Leaving 2021 Behind...in style?

Hey folks,

 

As I see the end of the year looming closer and closer, I also wanted to get ahead of any end-year/new year malaise and make my final post for 2021.

2021...Oh what a year. A few parts of brilliance, a few more of WTF, with heavy splashes of m'eh and whatever...at the end of the day, this year too will end. I will give brief acknowledgement to Covid as it definitely fits into each part of the year. And has a share in the very mild woe's (certainly in relation to the bigger picture) that plague my hobby progress

To be honest, working from home has been quite brilliant. That too has brought a few WTF and are you kidding me moments. And I have to admit, my painting has gone through the range of brilliance and m'eh. My output is definitely not shattering records...although I am happy to be in the triple digits (largely in part to my return to 15mm). I am really happy with how my Marvel figures are turning out, admittedly they do give my OCD a run for its money and some of them have taken a crazy amount of time to finish, but the figures really are great.

If I had to capture the years most brilliant painting moments it would have to be the competitions that I was able to enter in...and was quite successful! So, yeah me...and it also brought some considerable WTF moments as this venture took a large amount of my overall painting time, and some of my biggest f$#k ups...dropping and breaking one large scale sculpture at the 50% completion point, and giving a 3d printed Mandalorian a prep wash - and then forgetting about it to the point where the bust...well, busted out. So some success and some hard lessons.

My quick thought for looming projects brings me to more Team Yankee, the Nam, and things 15mm: perhaps an inspired region of the world of my own design and historiography so I can move away from set army lists and just get some figures on the table (maybe using FoF or maybe AK47 rules). As well, given the success of our recent Star Wars Legion game, I am thinking scenarios and more games are needed...so I'm looking forward to that. In terms of other painting and terrain goals...I may have to give the new Sanctum Sanctorum model a shot; some 28mm-ish terrain ala Blade Runner keeps popping around in my head; and of course terrain to support my fantasia planning and our The Nam Ace campaign.

So, lots to think about.

Anyhow, I hope the next year finds you safe, healthy, and better than the last. And of course, with the though of leaving in style, please see some pics of my recent scatter terrain painting thanks to Modiphius Fallout Wasteland Warfare and some 3d printed pieces from my buddy Duncan...these pieces turned out great and will work for a wide variety of settings!

TAKE CARE...and Happy New Year.

 

Some 3d printed pieces...the fridge and toolbox are from Modiphius's Fallout sampler (it is free!!!). The cargo boxes come from Legion Terrain from their scatter bundle.

The fridge was a great exercise in painted heavily weathered white...it came up very quick and was actually quite enjoyable.

These barriers are physical models from Modiphius. These ones also came up quite quickly and I enjoyed working out a rusting/weather technique for them.

Lead Mountain 2021 FINAL TALLY

Painted:

 

Large scale              3

28mm                     35, +10

15mm                   102

Bought                  30, +6 (the barriers were bought this summer from a LGS)

Progress               +110 (just over the 3 digit mark, but I'll take it)

Bring on the Wars - Star Wars Legion!

Howdy everyone,

 

So after literal years of painting Legion figures, I finally got up the motivation to get a game in…a big thanks to Mike and Duncan for the push to try it out. Now with the first game down, I have the bug to get some more painting done AND get some more of these games under the ole belt. 

 

For our first foray, we decided to go relatively light on the force structure and card allocations...keep it a little simple and just work on the overall mechanics and flow.

 

With that, Mike had some Trade Federation bots being led by General Grievous; Duncan and I had the Empire under the shuffling slipper heals of the Emperor (he does move a little slow). We each had roughly 3 grunt sections each, the Empire had some fast-moving combat support with a duo of speeder bikes and the Federation took a couple of card upgrades to even the points (I think we went with 400? Maybe Mike or Duncan can sort me out on that)...

It is a little long and there are a few pics to look at, but as always, enjoy...and of course, if you want to see the incorrect side of the story, Mike beat me to the posting punch:

Mike's Trade Federation LIES

Table setup...pretty basic, we went to our sides, threw a bunch of random scatter terrain and pieces down to block line of sight and movement. These are some excellent looking pieces that Duncan printed up over the past week, can't wait to paint them up. BTW, good guys on the left, Mike on the right...

Pretty relaxed deployment, from the edge within 2 range sticks. 2 x Stormtrooper sections deployed on our left and right, 1 x Snowtrooper section in the middle, Speeder bikes at the back, the Emperor at the rear..and oh yeah, totally forgot about his guard, they were just in front of the boss.

Troopers move forward, get behind whatever terrain they can...old bunker walls in the main portion of the table, random cargo on the right side. Mike had deployed a bunch of walls/barriers as well, so there were those options too.

View on the Empire right / Mike's left flank...bots moving up...standard 'Roger Rogers' and super bots...

Mike's right flank, more Roger Rogers led by a Tactical Droid, and a couple of Droidekas

The harly's of the Empire moving up on the left flank, taking their time...within range of some Roger Rogers...a buttload of firepower gets thrown out, spare parts and plastic scattered among the field (I think we took out 3 or 4 of them)...

I can't remember exactly when, but this happened a turn or two later...Grievous moving up, Droidekas rolling with things, and a couple of Roger Rogers walking amongst the spare parts...still moving forward.

The metal line moving forward on Mike's left...

 

Droidekas surging forward...

Stormtroopers on the Imperial left, engaging droids to their 12...

Speeders slowly moving forward...putting some more hurt on the Roger Rogers...I think they may have tried blunting the Droidekas as well...

 

 Snowtroopers facing their own elephant on the left...

 

Stormtroopers on the right move forward, blasting through doorways and working the angles...

 

Grievous and the Droidekas not impressed with the Snowtroopers...

The speederbikes dishing out pain and taking a hit or two...down one bike...

The Emperor lets loose with his Crimson warriors...they engage with Grievous in melee...

 

Battledroids on Mike's left take the Empire down a peg or two...decimate the second Stormtrooper section with ease.

and they start sizing up their right flank...

 

Meanwhile, a flurry of dicing action continues between Grievous and the Crimson Guards

 

...and the Emperor really where he likes it best, hanging with his best homies waiting to lay on some massive hate, regardless of the electric bill! The Emperor can intentionally take damage to inflict lightning pain on his targets. I think Duncan gave almost half his hit points to the electric company and unleashed severe pain, he was pretty happy to melt a section of Roger Rogers...

 

Conclusion - the Trade Federation were able to take the Emperor down and win the field, but it was a big cost on both sides of the battle. 

Conclusion for the 3 of us - Please Sir, we would like some more....

Marvel Crisis Protocol - Starter Box - Main Characters

Hello everyone,

As always, hoping that things are right in your respective corners. So with my previous post showing off my finished Baron Zemo and Doctor Octopus, I thought I would share a quick collage and group photo of the heroes, villains, and in-between from the Marvel Crisis Protocol core box.

That's it...not much else to say...except to say that so far, I am really enjoying these Marvel characters. Not only are they fairly dynamic in sculpt and pose, but they look really cool, and for me they have been an excellent challenge to my painting technique.

I have to throw a shoutout to Sorastro...yes, I do follow him on YouTube, I do contribute to his Patreon, but if you're tight on budget, he has a great website that not only includes great pics, free painting guides for select figures, but also an excellent painting techniques page that has links to his videos free to access on YouTube...if you can, I encourage you to check him out, if you like what you see, then check out his website, and if you are able, then support him on Patreon - I'm a big fan and love that this is his dayjob now.

Anyway, promotions aside, I really like how looking at Sorastro and other pictures on-the-Google got me out of my painting comfort zone. I like the comicbook colours and approach to these figures and I now have a molehill becoming a mountain of Marvel Crisis Protocol plastic to work through.

I hope you enjoy the pics. Have a gooder!!

The Heroes...for the most part, being heroic...and maybe conflicted (I'm looking at you Widow)...

 

And in all their villainy glory...not conflicted, very sure of themselves, the confidently evil!

 

 

 

 

Aaaaaaaannnnddd of course, GROUPSHOT!!!

Zemo and the Doc Octo-man

Hey folks,

I hope all is well on your respective fronts.

So with the latest Disney+ marvel series hitting the 'airwaves' and the trailers for the upcoming Spiderman movie, I couldn't help but have the title of this post come out like a new webseries. Not to mention, since I came up with the title all I can think of is American Dad and Wheels and the Legman!! So yeah, its gotta be a series now...

 

American Dad - posted on YouTube by user Jennifer Hime Lawrence

 

Anywho, Baron Zemo and Doc...I mean, Doctor Octopus (he didn't go to evil science school to be called 'doc')...are part of the core characters from the Marvel Crisis Protocol core box. I gotta say, Zemo was a real hoot to paint and he came up fairly quick. On the other hand, the Doc, has been on my painting table for probably the last 4-6 months...for some reason he really intimidated me and had me uncertain on how to reach the level that I was envisioning. Of course, that fabulous sob Sorastro really set the bar high for this figure.

I gotta say, after the fretting I am really happy with how things turned out...and in all actuality Doc painted up relatively quickly...go figure! I'm particularly really happy with how the tentacles came out as I'm dipping my brush into the non-metal metallic field.

 

Anyway, with these 2 glorious villains complete I am now 'half' way through completing the core box with all 10 heroes/villains complete...the next step will be to tackle the great looking terrain that came with the box.

 

I hope you enjoy the pics. Take care!

Magnificent looking buggers. With the right banner and theme song, Zemo and Doc Octo-man could be a real thing, I'm sure of it! In keeping with our title, we'll let the Baron strut his stuff first...

I have to say, this painted up so easily. I did have a Sorastro painting guide to help me, but the main difference I had compared to other figures is that I wasn't concerned with paint-matching per say. I used the guide...well as a guideline, not a rule. I liked the overall look and I adapted my painting to my paint collection and personal taste. I even tried out some NMM on the sword - much more practice needed, but I'm still happy overall. 

 

 

I really like Sorastro's approach to Doctor Octopus, the colour scheme is very much keeping with the comic book feel. The tentacles are very representative of the comic as well, and the source lighting in his treatment looked spectacular and was quite inspirational. And just because I like seeing figures from all angles...

 

The doc of the hour in all his NMM and impatient glory!

Lead Mountain 2021

Painted:

 

Large scale              3

28mm                     25, +2

15mm                   102

Bought                  24

Progress               +106