Challege Submission #15 - Another Smattering of Special Challenge Targets

 

One of the special challenge targets was to paint a Superhero figure. I didn't have any miniatures that were easily identifiable as a specific superhero, although the figure with the helmet and gun has a bit of a 'Peacemaker' vibe to him. I don't even know where I got these figures from or who manufactured them. They all stand 30-32mm in height, so they are slightly taller than the usual 25-28mm figures. Perhaps the Hive Mind can provide some clues.

They were first primed with black, and then painted using Vallejo acrylics. I used some GW washes on the skin areas, and on the hair. The colours chosen for two of the figures were based on suggestions from my wife, who used to collect Marvel and DC comics before we got married. The colours for the 'Peacemaker' figure are based on images of that superhero found on the net. So I give you 'Blue Moon' (named for the frequency of his appearances), 'Omega Dude' (named because of his fancy wristwatch), and my version of 'Peacemaker' (who is wearing his holster on his right side, but shooting left-handed. 😕)

 

 

Diving into my box of unpainted Sci-Fi miniatures, I found three West End Games Star Wars Snowtroopers as they appeared in 'The Empire Strikes Back' during the attack on Echo Base. They were primed in grey, and then painted using Vallejo acrylics. After the bases had been painted white, some AK Diorama 'Snow Sprinkles' was applied  While not as fancy as some of the newer Star Wars: Legion figures out there, I think they still look pretty good. 

I didn't have any robot miniatures in my 'big box of shame', but I had some wooden figures from the local craft store that were designed to be painted up as nutcrackers. I also had the book 'Boilerplate - History's Mechanical Marvel', by Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett, and I thought I might be able to do a conversion to make an 'old robot'.

 

An image of Boilerplate from the book

 

My starting point

 

I rummaged through my boxes of collected bits and bobs that I use for building terrain features to find the right pieces to convert my nutcracker figure into an old robot. Doweling of various diameters, tubes from dry ink markers, old chopsticks, hollow plastic sucker sticks, thin copper wire, and some epoxy putty were all pressed into service. In the end, the only pieces from the original figure that were incorporated into the build were the arms and legs. The end product stands 80mm tall (pictured below standing on a hockey puck, the Canadian standard for both size and mass). If I were to do another, I would make his head a bit shorter  his helmet a bit wider, and his arms a bit longer, but I am satisfied with the final result.

 

 

Thanks for reading.

And Now for Something Completely Different... Superheroes!

Marvel's Alpha Flight: Back row: Shaman, Snowbird, Sasquatch, Vindicator/Guardian, Aurora. Front row: Northstar, Puck, Marrina.

One of the more "fringe" genres in tabletop wargaming has to be superheroes. Sure, you see the odd WW2 game with Captain America playing some minor role, but for the most part, superhero gaming just isn't done - by either the traditional "historical" community or even by the more adventurous sci-fi/fantasy bunch.

Omega Flight: Wild Child, Smart Alec, Box, Flashback with his "future men", Diamond Lil

For me, "peak comic book" was in the mid-1980s. I followed the Marvel titles almost exclusively, and the Uncanny X-Men with particular fervor. My favorite artist and creative person was the British-Canadian polymath, John Byrne. Together with scripter and co-plotter Chris Claremont, he created some of the best superhero stories of all time, including the "Dark Phoenix Saga" and "Days of Future Past" storylines in the Uncanny X-Men.

The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants: Avalanche, Mystique, Magneto, Pyro, Blob, Destiny

Byrne was also tapped by Marvel to create Canada's superhero team: Alpha Flight. Originally created (according to Byrne) "just to survive a battle with the X-Men," Alpha Flight proved to be so popular that they were spun off into their own title, written and drawn by Byrne. The prime adversary group for Alpha was Omega Flight. Like the Alphans, Omega Flight was created by "Department H" of the Canadian government as an officially sanctioned team of supers. While Alpha Flight were the prime team, Omega and Gamma Flights consisted of supers-in-training... and when Department H was disbanded due to budgetary considerations, the lower-tier supers took the easier rout of using their powers for selfish purposes. This allowed them to be manipulated by Delphine Courtney, a humanoid robot and agent of Jerry Jaxxon, an aggrieved former boss of James Hudson (Vindicator) who sought revenge against Hudson for "stealing" the battlesuit designed by Hudson for the company they both worked for, when Hudson discovered that the company was to turn over his invention to the US military. This resulted in a downward spiral for Jaxxon, who was fired and subsequently rendered paraplegic after a suicide attempt... Dark stuff for kids' comic books eh!
 

The Uncanny X-Men: Phoenix, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Professor X, Storm, Cyclops, Wolverine

So as a side project some years ago I started buying and rebasing (and sometimes repainting and converting) Wizkids' "Heroclix" figures to create the supers of my youth. Heroclix figures can be hit and miss in terms of sculpting quality but they're usually cheap, and the variety of them is really monstrous. Pretty much every super you can think of has been made into a Heroclix figure (sometimes multiple versions), but having said that, I've still had to do conversion work on figures like Omega Flight's Box, Smart Alec, and Flashback, as well as on the "future" Colossus and Storm, before their specific models came out. For the most part, though, I just applied a black or brown wash to the models as-is and rebased them. Easy. The other great thing about Heroclix is that they're approximately 28mm scale so all of my modern 28mm models can be used with them. Great for those games set in the mid-'80s with our Eureka Soviets and US Army models!
 

The X-Men (Days of Future Past): Colossus, Storm, Logan, Kate Pryde, Franklin Richards

Sentinels

Wizkids also made Sentinels in their range - these are the giant mutant-hunting robots that have featured from time to time in the X-Men and other Marvel books. I've got two versions - the original (left) from the initial "Infinity Challenge" range and the "Alpha" at right which came later. I really prefer the sculpt on the Alpha version, and it also has exchangeable arms, torso and head to create a "damaged" version - cool. However in the Days of Future Past setting I can use both versions; the larger ones can represent the "triad patrols" combing the ruins of New York City circa 2013, while the smaller more detailed models represent the "Omega series executive cadre" that eventually kill the remaining X-Men (spoiler alert!)

Sentinel with Logan and Kate

The tricky part, of course, is actually playing games with the models. What rules to use? Well, we once played a "Days of Future Past" game years ago, I think using a modified version of GW's Lord of the Rings skirmish system. That was OK. But recently I picked up a trove of old TSR Marvel Superheroes RPG stuff so we may give that a try. MSH is pretty simple and might be suitable for skirmish gaming. There's only one way to find out, right!

Photo for this morning

Since I had to miss out on the majority of the awesome-looking Lord of the Rings game last night (hopefully Dallas will send me a report later today so I can enjoy it vicariously) I thought I would post a photo at random from the assortment I have saved on my computer. As a testament to the wide variety of gaming settings and scales we enjoy (see below), here we can see Captain America dealing with some important covert matters that arose in Berlin in 1945...