Ladies Night - Marvel Crisis Protocol Gamora & Nebula

Howdy folks,

I hope all is well on your side. Apparently the North Pole got my request for some snow...we got a dump of almost 50cm the other day...or...almost 2 feet and then another few inches a day or so later. Very cool, nice thing is that the bulk of it was rather light and powdery, so no shoveling heart attacks!

As the title says, this one is about the ladies, and in this case we're talking the Gamora and Nebula pack from MCP. The sculpts are very dynamic and action oriented...and while I am not familiar with their comic book origins, being a big fan of the marvel movies, I thought the poses fit my movie expectations. As for painting them up, like the marvel figures I've painted to date, I wanted to go for a brighter, 'poppier' and comic book look and feel.

Now anyone who has been reading my posts will know, I am a pretty big fan of Sorastro and his style and approach to painting figs. Thankfully from watching him work I have been able to add a few techniques to the painting toolbox over the past few years. With no dedicated guides to go by, the paint scheme was really up to me on this...sure, there is some box art to go by...and the character cards themselves also help provide that comic book look and feel. But I am happy to say I was a little more confident approaching these models...and if I'm totally honest, it was Nebula that presented the biggest challenge.

 

Gamora was pretty straight forward, the box art was close to the comic book references that I found...white and black body suit, red/orange colour bands on them, metallic looking sword. Fairly straight forward and really happy with the results.

 

Nebula took some hard time to consider...the character card was great for scaling out her clothes and form, but the model has her leaping off a booster, rocket, or some motor type thing. Taking to the google, I saw that there was a consistent approach of hitting this 'rocket' with a straight metallic or single colour and adding some rusting/weathering. Given the dynamic model, the look and feel I was going for, I thought this rocket needed more.

 

Looking at the end of it, it reminded me of a inlet turbine so I did take a look at various rockets and engine for overall metallic colours.At th end, I took the chance to try out my shading techniques and try my hand at some non-metal techniques as well. Again, very happy with the result.

Take care...enjoy the pics.

The Ladies...daughters of Thanos

Lady Gamora

the warrior Nebula...very happy with how she turned out. The colours were a lot of fun to mix and paint up. The nmm was a challenge and t really happy with how I was able to get the shading/highlights that I was looking for...

2022 Lead Mountain Climb

Painted

15mm               8

28mm+             6, +2 (Gamora and Nebula)

 

Bought              0

 

Progress          +14

Rules for Imagi-Nations - Afropia?

 Hello folks,

One of my random thoughts on my end year 2021 post was the idea of moving forward with an 'imagi-nation' type setting to bring together some ideas I had on scenario creation, maximizing playibility, fielding more figures, and really just getting more games in. I know that with Duncan and Mike we have some ideas on SW Legion and the Nam...but I also wanted something that I could have where I could take as little as a dozen or so figures or as many as a couple of companies and have some enjoyable games.

As this is a longer term project and idea, I thought I would invest in some scoping activities and rulesets that could be feasible within these arcs of dice throwing. Now, I have to say I have always been entertained by some great blogs over the years and some have provided some great inspiration for getting to this point. As well, seeing some battle reports of various games and rulesets has also helped guide the research side of this as well. 

 

Most recently I re-opened my copy of "7 Days to the Rhine" and this looks promising to have some cold-war era kit with a more limited size of force. I think it holds the same promise as Force on Force Cold War and am really curious to try it out. In the scope that I'm looking at, I see it fitting in a scenario with standing armies going toe-to-toe who have the joy of being Superpower benefactors...or some variance there of...more to follow.

 

I have always been a big fan of Force on Force, and if you look through some of my posts from years back you will see some very enjoyable battle reports. This ruleset would allow me the minimalist approach to force size and there are some excellent companion books that can help scale everything from standing army modern fights to counter insurgency to peacemaking/keeping/building operations. So again, a very good ruleset to have as a reference point.

 

In similar vein to Force on Force (and Skirmish Sangin below), Contact Front is a modern ruleset focused on the Afghanistan experience and professional army vs. insurgent warfare. It does look pretty interesting, it is a little more manageable as the book is on the lighter side of pages, and looks like it is fairly open to scenario and force improvisation.

 

Skirmish Sangin from Dish Dash is one that I am not overly familiar with. I did have a chance about 3 years ago to get a game in and was pretty happy with the mechanics and gameplay. This set is focused primarily on Afghanistan and ISAF, however much to my delight they have also developed Skirmish AFRIKA with a reimagining of the African continent with enough similarity to be familiar, and enough reimagining for this to accommodate a variety of nation state models and histories. It does look fairly promising so I will be curious to see how I can adapt this.

In the African vein, Peter Pig are certainly no stranger to gaming. I recently picked up both old and 'new' version of their AK47 ruleset. I have to be honest, this is the ruleset that allowed me the headspace and comfort to start modern gaming and definitely the idea of gaming in Africa. Having served there back in the day, I had some misgivings about modern gaming. Now, while I had bought this set years ago, and enjoyed reading it immensely, I unfortunately never got around to gaming it. So looking at it again was critical to approaching my Imagi-Nation. In terms of scale, this does represent a bit of a miniatures 'investment' as it allows warlord and state actor armies, it has a base level of 5 units...so some investment in terms of grunts, etc. Although, I may have to see how I can adapt as I have read so many great battle reports that it is really enticing.

At this point, I'm pretty confident that my battlespace and geographical reference will be rather Afropia (Africa-Europe-Asia) focused...this lets me use the full range of terrain and figures that I have but I will have to scope and define this further.

I guess that's all I'm going to say about that...for now. 

Take care.

Painting Update

Hello Everyone,

 

I trust all is well in your areas of influence. Just a quick post today with a truly random collection of figures that I've painted up over the past little bit. These wasn't a particular focus in mind when I went through each of these, and you'll see by the pictures there really is not a cohesive connection between them. Simply put, they were on the table, and they needed painting.

 

Take care. Here are a few pics...

A remnant from the assembly of my Royal Canadian Dragoons force for Team Yankee, I had an extra Leopard 1 tank kicking around assembled and in need of a paintjob. As I'm starting to put some thought to an Imagi-Nations setting I am anticipating that there will be a need for some sturdy peacekeepers to hold the line somewhere in the region. As such, my blue helmets will have some white metal to bring to the conflict resolution table.

 

If I recall correctly, these glowy ghouls were originally from a convention special and then they went on the Modiphius's shopsite in the early days of lockdown. Given that they didn't require any painting for the figures, the bases were the only thing that needed some love. They're straight out of Fallout and will be perfect for any post-apoc and radioactive setting ala Zona Alfa.

A few-ish years back, I picked up a superheroes blister from Knight Models that was on sale at FDB Boutique. Now, I am a bigfan of the sculpts for Marvel Crisis Protocol, but regardless I still have some heroes to paint up. Originally, I was going to use a similar technique as what I had painted up my MCP Ironman previous, however after visiting Red Dragon over the past summer I picked up Turbodork's Redrum...which as Dan told me was "Ironman in a bottle"...to say the least, he was right. I brought the paint home, put a fresh black base coat on 'little' Ironman and hit him with some Redrum. I gotta say, Dan was spot on!! For the silver metallic, I used vj gunmetal and nuln oil overtop. For the bronzey-gold elements I used the same technique that I did on MCP Ironman.

Finally, I picked up some figs in 2020 from Monster Fight Club, amongst them was an IT inspired Pennywise...I actually picked up 2. I painted one already, here which I painted up ala Pennywise. For the second, I was going to go with the clown from American Horror Story, but was instead struck by inspiration and instead painted this one up ala Homey the Clown from In Living Colour. The figure was a lot of fun, especially trying to capture the Homey look...and the balloons were a great test of my wet blending different shades. All in all, good fun.

Anywho...I hope you enjoyed the pics.

2022 Lead Mountain Climb

Painted

15mm               8, +1 (Leopard tank)

28mm+             4, +4 (homey the clown, 2 x ghouls, ironman)

 

Bought              0

 

Progress          +12

2022 - First Figures

Howdy folks, 

I hope all is well on your respective sides. Hopefully you are keeping safe and warm and any sniffles that you have are just that! Not much to report from my little corner of the globe, I'm on the right side of the dirt so that is always a great way to start the day.

As I mentioned in my parting shot/post for 2021, one of my objectives is to get back to my 15mm plasti-lead pile and my Team Yankee collection is amongst the top of that. So with that, my first figures of the year are some Soviet BMP-2's as well as a FOO in a BMP-1 to support my Carnations and Hails. As with my previous experience with these models, they painted up quite quickly and were a snap to put together...and to be honest I had put them together a few years back and subsequently lost them to the heap.

For the BMP's, I painted up the 2's in the same manner as my previous vehicles, however with these 4 BMP 2’s earmarked for recce duty I’ve added a higher level of weathering. For the 1, I wanted a different paint scheme to better differentiate it on the table. Overall, I'm very happy and while I did a fairly fast paint on these, I think I've hit a very good tabletop standard.

Enjoy the pics...take it easy!

Any force that brings their big guns with definitely needs a FOO. For my Sovs I’ve elected to transport mine in a BMP 1, with the Sagger missile removed.

2022 Lead Mountain Climb

Painted

15mm               7, +7 (5 x bmp's, 2 x crew)

 

Bought             0

 

Progress          +7