30MF Rosan Knight Class I
Hand it over... that thing... your dark soul...
I've finally gotten my hands on a 30 Minutes Fantasy kit! I wanted to pick one up for ages, but unfortunately they're just the sort of kit that dissappears of shelves near instantly. I was lucky enough to find this one buried at the bottom of a pile of other kits at my local hobby store.
After trying out a light grey Tamiya panel liner on the black parts for my MG Vidar, where I found that it had an almost greenish "patina" look, I wanted to try using it for weathering old tarnished armour. The 30MF Rosan Knight, with its mostly dark grey armour sections, was perfect for this. There's 3 main sections of colour for this kit - a dusky purple/grey for the body underneath, which has plenty of 3mm holes that can allow it to switch out armour sets, a darker grey that forms a few of the joint pieces and the shoes, and the super dark almost-black grey that forms the Class I Knight armour. There's also a few dark pink pieces that are mostly used for accents and joints, as well as the clear red for the chest gem and eyes.
I tried out a few different weathering techniques for this kit. The base purply-grey got a simple silver metallic drybrushing, with silver pigment powder and a tiny bit of gold to make it feel warmer. The darker parts on the hips and feet got a mix of my old Citadel copper/bronze and gold paint drybrushing, while the darker armour was just the copper/bronze paint. I think the best part of the weathering came from the patina, however. The metallic paints added a lot of shine even despite a matte topcoat, but by mixing Vallejo flat white with Vallejo turquoise, I got a very flat non-reflective effect that makes the sections of oxidation look especially rough and damaged.
I really like how ancient and corrroded this makes the kit look, as though it's an animated statue, or armour scavenged from the bottom of a pond.
The 30MF has brought a lot of nice articulation to the 30 minutes series. The knees have a 3-part double jointing that separate the knee armour, and the arms are nicely designed to allow almost 180 degrees of flexion. There are three ball joints in the torso to allow for super flexible ab-crunches and twisting, and the neck is super mobile. All this allows for some really nice and human-like poseability.
You can even cross the kit's legs and make it sit as though it's at a bonfire.
I really loved the design of this kit. The armour is mostly fairly typical fantasy plate, but the helmet parts give it a really menacing skeletal look, complete with small and rather unsettling teeth just beneath the mask.
Aside from the armour, this kit includes the short sword and large shield. The short sword has a rather disproportionately long hilt, allowing it to be held with both hands.
The shield has two handles - one that's a simple 3mm peg on a 90 degree bend, attachable to a reciprocal hole on the rear of the forearm armour, and one that works as a handle that can be held with one of the open fist hand options. These can both fit into any of the 3mm holes on the back of the shield. I found the shield a little heavy and bulky for the provided holding options, unfortunately, although both shield attachments can be combined for a little extra security.
There are 6 hand options: two open hands, two closed fists, and two open fists. These use a similar flexible peg joint as the 30 Minutes Sisters line, which I'm personally not a fan of compared to simple ball joints, but they do allow for a greater range of motion for posing. I took some inspiration from Dark Souls to get some really great pictures.
Overall, I'm super happy about how this kit turned out, and I'm glad I was able to find one. I'd love to try and find more in the future, for combining with some of my more fantasy-themed 30MS kits.
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