From Pete F: Cook's Crevasse Speed Paint Earth Elemental (50 points)

This is a greater earth elemental for Kings of War by Mantic Games. My first KoW army is Forces of Nature - a mixture of naiad and lizard infantry supported by elementals, shambling trees and centaurs. I chose my army by buying the cheapest thing I could get on EBay. This was part of a roughly painted and heavily damaged job lot that had to be stripped, reassembled, cleaned and reprimed.

The main body of the earth elemental was painted using contrast basilicum grey, lightly dry-brushed. The crystals were painted black and then with a  colour shift called "Crystal Cavern" made by Turbo Dork. These colour shift paints showed up at my local store a couple of months ago - they are great for creating fantasy or sci-fi metallic sheens. This is the first time I've used one and I'm very happy with the result.  I've used the contrast paints as a base for the massed ranks of infantry - they can produce great results for wargame standard speed painting and I plan to use them a lot for my Kow Nightstalkers army. With contrasts and colour shifts it should be possible to get a big army table ready quite quickly.

If you like fantasy miniatures I'd recommend checking out Mantic's recent releases - they have really upped their game - this is one of their older models - good but not great. Decently functional. The newer stuff has more pizzazz.

The base got some aquarium rocks, various bits of flock, tufts and a pond made from Woodland Scenics realistic water.

In the game the earth elemental is high defense (armour) and has a lot of "crushing strength". It is a "titan" (even bigger than the creatures classified as monsters) so it sits on a 75mm square base. They work well in concert with other units and in addition to moving under their own steam druids can move them using their druidy magic. These kind of tricks are an important element of Kings of War - a game that richly rewards flank attacks if you can figure out how to get them.

This is my 5th area explored on Challenge Island (30 points for Cook's Crevasse) - I'm not sure if that qualifies me for Snowlord's Peak as I am not (yet) adjacent to it. The elemental is 100mm high from foot to top of crystal and he's kind of crouching - I'll leave it to the Minion of the Day (or the Snowlord) to score him (or her, it's hard to tell with elementals).

"Get off my lawn"

From MilesR:  That certainly is an impressive elemental and the basing is nicely done.  I also found the mini tutorial on contrast paints interesting.  I scored this as a 28mm vehicle.