One lesson in gamecraft is that if you want to play a particular game, it’s helpful to provide all the materials. Skirmish games make this not too painful. Since GCT was nice enough to put a Ryu model in the VIG bags at Adepticon 2017, Ryu would be the second faction.

Unlike the Ito starter, the Ryu starter models are wearing something approximating uniforms. That made it easy to batch paint, although it’s a bit harder to remember who is who.

Also unlike Ito, these models are mostly one piece and fairly blocking. The poses are a bit less dynamic, but they’re also quite sturdy. Hanso has the sword-and-scabbard thing, but without any of the fragile joints of the Ito models.

Minuro’s gun is the only one in my collection. But with a dragon wrapped around it, I’m not sure it really counts as a gun.

I’m quite happy with how the armor turned out. It reads as black, but the texture comes through quite well. It’s a simple mix of thin paint and drybrushing, but it comes together nicely.

Dragons don’t just belch bullets, sometimes they have stabby tongues.

Kenta Takashi was the swag bag freebie. He’s a quite different look from the rest of the set, but I kept a blue shirt to hopefully tie them together a bit.

I still haven’t played a non-demo game, but with two factions I’m running out of excuses.