Painting Marvel Crisis Protocol With 144Artist

If the Executioner is around, the Enchantress can’t be far away.  She has the power to beguile and enchant others in the comics but she is a very unpleasant person.  I don’t know how that plays out in the game but it should be fun finding out.  I have played MCP again recently but that is for another post.

A bit of house keeping here.  Wanted to post the last figures I finished in 2024 as well as a bit of work in progress or WiP as the cool kids say.  I really try to get at least 30 minutes a day at the table. I am an artist and public school art teacher so it is part of my peace of mind.  So is getting miniatures painted because, like terrain, storing finished work isn’t annoying like storing potential.  While I am a painter first and gamer second (though just) I do prefer playing with pretty toys so try to get things done for the games I want to play.

The point of my rambling is that I’m trying to document this incremental progress to help me better gauge progress and keep motivated.

Skurge, lapdog of the Enchantress is painted and ready to hit the table.  I only had limited exposure to the character through the comics but fell in love with with the Executioner when Karl Urban played him in Thor: Ragnarok.  He’s such a fun actor that he made Skurge likable which isn’t my memory of him from the comics.  He is the first of my remaining Asgard characters I’ve primed in preparation of getting the new set.

Lockjaw is painted and ready to teleport all over the place.  What a great figure.  I’m already a huge fan of dogs but one this big is a dizzying idea.  He’s got a convoluted and sometimes contradictory backstory.  Sometimes he”s a dog who was mutated by the Terragen Mist and others he is a man mutated into a giant dog. Either way, I love the mini and look forward to expanding my Inhumans Court.

Crystal, princess of the Inhumans and Medusa’s sister is now in my collection.  Really one of the most dynamic poses in the game and despite being a little fiddly to assemble she painted up nicely.  I like how her control of the four elements is visually described.  Reminds me of the Last Airbender and Kora.  She does have her own giant animal sidekick after all but more on him next post.

Queen of the Inhumans, Medusa, has been finished and is ready to throw down.  Throw somewhere anyway.  She looks like a formidable character so I look forward to adding her to a team as well as running Inhumans.  We will have to see what happens this weekend.

I am ending 2024 with the start of my Inhumans affiliation and their leader, Back Bolt.  I always liked the Jack Kirby created team when he was writing them I never loved them.  Their various guest appearances in other comics were interesting but didn’t excite.  I know they have had a bit of a rebirth in modern comics so I may have to seek out some reading material.  The miniatures are fun and I love Lockjaw.  I’m now looking forward to getting ahold of the new Inhumans’ Court set in 2025.

With the completion of Arch Angel my X-Men First Class is finished.  I find the concept of one character changing into the other, like Ant Man, very interesting.  I’ve got a chance to play some MCP coming up soon so imagine I will be trying out the X-Men so might get a chance to play Warren Worthington.  Until then, what a great pair of sculpts!  I love them both and they were fun to paint.

To continue in the spirit of the season, I’ve been working on terrain.  I photographed the first two hydrants I worked on as well as the five I just finished.  I’ve completed a fourth apartment building as well.  It still needs some details like fire escapes, roof details, electrical boxes, graffiti, and a sign over the store window but I’ll to all those soon enough.  I’m hosting a two day “convention” to celebrate my 60th birthday in January and so want plenty of terrain and minis for MCP.

I better get those street tiles worked on…

Between End of Quarter, End of Semester, End of Year, and several Holidays (not the least of which being my 60th birthday next month) I have not had as much time at my painting table as I would have liked. I only have a few finished MCP characters waiting for sealant and only a couple close to done.  I did work a bit on the previously owned Apartment building that I have dubbed #4.  My creativity knows no bounds.  While the floors may all separate, I tried to paint the brick with them assembled to keep a consistent look.  As I was doing so it became clear the initial assembly needed some revisiting as pieces were coming apart, so I have glued all the corners and left them to dry wound up in rubber bands.  I hope to get to this and some Inhumans over the weekend.

I have to confess to knowing little about Ben Riley, one of Peter parker’s clones before picking up the mini.  I have since remedied the situation and have to say it is a very interesting story arc.  I love the idea that somewhere in the Marvel universe is a backup Pater Parker. lol  A fun figure to assemble and paint all in all and I look forward to seeing what he brings to the Web Warriors.

He’s no Andy Serkis but MCP’s Klaw is painted and ready for action.  Very unique sculpt but then it can’t be easy to represent a character made of sound waves.  I find his game card a little perplexing but I am sure a few games with him and it will all be perfectly clear.  For now he can join my plethora of painted characters.  Maybe he will see the tabletop come January and my birthday convention/party.

While I’ve read the Ghost Spider, or Spider Gwen, comics I’ve not followed this storyline where she bonds with the symbiote but I love it.  I wasn’t crazy about the optional guitar so didn’t use it but it will find a way out of my bits box eventually.  A wonderfully fluid pose that wasn’t as fiddly to assemble as I had feared. As with the majority of MCP minis, so far, a really joy to paint.

Another character I can only recall seeing a few times over the decades I read comics.  She is another fun sculpt that assembled easily and was fun to paint.  Looking at her card it seems she has some nice powers and re-rolls but I will really have to run her in game to see what she can do.  Nice to have my Winter Guard painting caught up.

My Winter Guard affiliation is growing with the addition of Crimson Dynamo.  I only have scattered memories of either him or the Winter Guard but the mini is a fun, solid sculpt.  He looks tough, hard to move, and capable of a solid hit.  I will have to see how he is in game. He was fun to paint and I’m pleased with the way the reds came out.

Now that I finished painting Angel, my collection of the Original X-Men is complete.  Of course some of them look very differently than they did in the sixties but then neither do I.  Beast is a good example but Angel became Arch Angel after encountering Apocalypse and those steel wings look very different. I’ve almost finished painting that model as well so he should be popping up on this blog soon.

There were a few minis I had called done that I knew I would have to revisit.  Not the least of which was the first Captain America I painted as I hadn’t addressed his shield.  The Iron Man from the first core set needed some clean up and more highlights while Amazing Spider-Man really needed the black lines of his costume popped out.

With AMG’s NYC Apartment kit getting harder to find I have had to get creative in my searching as I can’t meet the majority of prices I’m seeing on eBay and the like.  I mean, the kit is expensive enough at original retail but now I see them going for way more than I can pay.  So I look for assembled or mostly assembled kits that folks are unloading as they as often keener to get rid of them than max their profit.  So the fourth apartment for me to paint is one of those.  It came with all the roof details and fire escapes unassembled but those are easy enough to get done.  Apparently I’m not the only person who sees the benefit of using this to store smaller terrain in.  Not only is the roof of this building not attached but there is a transparent acrylic “floor” attached to the interior of the third floor which is also not attached. So here is the starting point for my next building.

I have taken some pictures of my third completed apartment building.  Going to look good next to the other two and the Sanctum Santorum.  I have heard that one doesn’t want many huge terrain pieces on the board during a game but I just think it would look so cool to have an entire street scene to play through.  Like the other two apartments, I didn’t glue the roof on in order to store smaller terrain inside.

I finished my third NYC Apartment building. My relentless scouring online for deals and collections meant I had enough pieces for a fourth floor.The last bit I needed to paint being the neon sign announcing it as Josie’s Bar.  That was a new skill set for me and it came out fairly well for my first time.  I got the fire escapes glued on as well.  More pictures to come once I have my table cleared to take them on.  It is currently covered with the parts of my Terrainfest project.