Return of the Elemental Knights

I think I’m remembering some stuff from my childhood that’s made me somewhat obsessed with the idea of knights that have elemental powers as the basis for a Fantasy setting as seen before on this blog:

The original Elemental Knights post is here:

https://deathzap.co.uk/2021/07/13/elemental-knights/

The three major culprits as far as I can see are Pokémon (that goes without saying), Bionicle:

The Lego range of robot-like characters with elemental powers battling the forces of evil, and Warplanets:

The toy range and TV show about a series of elementally themed planets doing battle with each other and the big bad ‘Beast Planet’ – the big black planet in the back that eats other planets. Which would be a really good wargaming project to do one day, either using the original toys (if they can be found on eBay) or using similar looking figures.

(There was half an hour of googling things between the above paragraph and the following one. I’ve decided not to start yet another project.)

For ease of use this time round instead of those larger figures I’ve got some of the Caesar Miniatures copies readily available on Amazon, which are 1/72 scale.

My original review of the figures is here:

https://deathzap.co.uk/2022/04/29/cheap-1-72-knights/

The figures are still on the painting desk due to a nasty cold slowing me down:

I’m a big fan of the term Volcaknights, I’m neither here nor there on Frostknights. My other two were originally Forestknights and Rocknights, which I do not like, so post any alternatives in the comments.

I’ve also picked up some cheap dragons from a local toy shop, which will be a lot of fun to paint up.

The detail is definitely there, and a drybrush will do wonders.

I like the idea of the knights fighting alongside monsters – dragons for the Volcaknights, maybe yetis for the Frostknights (some cheap gorillas should be easy enough to come by), something Ent-like for the Forest lads, and a rock golem for the Rocknights. Maybe the objective of each battle is to slay your opponents monster?

Thinking about other elements sparks the imagination too – darkness, light, electricity, death – ghost knights are very easy to paint, water/ocean (a giant flying shark as a monster!).

My original enemies were wraiths:

https://deathzap.co.uk/2021/07/20/bog-roll-wraiths/

Which is a possibility again, if a little fiddly dumping loo roll over a load of 1/72 figures, but I may just go with the death/ghost knights – Reveknights.

Put any ideas in the comments!