Ice Ice Baby

 So, another X-Man joints the roster:

If I’m being frank, I actually prefer an Iceman that’s made of… well, ice. I don’t have one of those though (and the last time I stocked up on Heroclix, the store I was buying from didn’t have any either), so here we are. On the other hand, I actually quite enjoyed the series of comics where the original X-Men are brought through time to the modern day (which I really didn’t think I was going to), so maybe this is that time transplanted Iceman, and I can still paint another one at some point in the future…

Also, he’s done before the rest of the team because… well, there wasn’t a lot to paint once I’d gotten his snowy body to a point I was happy with, then his boots were pretty quick to layer up to done!

8 vs 204 = -196

(although I just discovered that the box of Dragoons I bought at Salute is actually missing a couple of sprues, so it’s actually currently 4 different to that)

What’s next? I’m away for work next week, so am planning to take my usual hotel painting kit along with some more X-Men (as their shared colour scheme means I can take fewer paints), so here’s to hoping I’m not so exhausted by the evening that I can’t get any painting done!

She really gets in your head…

So, the joke in the title only really works if you’ve seen the most recent Deadpool movie, this miniature being what I immediately dug out and started prepping when I got home from the cinema after seeing:

It then took me months to actually get her finished despite being basically three colours, but inspiration strikes where inspiration strikes I guess. 

She’s teeny tiny, and so zoomed in like this the paint job looks extra scrappy, but on the tabletop she’s perfectly adequate, I assure you. Considering going back and giving the X on the front of the Cerebro helmet some more love, but on the other hand done is done…

Like Danger she’s a mini that isn’t really needed at the moment (that being a couple of teams of archetypical X-men and X-foes to get started), but being keen to not have even more half painted miniatures knocking around she got finished regardless. It’s been so long since I read Grant Morrison’s X-Men run that I can’t even think who else I’d need to paint to accompany her to make a thematic Super Mission Force Team…

Either way, the Tally now stands at:

7 vs 24 = -17

Do you know what happens when a Toad gets hit by lightning?

I’ve finished another mini for the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, to accompany Blob that I previously painted, Toad:

He’s another early Heroclix sculpt, so some of the details are kind of rough, but honestly I think that they have so much charm that I love them regardless.

For all my claims of rough sculpting though, look at that surprisingly defined musculature:

I can only assume that as well as eating flies Toad has a particularly structured workout regimen.

This brings my total of finished Brotherhood of Evil Mutants to three of the four needed for a regular sized game of Super Mission Force (including the Scarlet Witch that I painted way back when), although my initial plan is to paint up a couple of alternate groups - one being more ‘mooks’ like Blob and Toad, and another being ‘Magneto and his children’, with other key characters that can be swapped in as needed before then spiralling off into weirder foes as they take my fancy. 

This is probably why this project is taking so long though, I should maybe have painted individual minis in isolation as they took my fancy (as I generally have with the rest of my superhero stuff), but I can’t help getting carried away with something like this…

Finishing him brings the Tally to:

6 vs 24 = -18

Next - more!

Danger…

 … Will Robinson? Wait, wrong robot, it’s actually this robot called Danger that I’ve painted:

I think my first exposure to the character was actually pulling this mini out of a heroclix booster (as I ended up buying a bunch for cheap from the Works when the game first went away) and my first thought was that… she looked a bit dumb. Then many years later, I read more comics and my X-Men fandom increased, and I thought… well, that she was still pretty dumb, to be fair. It’s the danger room, but walking around in a robot body? Then I read X-Club by Simon Spurrier, and honestly Danger’s still kind of dumb but in a way that I’m actually also fairly fond of…

She’s generally portrayed as being a metal frame around some glowy internal bits, like this:

So I went at her with the only pot of contrast paint that I own, to sort of sink into the recesses, and also make a quick and easy glow effect. This was fairly quick and effective, and is the main reason that she is the first ‘goodie’ that I’ve finished for my X-Men project rather than one of the more iconic characters!

As well as finishing her, I also nipped into GW with my wife to grab the new mini of the month:

As a Death Korps Engineer can definitely find a home in an inq28 warband!

So, no great change to the Tally, which now stands at: 

5 vs 24 = -19

With six days to go until Salute…

Do you think Blob…

 …chose his own Codename? Or is Magneto just really blunt?

So, I’ve recently had a reorganise of my painting tile and stripped back the amount of half-painted miniatures on it in the hopes of reducing option paralysis, so it’s mostly the X-men minis I prepped a while back at the moment, which has allowed me to get Blob to a finished state.

The aim is to get four X-men and four Brotherhood of Evil Mutants characters painted so that they can start getting used in Super Mission Force, so that’s one down, three to go (and there’s still another five possible options on my painting tile).

Just for fun, here’s the piece of art that someone posted on Facebook while I was mid paint job that reminded me that Blob sometimes has a yellow belt:

Poor Rogue…

Finishing him brings the Tally to:

4 vs 23 = -19

Next: more mutants! Although I really want to start on some Alamo miniatures. And am fighting the urge to start a Napoleonic project, damn you Richard Sharpe…

I’m Venom, my body weight is 40% tongue…

In between painting pieces for the Umbrella Academy board game, since I already had some black paints out I also finished this monstrous guy:

Whenever I’ve played with superhero miniatures with my children, my youngest has always asked to be Venom, which I didn’t have a miniature of, but thanks to eBay I’ve managed to rectify that. I’m not sure where my son’s love of the character comes from - he’s desperate to watch the Tom Hardy movies, but given that he’s five that’s not really on the cards yet. 

The spider logo came out quite nicely, I think, due to judicious use of Gundam liner pens to get the bits that I’d have struggled to line with a brush, then carefully tidying up with a brand new brush that came with my Father’s Day present, and has rapidly become my current favourite brush.

You wouldn’t believe it, but the black on Venom is three different shades, which you’d struggle to see in my pictures. Believe it or not, this was the second set of pictures I took of Venom, using natural light, but here’s another posed picture from the original set of Venom menacing the Spider-Man that I painted years ago:

I’m hoping to play some a super Mission Force with the kids, so I need to work out the stats for the symbiote. When asking my son who else he thought he might like to be on the same team as Venom, his first answer was Spider-Man (which I initially tried to object to, but thought the better of it), followed by Green Goblin. I have a Hobgoblin mini that I could paint, but apparently only ‘Green Goblin, wearing purple and green’ will do.

As of now, the Tally stands at:

57 vs 192 = -135

Now, back to the Umbrella Academy board game, no distractions. Honest.

The Protector of travelers in the night

 Moon Knight! He’s been prepped to paint for ages (I think since the Disney series was initially announced), but finally got finished this week, as the final episode of the aforementioned series is now out…

Which is surprising, given that he’s basically one colour. 

I’m not a huge fan of painting white, but have discovered the secret to this - paint it a very light grey and then use grey to shade it, before adding white to the mix to highlight, and it comes out looking not terrible!

Well, don’t look too closely at that cape as I describe it as not terrible, but you get what I mean.

The miniature itself is an old bendy Heroclix figure picked out of a bargain bin at Salute many years ago, mostly because of having seen the character in someone’s avatar many times over the years over on the LAF (you’ll know who I mean if you ever frequent that particular forum). In the years between buying the figure and actually painting it, I got round to reading a bunch of the Moon Knight comics (the Ellis and Lemire runs, and even the Max Bemis run) and found myself enjoying them. Now, on to paint one of his iconic enemies like… I don’t know, another Moon Knight? Some sort of mercenary? Some generic dudes? Maybe I’ll shelve that plan then…

The Tally:

15 vs 46 = -31

Next, back to that unit of Skaven I’ve been working on all this time, but still haven’t got ready to show…

Who is the most important Avenger?

 Probably Hawkguy:

He’s been sat half painted for years, but watching the current Hawkeye show prompted me to get him finished. Also fun was attempting to persuade my wife that he’s called Hawkguy rather than Hawkeye…

It’s a fairly tricky sculpt to get a picture of, given how hunched over he is. On the plus side, that means you can’t really see the lack of detail on his facial features, and my attempts to make him look more human. Part of me thinks I should have replaced the bow, but I think the original lump has a charm of its own (it’s an oooold Heroclix sculpt, so he’s good and chunky)

I went old school for his colour scheme, using the 1969 Marvel Comic Annual for reference, which was my first introduction to the character:

Once he was painted, I pinned him to a base I had handily prepared some years earlier - I was making some bases for The Walking Dead figures one past Zomtober, and this one came out too tall. Looking more like a typical ‘hero rock’ rather than post-apocalyptic pavement, so while it was no good for that, got stashed waiting for the right superhero to come along.

(This picture also got posted on Instagram with a caption claiming that I’d spent hours painting the invisible man, of course).

Finishing Hawkguy brings the Tally to:

43 vs 23 = +20

and also means I’ve got a half-decent spread of Avengers now:

Although you can really see the difference in sculpting styles between old and more modern Heroclix, look how giant Hawkeye looks next to the more slender Captain America! I should probably get around to painting some baddies for them to fight too, so here’s to hoping that I find some AIM or Hydra minions in a bargain bucket at a future Salute…

Zomtober 2021 week 5: Halloween edition!

Week five of Zomtober 2021, we have a before and after set of miniatures:

One intrepid chap, out to decimate the zombie hordes with nothing but his ancestral family chainsaw and the intense self-confidence that comes with generations of good breeding. And then the result of that intense self-confidence: he’s got guts, certainly, and now everyone can see them…

You can just about see my attempt at painting tiny argyle socks here, as suggested by my wife who bought me the set of Frothers miniatures they are from 12 years ago according to the integral base on one of the minis: 

I mentioned this to her, and she suggested that if I’m only now getting round to painting miniatures that I got twelve years ago I probably don’t need to buy any more, but that can’t be right surely…

If I were to paint him again, I’d probably strive for greater definition on the face of the zombified version, as I think the grey moustache is too similar to the grey zombie skin, but I’m not sure if I’m feeling brave enough to repaint it for fear of having to redo the whole face!

Painting this pair of chaps brings the Tally to-

but wait there’s more, with a bonus Zomtober offering!

Having been watching Y: the Last Man (and having re-read the comics in preparation for the tv series) I thought what would be more helpful in the zombie apocalypse than a helper monkey? 

So off to the monkey box I scampered, and lo, here is my Ampersand expy:

Look at his little monkey face!

Painted mostly using this first page of Google results as inspiration:

Admittedly, you need to suspend your disbelief somewhat, as he’s approximately four times bigger than a capuchin monkey should be:

But hey, while I didn’t have a capuchin monkey miniature, I did have a Moon Boy mini from a Devil Dinosaur heroclix, that I was able to fashion a tail for using a length of wire and some liquid green stuff:

I was tempted to sculpt him a little green stuff diaper, but decided to leave him au naturel so that he can pull double duty in the long postponed Rise of the Planet of the Apes project (looking back through the blog, it seems there was a two year gap between miniatures for that project, then three years before the next, then four years until this one, so following that pattern I’ll next post one in 2026).

So, all in the Tally now stands at:

31 vs 23 = +8

Wandavision

 Well guess what I’ve been enjoying on Friday nights?

I wasn’t initially particularly fussed about watching it, but my wife insisted we give it a shot (as she is always wiser than I) and I was hooked from the first episode - as soon as it finished, I hared off to the basement to dig out some minis from various boxes of Heroclix!

The Scarlet Witch I knew I had (I was always a fan of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and so have figures of the majority of their classic members), but wasn’t sure about Vision.

After much rummaging, it turns out the only Vision figure I had was the female version (from the Ultimates?), so I found an online store with a sculpt I liked for pennies. 

Waiting for him to arrive, I started voraciously consuming back issues - definitely check out the Vision mini series if you enjoy Wandavision! I’ve since ploughed theough

Side note - when finding Scarlet Witch, I also stumbled on dozens of other figures I now want to repaint, and so was sidetracked into looking up Superhero ruleset, and also giving the X-Men movies a second chance...

Looking at the Vision figure next to Wanda, you can tell that they’re from opposite ends of the release schedule - Wanda is I think from the first set, so I’ve probably had her for somewhere between fifteen and twenty years (terrifyingly), and her proportions are somewhat more cartoony than the computer sculpted Vision from a more recent release, with his slender limbs and sensibly proportioned noggin!

Ugh, I went way too hard with a soft tone wash after basecoating Vision’s cape, and the following weeks were just an exercise in trying to undo that. Part of me thinks I should have just stripped it and started again, but after a certain point it feels like you’re in too deep!

And yes, these two fairly simple paint schemes took weeks to compete, mostly because I wanted to paint them whilst watching Wandavision (thematic!) but hampered by the fact that I was paying attention to the screen too much to do any actual painting when it was on...

Done now though, and taking the Tally to:

6 vs 18 = -12

With only one more episode to go, how do we think it is going to end? 

Tabby!

...is gonna steal all your stuff... (Click here for the theme tune)

I love Nextwave, so to the casual observer it might be strange that I’ve taken so long to work my way through painting miniatures of them (8 years and counting currently). I’m getting there, slowly but surely!

There are a couple of variations in how her costume appeared, but I used this image for reference whilst painting (although I used the more metallic design from other pieces of art for her flight belt).

I painted the back of the miniature too, as is the convention. Not my finest work, but looks good at tabletop height!

Which brings me to another point: I used my new Foldio photo booth that I got for Christmas, which comes with pros and cons - 

Pros: better pictures, so you can see a truer representation of the colours (although I’m still not quite there yet with my miniature photography - according to the literature that came with the photo booth, there’s a Foldio photo editing app available that I might download and try)

Cons better pictures, so you can see every little flaw or mistake - she looks fine at arms length, but blown up and lit like this I start to notice things like the patchy bit on her skirt, or the sloppy painting on her coat. Eh, I’m paining these for fun rather than profit, and I can live with that!

Finishing her means I get to cross another item off of the 2019 Challenge list, which is something that’s happened very infrequently this year!

• Finish something  old
• Finish a piece of terrain
• Prep all of the monkeys in the monkey box
• Build a wargames board
• Paint all of the miniatures in a boxed game
• Play a game of Blackstone Fortress with fully painted miniatures
• Finish a complete skirmish force for a project (at least 16 miniatures, unless it's for a much smaller scale game like Batman)
• Repaint something (either a miniature that I have previously painted, or one that was received painted

• Convert a miniature and show WIP pic

• Finish a member of the Nextwave team
• Average at least a miniature a week by the end of the year (so, paint 52 miniatures)
• End the year with the Tally in the positive!

I also picked up the limited edition Grombrindal miniature this week:

Because as well as it being a cool miniature, I thought a Squat Tech-Priest would sit nicely in a radical Ordo Xenos warband alongside a Howling Banshee. That does mean that there’s no movement on getting the Tally into the positive before the end of the year:

38 vs 43 = -5

I also took the opportunity to try out my new Citadel Paint Stick, and undercounted some miniatures. Fun fact - it’s very difficult to attach miniatures on non-GW bases to it, as they have a shallower slope and the elastic bands tend to slip off of them - coincidence of planned, I’ll let you decide...

Frosty the snow zombie...

Throughout the year, there are a few 'occasions' that I try to post for: something Star Wars-y for May the 4th; Zombies for Zomtober; something Christmasy for Christmas. This year, however, there was nothing festive in my lead pile (as I generally don't think to check eBay for a reasonably priced Sanity Claws until too late in the year), so I took matters into my own hands and came up with this:

Frosty the snow zombie.

Did a zombie get stuck in a snowstorm? Did some gangsters hide a body inside a snowman which then reanimated? Did some cheeky survivor build it around him for a laugh?

I took a Horrorclix zombie as my base, lopped off his arms, and then built the basic shape I wanted around him using scrunched up tin foil, before giving him some shape and texture using milliput.

My milliput is unfortunately many years old, and so I spent the majority of a delightful Christmas movie where Lacey Chabert gets a magic wish that affords her the self-confidence to talk to her handsome boss frantically working my wrist to get it back to a useable state...

Once it was mixed with water and was smooth enough to work with though, it was just a case of glopping it on over the tin foil base and then working it with some rubber tipped sculpting tools until I was happy with it's shape and texture. Small chunks of cork were embedded down his front for coal buttons, and a plan to give him twig arms was rapidly abandoned after a couple of test fittings revealed that everything that I had to use looked ridiculously out of scale. Once he was dry, I started painting, and finished him off with a judicious application of snow flock!

He (along with some chums that will feature in an upcoming blog post) was finished today, on Boxing Day, hence the rather poor lighting (apologies in advance for the quality of pictures in the next post too), during a festive family craft session:

Now, as it has been a while since my last post (I mean, and it was Christmas to), the Tally has taken hits in both directions:

A while back I wandered into Games Workshop to grab a couple of paints, and ended up grabbing the 'Getting Started with 40K' mag as it has the basic rules and a Space Marine for a fiver. My subconscious wants me to play some 40K, I think...

For a while, I was kicking around the idea of converting and painting an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor's retinue (to try and stretch myself by painting something different, if nothing else) - I spitballed making a Kroot Tracker, maybe an Eldar Exodite, Ranger or Howling Banshee... Then Blackstone Fortress came out and had some of those things in, stealing my thunder somewhat, but I still picked up a Banshee from eBay just in case my fancy swings that way again...

Speaking of Blackstone Fortress...

Mother-In-Law was furnished with a list this year, and was very generous with it...

Oof, that's a lot of miniatures. Guess what my project for next year is going to be?

I'm a big fan of this robot chappie. Not surprising considering my other hobbies when I'm not flicking at little men with a hairy stick:

Totalling everything up brings the Tally to:

38 vs 0 = +38

Unbelievably, it seems that I've acquired the exact same number of miniatures over the year as I have sold...

Finally, check out this cutie pie Owlbear dice bag that I got for Christmas too: