Now I have painted a lot of Imperial for Warzone during this Challenge and before I tackled the last units, I needed a break from Imperial. Keeping with Warzone (partly because a mate of mine jumped in on our league but has no units painted yet) I chose a unit for Mishima, the Kunshu Dragon Riders. Looks wise they are one of the coolest units in the Mishima selection, but a bit too overpriced to play for my taste. (Or rather not as underpriced as the rest of Mishima.)
Kunshu Dragon Riders
Now what they are some Dragon like creatures found in the caves of Mercury. Domesticated (to a certain degree) they are ridden into combat, usually by the heirs to noble houses of Mishima. AThey are a very fast monster choice in the game, which can do lots of damage either at close range (combination of the riders SMG and the Dragons spewing flames) or close combat (combination of the riders Katana and the Dragons teeth and claws).
Kunshu Dragon Rider (Squad Leader)
Two things that slightly bleeped me off about these models. For one, I had always had a vision of how I would paint them. Mostly like those flying creatures in Avatar. But once I took out my airbrush, I had to find, that the body and wing anatomy is too different for this to work, so I had to go for something less intricate.
Kunshu Dragon Rider (Trooper #1)
The other thing is in the background. The riders wear so-called “Retainer” type armour, which is always a crimson red, whence the colour of the riders. Now this type of armour is also worn by the Crimson Devils, the most dishonored unit Mishima has in its inventory. I doubt that a noble in a culture based on feudal Japan, would want to wear the same armour as a dishonored regular soldier. So I would have preferred, if they had gotten a different type of armour, where one could have gone wild with the colours. As a small personalization I gave the troopers white face masks and the squad leader a gold one.
Kunshu Dragon Rider (Trooper #2)
Kunshu Dragon Rider (Trooper #3)
Kunshu Dragon Riders
dhcwargamesblog 
Dean
March 22, 2015 at 16:21
Very cool models, Burkhard. I must say your background description of the units are intriguing.
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Burkhard
March 23, 2015 at 08:12
Thanks Dean.
Their background is even more elaborate (just wrote a short text for the AHPC entry and recycled that here). I like their back story quite a lot. Especially the part where the Mihiman stumbled across them while extending their subterranean holdings on Mercury, which did not end too well at first.
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Nysse
March 22, 2015 at 17:32
Nice work on them! These are excellent looking models. Warzone seems to have loads of really characterful sculpts with some great design ideas
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Burkhard
March 23, 2015 at 08:16
Thank you Samuli!
The models post-KS have been getting better with every release (these are about a year old). They should start pre-viewing the Salute releases as off today and I am really looking forward to that!
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von Peter himself
March 22, 2015 at 22:51
You have been busy Burkhard with quite the variety of subjects. I’m sure your friend will be more than happy to be using these Dragon Riders in his games. Hopefully they want come back to bite you! 8O)
With the way the tails of the dragons are modelled, and with thoughts of the heads on some of the deep DEEP sea sharks/fish the models make me think more of flying sharks than dragons. Bi that’s just me. 8O))
Salute
von Peter himself
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Burkhard
March 23, 2015 at 08:22
Thanks vP!
The last two weeks on the Challenge suddenly saw the infusion of determination I had lacked all the time. I guess seing that I only lacked 100 points to reach my target suddenly motived me!
Martin will be my last opponent in the League in November, so I hope he has his units painted by then and they will therefore not come back and bite me! 😀
I agree on your shark assessment. Being a diver, I got the same feeling. But I guess it is intentional. Most people see sharks as relentless predators to be afraid of, so I guess incorporating them into the design of these minia made sense to make them look more ferocious!
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