents of the fearsome Green Emperor. The fledgling Hero called Chronin dispatched a previous Shadow Mask, and now another has arisen to take on the mantle. yet this one is possibly deadlier and certainly more feral than his predecessor.

 My painting has been slowed by a combination of working night shifts (never conducive to my painting it seems) and engaging in bits of writing and development work. So even though this is not the best paint-job I have done, I am still quietly pleased that it is finished. I have decided that I will try and include at least a flash of the same green colour across all the Jade Cult that I do, and I may go for a 'black and green' scheme for the whole Team to help tie them together. I have a Ninja Sensei coming up soon that will hopefully help firm up that idea.

In game play Shadow Mask is all about sneaking up on enemy models then bringing some brutal attacks to bear. I need to probably pick up another so I can do a Shadow Double (one of his Exclusive Actions which allows a second self to appear; the double is likely just going to be a dark grey mini with basic highlights).