Necrons and Space Marines from Japan
Every now and again we get an email from our friend in Japan, Ryogo Yamane and, as always, it's a real delight to receive it. Not only does he include loads of information about his latest projects, but he also sends us plenty of great pictures of his miniatures. What more could we ask for, eh?
As we've featured them on the blog a few times before, you'll know that Ryogo is a huge fan of Imperial Fists and rarely a month goes by when he hasn't added something new to his collection. We're placing bets here in the office on how long it will take him to paint the entire Imperial Fists Chapter....
*I'm betting two years...*
The latest additions to his army are a Tactical Squad equipped with Mark VI Corvus Armour and a Deimos Pattern Rhino (both from Forge World) to carry them into battle. He also included the 25th Anniversary miniature as the sergeant for the unit - the perfect role for a beautiful miniature. As always, Ryogo has used a very bright palette to paint the armour of his miniatures (he does like his yellow), which contrasts perfectly with the black shoulder trims and black boltguns. One of the first missions for his new unit was a battle within the Zone Mortalis set from Forge World. Over the course of a week, Ryogo went a bit crazy with his paintbrushes and painted a full four foot square board of labyrinthine rooms and corridors.
Ryogo is a big fan of John Blanche's artwork in the Warhammer 40,000 Rulebook and was inspired to paint the majority of his board red because of him. To paint the board, Ryogo basecoated all of them with a layer of Mephiston Red fired through the Citadel Spray Gun. He then applied a drybrush of Ironbreaker to give the walls a beaten, battle-worn appearance. He then applied a layer of Mechanicus Standard Grey to the floor and Balor Brown to the walls. Once these two layers were done he then applied a couple of Shades to the set - Nuln Oil on the floor and Seraphim Sepia on the walls.
Once everything was complete he invited Big Dan (so called because he towers, skyscraper-style, over the rest of the gamers in the Hiroshima gaming club) over for a game on it. It was Night Lords Chaos Space Marines vs. Imperial Fists Space Marines in epic conflict. Check out the pictures in the gallery above to see a bit of the action. Incidentally, we have no idea what the captions on either side of the second picture say, but we think they are probably something along the lines of: evil Night Lords start here, noble Imperial Fists start here, objectives are in the middle.
Most recently Ryogo has been distracted from his Imperial Fists by the new Necron characters that came out at the weekend. The first additions to his extensive Necron army were Nemesor Zahndrekh and Vargard Obyron - two characters that Ryogo particularly liked the background for in Codex: Necrons. Most of Ryogo's Necrons are painted in a silver and blue scheme, but he was so enamoured by the 'Eavy Metal paint scheme for Zahndrekh and Obyron that he decided to paint their armour in their traditional white enamel and use blue as the accent colour instead. Not only does this tie them to the original colour scheme of the army, but it also makes them stand out from the crowd (well, legion) - perfect for an army commander and his bodyguard.
