Chicago Skirmish Wargames

In order to join Josh in playing Bushido, I decided to speed paint the ninja from the Rise of the Kage (RotK)  board game and its expansion Docks of Ryu (DoR). I also happen to have one metal ninja from Bushido, so I'm including that for a total of 8 ninja. This should be plenty for a game. The first step was to prime the minis with a medium gray gesso- 1 part black and 4 parts white, both Golden brand. This is just about the same color as the gray plastic the minis are made from.  I also added some Golden hard modeling paste to fill in and give a little texture to the bases.

I added a minimum of detail to these with several paints- Games Workshop: chainmail- Reaper: 29816 solid blue, 09039 pure white, 09401 dragon red, 09197 old bronze-  Golden fluid acrylics: mica iron oxide, burnt umber light- craft paint: hauser dark green, yellow ochre, golden brown.

Here are the minis with their base coat.  Sorry this first set of photos are so dark.

Shizuka, Katsumi, and Yuto -the ninja from RotK

Rin, Ghost, and Kouhei- the ninja from DoR

Kerasu, a seventh ninja from RotK/Dor and Bikou a ninja from the Prefecture of Ryu faction.

The next day, I added an overall wash with black ink.  I used 1 part FW black with about 4 parts water and 12 parts golden polymer matte varnish.  It is fairly thin and runs into the details well but can pool on the base, especially around the feet.  After a while I went back to soak up any pools that collected.

You can see an upcoming project in the background while the wash dries on the ninja.

After the wash dried, I went back and highlighted  couple of details. I highlighted parts of Ghost's mask with white and also added a little Reaper 09419 tropical blue on Kouhei and Kerasu's tattoos.

On day three, my final step is to give each figure two coats of Golden polymer matte varnish.

They dried overnight and are ready for a game.

These are not my best paint jobs. I feel comfortable saying I could do better without much more effort. However, I spent less than half an hour per mini paining them including prep work, simple texture on the bases, and brush on primer and varnish. My goal was to get these from new in the box to fully painted on the table in less than four days. I'm happy enough with them to bring them to a game.

-Tim