White Tiger (SMG Project)

Well there we go - White Tiger is done, just by the skin of my teeth!

My contribution to Forgotten Heroes (click for link) and it has been great watching various projects unfold - well done all. I promise to be better organised next year - although I feel my G.I. Joe stuff this month is in keeping with the whole thing too. :)

Thankfully this was a fairly simple paint job which helped speed things up. I was able to go a little messy doing the necklace with the knowledge I could tidy up the 'white' areas. The white was mainly done using Vallejo Pale Blue Grey as a base up to Off-White. For some deeper recesses I mixed in a bit of Blue Grey.

I decided to shade the eyes with a pale green to tie into the amulets he wears, representing the glow of mystical power they infuse into him. Other than that a pretty simple paint-job.

I also worked up a rules card for him for the defunct Spider-man Miniatures Game, just to complete the project. His Reputation cost may get a slight re-jig when I rework how I have engineered my best guesses for KM's points formula. I fear not, there are more home-brew conversions planned for SMG in the near-future.

SMG Painting Summary
SMG characters owned: 15+2
Percentage of owned characters painted: 47.1% (8 models)
MUMG minis re-based to fit my SMG: 0
SMG Project minis painted: 1

White Tiger WiP

A quick update post on White Tiger. With work on other projects this one got a little side-tracked unfortunately.

The conversion is pretty simple and I ultimately opted to omit the leg-straps. I tried doing something with green-stuff but what I was trying simply wouldn't work, and I lack the sculpting skills to render them in fine-scale in keeping with the mini's aesthetic any other way. Therefore I have to accept they are a stage too far for me.

The teeth on the necklace were trimmed back and green-stuff amulet pieces added. I may need to do a bit more on those once I can see them better when the mini is undercoated (my eyes struggle to pick out some details on/against bare metal and I often can see much more clearly when undercoat is applied). I filed the boots and gloves to lessen the trademark Black Panther grooves, and then painted that over with brush-on matt varnish with the idea that the relatively thick liquid should fill those grooves - at least that is my plan; again I may need to do a little more once I can see things more clearly with the undercoat.

I still hope to get the mini painted today, time permitting. Watch this space!

The Eye of the Tiger!

Well, that escalated quickly! No sooner than I set course with my SMG Project, than I learn of something called Forgotten Heroes which perfectly dove-tails with my own project  - the only requirement being to produce something in June and following the rules as set out:

1. The character you create must not yet have had an official or unofficial miniature made for it.
2. The figure must be in 28mm scale.
3. The figure must be completed during the month of June.
4. In your first post, you should provide a bit of detail on the character you’ve chosen and why.

I think #1 is a slight fudge for me as my character never had a mini made while Marvel stuff licensed by Knight Models, and only had a single Heroclix incarnation.
#2 is a bit of a fudge as Knight call their 'scale' 35mm (I know it is not a scale per se....).
#3 is do-able, and for #4 read on....

My character (as can be seen in the top picture) is White Tiger, a character created in the 70's amid the martial arts craze that swept American popular culture. White Tiger (Hector Ayala) was Marvel's first Hispanic hero, and really was only a sporadically-seen character for the next twenty-five plus years. Nowadays his mantle has been taken on by other characters (his sister and niece), and White Tiger is probably an apt Forgotten Hero.

My plan is to use the Black Panther mini as the basis for the character. His gloves and boots will get a little filling with Milliput. His pointy panther ears will be removed and filed down. His panther-teeth necklace will be trimmed back and an amulet made out of green stuff. And if I feel really confident, I may (emphasis on *may*) try to do his boot/leg wraps.

SMG Side-project...

I have been bitten by the bug of a new side project in recent days, and as any hobbyist knows, that way lies peril as there is never enough time for every project!

I like designing character rules and I like playing games. I also like what Knight Models did to a limited extent with SMG, but lament there wasn't more. The now defunct SMG range extends to 15 officially released minis with cards, plus 2 minis with leaked cards which were never printed (Elektra and Venom).

I started musing and pondering this week, which is what general leads me down the rabbit-hole of a new project, and may be regarded as 'unwise' by the more learned hobbyist....

My idea is simple: create more stuff which I can use for SMG assuming my main opponent agrees to it being used! But any good project needs some boundaries, so I am following these rules:

1. All minis must have a Knight Models mini as their primary basis to ensure some degree of aesthetic consistency;
2. Characters should fit within the general street-level-plus milieu already established (so no Thor....at this time);
3. Characters should reflect the comics as opposed to movies;
4. I must create a card for each new or re-purposed character.

Now, I already have given myself a slight head-start in the SMG Project, as I have painted Black Panther (shown on the blog last July) and Black Widow already. I set to work adapting a cost schema I obtained from a fellow hobbyist and engineered it so it gave me ball-park near costings on Daredevil and Elektra, using that to inform the costs I assign to new characters as I develop them. 

One of the first examples is the Black Panther card in this post. I tried to encapsulate a classic sense of Black Panther (so omitted the Lord of the Dead stuff). T'Challa has a storied history operating solo in and around New York, and stood in for Daredevil for a while. In the same way that BMG stretches Affiliations (think Cyborg to Batman), I felt his natural home was Spider-man's faction. Expect to see more in my SMG Project in coming months!

Goblin Knight

Goblin Knight is my first painted mini in a couple of months, due to a lot of real-life stuff - at times like those I usually can write some stuff (hence the Supers Unlimited progress), but painting tends to take a hit. Thankfully I have cleared this mini which was started a while back, and I may try and tackle some easier to paint generic stuff soon to get myself back on track.

I really didn't enjoy painting this in anyway to be honest - the sculpt felt fiddly in terms of design, and the casting was poor in places, not uncommon with too many Knight Models in my experience. It does mean another SMG mini done, a range I expected to become defunct and since I commented about that it has come to pass. Brummie and me are planning a 400 Rep BMG versus SMG game sometime soon, so that will be a positive out of getting this mini painted amid the ongoing stuff related to the collapse of Knight's Marvel ranges.

In terms of my painting progress for SMG I am adding Venom and Elektra to the overall target list since I consider them part of the range; both had cards published digitally if not physically. I have since had my own copies printed for eventual gaming. Venom will give another Goblin Cult option for a bit of variety when I eventually get round to painting the mini.

SMG Painting Summary

SMG characters owned: 15+2

Percentage of owned characters painted: 47.1% (8 models)

Green Goblin

Another SMG mini painted, my first non-Henchman, and thankfully this one went from contemplation to completion pretty quickly! Even better, it is my sixth mini of the month (along with a couple of Pulp City minis).

The reason for the sudden motivation to paint Green Goblin was to play a larger Rep-value game using the Goblin Cult against a Suicide Squad crew played by Simon as soon as possible. With Green Goblin and the Goblin Minions done, I now just need to paint Goblin Knight. It should be a weird and very much asymmetrical game, so will hopefully be a lot of fun. 400 Rep will allow Simon more freedom to pick some 'big gun' characters, and it looks like some big hitters will be on show, not least Deathstroke, Green Goblin and Goblin Knight.

In game terms Green Goblin clocks in at 200 Rep, way beyond any BMG character (the current highest Rep character is 150 for Arkham Knight and Batpod Batman(s). Whether he is worth it will remain to be seen! What you get for that 200 Rep is a lot of Endurance (10 points), a lot of Traits, along with Strength 2+, and enough ammo for 10 shots during a game (he will never actually be able to use all his ammo in fact)! Most importantly, like all of the (admittedly not very many) Goblin Cult characters, Green Goblin has Flight, which is something which will take some getting to grips with I think.

I do wish they had added a couple more options per SMG faction (Elektra could have been obvious and easy to do with Affinity: Daredevil, and some thing for Venom and Doctor Octopus since all three had minis casts up with rules done for two of them at least), but it looks like that ship has sailed unfortunately.

SMG Painting Summary
SMG characters owned: 15
Percentage of owned characters painted: 46.7% (7 models)

Goblin Minions (SMG)

My first painted minis of 2017 are these Goblin Minions for Spider-man Miniatures Game (SMG) - they were done a week or so ago, but I had to wait for improved conidtions to spray varnish them. I wanted something nice and easy-ish to do to get some early momentum, and thought these would fit the bill. Unfortunately the casts were not great with some honking mould lines obliterating details, and a weird porosity to the metal which I have encountered a couple of times previously on Knight Models minis.

In the Superior Spider-man comic books, the Goblin Minions are kids originally working for the Vulture who acts as a kind of super-villain Fagin I suppose. When he gets brutally taken down, they flee and soon join up with the disparate ranks of the Goblin Cult. They swap Vulture-themed masks and wings for Goblin-themed alternatives. As I don't read Spider-man regularly, I am not sure how far back their association with Vulture went prior to my reading them.

The colours are classic Goblin-esque and Marvel villain purple and green. The painting was mostly straightforward, except for the weird porosity which meant the paint did not seem to fully cover the metal in the odd place. The group was batch-painted for ease and speed, and I tried something new for me with the shading, which was to mix dark green into the purples, and dark purple into the green of the wings. It may need further experimentation to get used to.

I am quite some distance from building a playable SMG crew, but that is an ambition for this year. With so few models, there are not many distractions within the range, and it seriously does  not look like it will get expanded.

SMG Painting Summary
SMG characters owned: 15
Percentage of owned characters painted: 40.0% (6 models)

Spider Robots (SMG Henchmen)

These Spider Robots are my first painted minis for the Spider-man Miniatures Game (SMG) from Knight Models, companion game to BMG (albeit with many caveats). Theoretically SMG and BMG are compatible, but time will tell (as will those caveats I mentioned).

These are not the most interesting of minis, but I set out to get something painted very quickly and these fit the bill! I tackled them as a 'speed painting' exercise which is something antithetical to my usual plodding approach, so that too was satisfying. Either way, I have started on yet another range (albeit one limited to 15 minis at present).

It will be a while before I get an SMG crew together, and it may require house-ruling allowable inclusions due to the dearth of options (especially for the Goblin Cult which I want to play first); right now, assuming 500 Rep increments, Goblin Cult could be played at 200, 250, 350 or 400 Rep, but not 300, and at 350 Rep (typical for BMG tournaments I have been to) the crew has only two models. Right now with no new releases in 11 months SMG seems dead in the water, but they have updated the rules document for it recently so who knows if there will be more SMG models (as opposed to ports from MUMG)? Well Knight Models do, but of course they are not saying either way.

SMG Painting Summary
SMG characters owned: 15
Percentage of owned characters painted: 20.0% (3 models)