Painting Marvel Crisis Protocol With 144Artist

I have been lucky enough to find a few of the NYC Apartment Building kits from Atomic Mass as they are rare as hen’s teeth anymore.  My own fault for coming to the game after they had already left production.  I grabbed one from my FLGS, the last they had actually, and got a second on eBay which was already assembled, primed, but lacking fire escapes.  I’ve also picked up a third through diligent online searching but the prices are getting ridiculous so I think this maybe my total.  Good thing there’s the Sanctum Sanctorum kit out there at good prices.  Considering how much terrain I have built in multiple genres over the last 50 years, it’s hard to believe a contemporary “New York” has escaped my attentions until now.

One of the projects I’m putting in my list of terrain projects that need to be finished are the wonderful Terrain Tiles I got from Secret Weapon Miniatures years ago. Necron099 and I primed our sets at the same time with the idea that they would work together.  We have never gotten around to actually painting them even though We have played some games on them.  When I discovered MCP I knew right away that they would be perfect.

I will be updating the progress on these as well as a couple others in an actual TerrainFest blog.

Most of the miniatures I’m painting now have something added to their bases.  They look better and have a little more weight.  Here are the latest to receive added textures.  I’ve also based the hydrants I have.  They are so tiny I know they would get lost so I glued them to washers which I glued to magnetic base bottoms before texturing the ground and adding some of the bits and pieces that come with AMG’s bases.

With Cable comes Domino and she is another great sculpt.  I love how she is standing on the one piece of debris that will catapult her forward.  She’s portrayed beautifully in Deadpool 2.  In game she can spend power to turn die results of skulls into Crits and while defending cancels her opponents additional rolls from Crits.  Seems a fun way to illustrate her luck powers.

I’ve been working on one of the NYC Apartment kits lately.  Despite the size it is actually pretty quick to paint.  I left the window frames off to paint separately when I assembled it as it seemed easier to dry brush that way.  I was correct, it was much easier to make the brick look good without having to work around or repaint the window frames.  I use thick, craft paint to cover terrain pieces.  I will apply 3-4 different colors next to each other (not mixed) on the pallet, dip my huge dry brush, and wipe off most of the color, and apply in circular motions.  I will refill the brush from what I wiped off before returning to the pallet.  I start dark and work to light usually in three applications.  I have found that if I work on each side of the building by the time I’ve covered all four sides with their first coats they are dry enough of the next.

I will be shooting more pictures this weekend.

Poor Nathan Summers never had a chance at a normal life.  Child of Scott Summers (Cyclops) and Jean Grey’s clone,  Madelyne Pryor, he was sent to the future to try and cure the techno virus that was infecting him.  He became a soldier there, fighting Sentinels and Apocalypse before returning to the past.  He has been in several X-Teams throughout the years and is a formidable force to deal with.  In game he has a lot of tricks I look forward to trying out.  I love how his forcefield is portrayed on the miniature.

With the young Wolverine painted it was only a matter of time before her sister, Honey Badger, showed up.  They look like quite the team in game and I look forward to trying them out together when I get to play X-Men again.  Yes, I know anyone can join any team in MCP but I’m a newbie and so still like to keep my teams mostly pure to the comics or affiliation lists.

The minis’ storage solution has been taking up much of my time and energy and I still have to decide how to organize/store the various card types. I have been doing a little painting though.  I picked up one of AMG’s exceedingly rare NYC Apartment Building kits as well as an assembled one.  These are great but a lot of work.

So my experimenting and exploring with different storage solutions came to a head.  I’ve got six Really Useful Boxes lined with Steel paper and had ordered a large number of Litko Heavy Duty Base Bottoms ordered.  My test models had worked out wonderfully so I was eager to get started on this solution. Unfortunately the magnets were delayed in the mail.  When they did arrive I was delighted but immediately realized I had added five pounds of weight to the collection of minis. Still, that is far less than sheet steel and bigger magnets would have added.

I began by emptying the storage boxes the minis were in, one at a time, and adding Base Bottoms to each figure.  MCP bases come in three sizes; 35mm, 50mm , and 65mm.  The first two sizes have base bottoms that are the exact size but Litko doesn’t make a 65mm circle yet so I went for a larger size shape and planned to cut them down.  It turns out it was cheaper to order an octagon rather than the next size circle.

After I had finished with all the magnets and filling bins I washed up (working with magnets is dirty work) and emptied them again.  I then spent an hour organizing them by Affiliation.  OCD is a terrible thing but can be used for Good instead of Evil, like joining the X-Men instead of the Brotherhood.

More likely Sandman will knock you into dreamland because this guy packs a punch especially with that over sized hand construct.  Poor Flint Marko never had a chance, destined to be another of Spiderman’s great tragic villains.  Wonder if it had to do with being named Flint?  He was always one of my favorites and I think he showed up in a lot of Marvel animated shows.  Great portrayal in the films as well.  In game he looks like a tanky bruiser.  I like the rules for his constructs as well so know I will have to play with Spider Foes in the future.

With a wide range of folks calling themselves the Vulture, including and excellent version by Micheal Keaton, Atomic Mass Goes has a plethora of versions to choose from but, like Electro, they went with the classic Silver Age version.  Adrian Toomes is actually the second individual to wear the moniker but certainly the best know.  This is the version that showed up in all the old cartoons. Great sculpt full of motion and an easy paint job.  I did add rubble to the base but that is becoming the norm for me anymore.  I’ll have to do an updated blog post on that process as 3/4 of what I prep for primer need that first.

Rumor has it that my Litko magnet order will be delivered today so I will be working on the bases tonight and tomorrow.

Atomic Mass Games have based their sculpt on Max Dillon, the original Electro.  I love this costume as it was big part of my childhood.  The way he rode the power lines in the original Spiderman cartoon always made me smile.  I loved the movie version and the new female Electro, Francine Frye, is a lot of fun so I am sure we will see some variations showing up in future. For now it is nice to have the original Sinister Six minis to play with.

Painted the latest Spider Foes set.  These are classic villains of Silver Age Spiderman all in their comic book costumes.  This is Shocker who harnesses the power of shockwaves to  break in to banks and flatten his foes.  I haven’t really read his card yet as he was never one of my favorites.  He always seemed like an “Also Ran” both in the comics and cartoons.  I am sure I will be trying him out in the game regardless as I want to try out all of them.

Black Cat is painted and ready for some breaking and entering.  Such a great character in the comics that fluctuates between villain and hero being involved with a number of different characters.  Of course her time dating Spidey is generally way comes to mind and she is in the Web Warriors affiliation.  It is an interesting pose with her about to back flip and her costume is a straight forward paint job.  I do think her face came out well though she is the second mini with back lipstick I’ve recently painted.

Coming in out of the cold is another Winter Guard character, Red Guardian.  Whenever I’d come across him in a comic book story he always seemed to be a cheap Captain America knockoff.  David Harbour gave him a lot of life and personality in the Black Widow film so I’m looking forward to seeing how he’s handled in Thunderbolts*.  Nice character design and fun mini to paint but then I am very fond of red.

The Winter Guard affiliation has begun to form in my collection and Ursa Major is the first to arrive.  I don’t know much about the team, not having run into them in comics much but visually they are a lot of fun.  Hard to go wrong with a huge were bear of a man.

Baron Mordo is painted and ready to bounce around the battlefield.  What a great model if a bit delicate in places and fun to paint with different materials and textures.  This is another great example of a character which, being created in the Silver Age of comics, is fairly two dimensional and more of a caricature.  The first Doctor Strange movie really made him a real character with clear motives and vision.  I think the best villains are the ones that think they are doing  the right thing.  I hope he shows up in future films and I am glad AMG went more in the direction of the the MCU look.

I’ve been around a while and when I started reading Doctor Strange comics, Wong was just a servant at worst and a librarian at best.  I really like how the MCU has enlarged the character and made him so much more interesting and entertaining.  In Crisis Protocol he is a Threat Level 2 character that buffs and heals his team.  He looks very playable in a lot of teams.

Doctor Strange from CP023 is now ready to lead my Defenders or Convocation affiliations.  Not as dynamic as the later sculpt but wonderfully evocative of the character.  I like how the Cloak of Levitation connects to the spell effect to leave Strange floating above the ground.

I finished painting my second set of rulers and have added them to their box.  I think they are a little more vibrant than the first set even though I love the first Range 5 ruler’s Ruby Quartz Eye Blast appearance.  All in all the second ones just look a little livelier.