Supreme Grimm

My second Pulp City mini this year! Another Grimm joins the gribbly ranks of the under-dwelling empire. Like every other Grimm, Supreme Grimm is influenced by what he saw in human popular culture, and in his case he adopted a mask and cape to accompany his Supreme powers.

This was a lovely little model to paint, as it was quick and simple which is a contrast to some other minis I have tackled this year. Being able to finish a couple of models within a few days of each other was a real pleasure. As a consequence I have more Grimm ready for painting on the horizon, so hopefully their ranks will start to fill out pretty soon.

Supreme Grimm is a Speeder, and potentially a surprising one for opponents as he has an Overrun that works off his AGL Trump. He can also provide Power Up dice for an ally in BtB each Round, so he is a mix of team support, objective grabber, and attacker; he is not brilliant at any of those functions, but is a good all-rounder. He is also well worth considering in a Dark Solar all-Nature team: offering extra Power Up dice to Dark Solar, Perun or Father Oak is a frightening proposition.

In game terms Grimm are an unusual proposition. They have two available Level 3 Supremes, and all the rest, like Supreme Grimm, are Level 1. That means they are more fragile individually than the usual mix of Level 1 and Level 2 Supremes, and given they can appear in strong numbers, they can be prone to falling in groups to Rays, Pulses and Overruns. Rob and I hope to do a battle report with them later in the year - we even have a title ready!

Supreme Grimm
Hero/Villain, Brawler, Level 1, Nature
30 mm

Night Fright & Leech

Click to enlarge-ify

Night Fright gently eased Leech into a turn towards the primary portal. They were both ready to feast on the horrors in the souls of any unfortunates whose paths crossed their own. Yet somewhere deep down, Night Fright could not escape the feeling he had experienced something very much like this once before.

As ever, this has taken a while to finish!

I finally got around to assembling the mini in January (see here for the WiP) when I worked out how I wanted to manage to lift the model up. I did not want to use a transparent strut, and I did not want it to be attached by an object, since more often than not neither is too satisfactory a solution for my liking. I have seen some flying/leaping models lately supported by capes and trailing cloth, and that gave me inspiration when I saw some smoke effects from Tabletop Art.

I had a plan.

And like any plan, and as any regular reader of this blog know, my painting plans rarely survive contact with the enemy; the enemy in this case being my ever-fleeting motivation.

Well motivation returned in the past few weeks and it is finally complete. I am pretty pleased with the outcome and think that this very cool sculpt by Paul Muller will both fit in with and stand out from my Necroplane and wider collection of Villains.

In a nutshell, Night Fright is some kind of unliving remnant, possibly from outside the Necroplane, and he rides atop Leech, the wildest of the Nightmare Engines.

In the upcoming Pulp City SE, Night Fright & Leech is a Level 2 Speeder. Speeders can use more Movement Actions than other Roles. they are much, much faster as a consequence, but generally less hard-hitting. Except when it comes to Night Fright & Leech. This Nonliving partnership has one of the most powerful Overrun Actions in the new rules; an Action Type that allows a model to crash through a number of Targets at once. Arguably the only better Overrun may be Seabolt's, but that should be clear when the new rules are formally unleashed.

For my Necroplane, currently I have Doom Train and the soon to be released Papa Zombie and Comte Vendredi to complete. There are a few other Pulp City minis I have yet to finish so hopefully soon I will have more done to show off. The horror-themed Necroplane could be a cool choice for this year's Hallowe'en Madness, so I must get chatting to Rob about that very soon.

Moonchild/Moon Coyote

This teenage Native American is a werecoyote, choosing between here human support form and coyote speeder form. She belongs to Blood Watch but thanks to the half of the Moon Amulet, under certain conditions, she may be fielded in The Coven.

The human-coyote hybrid form (Moonchild) was sculpted by James van Schaik, and the animal form (Moon Coyote) by Jarek Smolka. A quick paint-job this on as I painted both minis together and there is little variation of colours on offer on either.

I like to think the paint-jobs are pretty understated, but fitting I feel, and I have pretty much used the official versions as a broad template, even including a magenta half moon motif to help break-up the look of ther tunic as with the studio version.










Just as Moonchild/Moon Coyote allows Loup Garou II to be fielded as a Blood Watch Hero, so the reverse is true: Loup Garou II allows Moonchild/Moon Coyote to be used as a The Coven Villain. Lots of Team-buildings combinations available there then.









In game-play Moonchild/Moon Coyote is a Shapeshifter, with each form having some specialisation, but overall offering a Supreme specialised in Support and mobility.











Further out it hopefully won't be too long before Blood watch can field their own Level 12 Team with at least a couple more Supremes lined up.

Androida

In Heavy Metal, Androida acts often as a public relations person, while on battlefield she employs her tremendous speed and cunning mind.

I am still working on my Non Metallic Metallics (NMM) techniques, and tried them out on this mini (sculpted, I believe by Gael Goumon). It is an approach I never tried before last year, and with my self-imposed painting challenge I am trying out techniques such as this that I have never used before. In other words, I still have quite a way to go, but I can see small incremental improvements.

This was the second version of Androida that I painted. The first was painted very quickly with regular metallic painting (see below), and even with the limitations of my meagre ability with the NMM approach, I think the NMM version is simply nicer to look at.

In game play Androida can be very quick, but also potentially very fragile, so she needs to be used cautiously. One approach some gamers take is as a resource delivery system (basically a super-courier!), carrying items like Force Field, First Aid Kit or Spare Parts. It may be something I try out soon. She can also be used to grab/contest objectives in agenda play.