Now that the rank & file and headquarters are out of the way, let’s move on to some more esoteric stuff.

I like the cross between the psuedo-historical era of Sludge and further into fantasy. The pointy hat, in particular, would fit just fine into Relicblade or even Mystic Skies. The others have rifles, which don’t work quite so well, though it would be easy to convert most of them into staves.

This kit comes with flag poles, but you’re left to your devices for flags. I don’t have a lot of experience with it, but I decided to try cutting aluminum from a soda can. I botched the first one when folding over the pole. The sharp bend snapped the aluminum. For the next one, I rolled it around a toothpick to give it a nice curve.

Since I’m too intimidated to freehand, I raided my decal bin for details to add. If I remember, this blue flame came from an Eldar vehicle sheet.

I love everything Metal King does. Sludge is a much less cuddly game than Relicblade, but it’s got the same great art combined with interesting rules. As originally published in Blaster it was suggested you kitbash historicals kit. As cool an idea as that is, sometimes I just want to put a kit together and paint it. Fortunately, a partnership with Black Site made that happen. The Royal Guard are the line infantry for the Keth army bundle.

I did two paint schemes, with a lighter and darker burgundy red uniforms, to see which I liked better. After I had six bodies of each, I realized I really like the look of them mixed, especially on the multibase. So I’ll be keeping that mix going forward for the rest of the army.

Some of the rifles came a little bent on these resin models. I dipped the offending rifles in boiling water, straightened them (mostly), then immediately put them in an ice bath to quickly cool it in shape. The resin Black Side uses seems to take better to that technique than some others.