Who is the most important Avenger?

 Probably Hawkguy:

He’s been sat half painted for years, but watching the current Hawkeye show prompted me to get him finished. Also fun was attempting to persuade my wife that he’s called Hawkguy rather than Hawkeye…

It’s a fairly tricky sculpt to get a picture of, given how hunched over he is. On the plus side, that means you can’t really see the lack of detail on his facial features, and my attempts to make him look more human. Part of me thinks I should have replaced the bow, but I think the original lump has a charm of its own (it’s an oooold Heroclix sculpt, so he’s good and chunky)

I went old school for his colour scheme, using the 1969 Marvel Comic Annual for reference, which was my first introduction to the character:

Once he was painted, I pinned him to a base I had handily prepared some years earlier - I was making some bases for The Walking Dead figures one past Zomtober, and this one came out too tall. Looking more like a typical ‘hero rock’ rather than post-apocalyptic pavement, so while it was no good for that, got stashed waiting for the right superhero to come along.

(This picture also got posted on Instagram with a caption claiming that I’d spent hours painting the invisible man, of course).

Finishing Hawkguy brings the Tally to:

43 vs 23 = +20

and also means I’ve got a half-decent spread of Avengers now:

Although you can really see the difference in sculpting styles between old and more modern Heroclix, look how giant Hawkeye looks next to the more slender Captain America! I should probably get around to painting some baddies for them to fight too, so here’s to hoping that I find some AIM or Hydra minions in a bargain bucket at a future Salute…

Wandavision

 Well guess what I’ve been enjoying on Friday nights?

I wasn’t initially particularly fussed about watching it, but my wife insisted we give it a shot (as she is always wiser than I) and I was hooked from the first episode - as soon as it finished, I hared off to the basement to dig out some minis from various boxes of Heroclix!

The Scarlet Witch I knew I had (I was always a fan of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and so have figures of the majority of their classic members), but wasn’t sure about Vision.

After much rummaging, it turns out the only Vision figure I had was the female version (from the Ultimates?), so I found an online store with a sculpt I liked for pennies. 

Waiting for him to arrive, I started voraciously consuming back issues - definitely check out the Vision mini series if you enjoy Wandavision! I’ve since ploughed theough

Side note - when finding Scarlet Witch, I also stumbled on dozens of other figures I now want to repaint, and so was sidetracked into looking up Superhero ruleset, and also giving the X-Men movies a second chance...

Looking at the Vision figure next to Wanda, you can tell that they’re from opposite ends of the release schedule - Wanda is I think from the first set, so I’ve probably had her for somewhere between fifteen and twenty years (terrifyingly), and her proportions are somewhat more cartoony than the computer sculpted Vision from a more recent release, with his slender limbs and sensibly proportioned noggin!

Ugh, I went way too hard with a soft tone wash after basecoating Vision’s cape, and the following weeks were just an exercise in trying to undo that. Part of me thinks I should have just stripped it and started again, but after a certain point it feels like you’re in too deep!

And yes, these two fairly simple paint schemes took weeks to compete, mostly because I wanted to paint them whilst watching Wandavision (thematic!) but hampered by the fact that I was paying attention to the screen too much to do any actual painting when it was on...

Done now though, and taking the Tally to:

6 vs 18 = -12

With only one more episode to go, how do we think it is going to end? 

America! Fuck Yeah!

"Comin' again to save the motherfuckin' day, yeah…"

A bit of a random one, this. It's something plucked half finished out of the painting queue that I worked on here and there whilst waiting for washes to dry on other things, mostly. He's a repainted Heroclix figure, so the facial detail is almost non-existant, but I'm passably satisfied with how the shield turned out, so there's that. After much deliberation, I went for a reddish leather effect on his gloves and boots, as a sort of halfway-house compromise between the movie style and the classic comic costume.

Finishing him means I now have a bevy of finished Avengers - but no one for them to punch... I do have a classic style Hawkeye eyeing me from my painting desk awaiting undercoat though, so who knows, you might see some more Avengin' types in the near future...

Tally:
34 vs -46 = +80

You wouldn't like me when I'm angry...

Before I start any new projects or models, I thought I'd have a crack at finishing off a couple of the miniatures currently sat half-painted on my paint palette. Hence, one Hulk:

Originally started when the wife and I made a concerted effort to watch our way through the Marvel Cinematic Universe, after knocking out Iron Man and Thor my enthusiasm waned as I focused more on other projects.

I'd considered painting his trousers classic purple, or something at least a little brighter to give some more visual interest to the figure, but a quick google image search of stills from the first Avengers filmed revealed that he's wearing black trousers, so black trousers he got.

The Hulk's a bit of a big lad, towering over most other figures, which doesn't make for the easiest figure to take pictures of:

But yes, she does have a face! The Hulk was mostly finished when I came back to him, mostly just needing his base and pupils painting to get his to this stage of completion!

I even painted the back too, where you'll find surprisingly detailed musculature - Heroclix figures are often quite nicely detailed, if you can pick out the good ones!

Finishing the Hulk brings the Tally to: 

25 vs 131 = -106

Alas, poor Captain America (the last of the four modern Heroclix figures I'd prepped) may never see the light of day, although my brother-in-law has just lent us the second Avengers movie, so you never know...

It's been a little while...

...but I've managed to get a couple of bits finished this week! Well, last week really, this post has been sat in my drafts for a little while (8 days now I think?) getting a sentence or two added here or there before being relegated back to limbo! 

These minis were mostly sat near-finished on my painting palette, and it was mostly just a case of finishing their basing before snapping a quick pic!

First of all is a figure that I won on a Facebook competition, 'Big T' from Pigeon Guard Games. I realise that I hadn't added him to the tally yet (presumably as the original plan was to paint him fairly quickly and get him posted up ASAP), so I'll get that amended at the end of this post!

He's a lovely little figure, and potentially the cleanest resin cast I have ever worked with, and will join my band of generic survivor types to get drafted to fight zombies, fungus men or intelligent apes as I see fit! He also came with an alternate hand holding a cigar, which I'll have to see about finding a use for!

A while back (as I may or may not have mentioned on here) the wife and I were working our way through the Marvel movies (as previously we hadn't watched most of them because I am a terrible geek that hates adaptations of everything and it takes me a while before I settle down enough to enjoy such things on their own merits - ridiculous, I know) and so I ended up painting some more Marvel heroes:

Iron Man! By the third film it's really a case of Tony Stark just saying 'fuck it I'm going to blow holes in my enemies I've had enough of this'

Thor! Terrible sculpt if you look at it for too long, but nice enough at arms length or on the tabletop!

Further proof of how long this post has been sat in Drafts, when I started it I (like so many others) had caved and bought an issue of White Dwarf as for the first time in an age it came with a free man:

I may base him up on a square base just to set fire to the internet...

Interestingly, I popped back to Games Workshop (or 'Warhammer', as my local branch has now been rebranded) during the week to pick up a second copy so I'd have a spare for conversion purposes (thinking maybe some sort of Space Marine Company Champion or something Inquisitorial perhaps) but it seemed they'd sold out - ah, the age old appeal of the freebie! 

So, all in this brings the Tally to:

23 vs 106 = -83

Delves in my stripping pot...

Having finally overcome my deeply ingrained (and generally unfounded) nerdrage, my wife and I have been catching up with Marvel's cinematic output (I'd previously only seen The Avengers , having decried all comic book films as a comic book fan). We've been watching them in chronological order, and we're now currently halfway through Agents of SHIELD, waiting for Iron Man 3 and Thor 2 to pop up on Netflix! As tends to happen in these scenarios, I found myself with a hankering to recreate what I'd seen in (roughly) 28mm, and so duly procured a Marvel Heroclix Avengers Movie Mini Gamefor the four sculpts within, with the intention to strip and repaint them:

Which reminded me, some of the miniatures in my stripping pot had been there for over a year, so it was probably about time to clear it out before adding anything else to it!

So, so time last February (I thought March, but the Valentines cards in the background of the next picture would suggest otherwise!) I picked up a whole bevy of Batman Heroclix from Blue Rat Games with the intention of painting up a posse or two for the Batman Miniatures Game:

Including picking up one particular Two-Face figure purely for the fact that it came with a 1:1 scale replica of Two-Face's coin, which I (should I ever manage to get a crew painted) will use to make every decision whilst playing as Two-Face!

There are some nice little sculpts in the Heroclix range (although admittedly generally not as nice as the entire range of miniatures that Knight Models has brought out in the time that these have been sat in my stripping pot), although they are sometimes hidden under thick (and goofy!) layers of paint:

Chilling. Master of fear indeed.

So, I attempted to strip them. Nail polish remover would absolutely destroy the plastic that they're made from, so I gave it a go in some Fairy Power Spray, which I'd read positive reviews of:

But nothing. Months of dunking, scrubbing, and repeating, and nothing. Frustrated, I dumped the lot into my usual stripping pot (of Surgical Spirit), where once more, they were dunked, scrubbed, rinse and repeat. Almost no change to the paint. What are they painting these things with?! As you can see, they've been in long enough that the glue holding them together has dissolved, but not the paint:

As well as the various Batman Heroclix, there were also a couple of Mage Knight sculpts that I fancied repurposing for the Dungeons and Dragons project (which I should really make a greater effort to get off the ground, what with the release date for the next edition having been announced and everythig); some Games Workshop Dwarf Slayers that you've seen in previous posts before their fragrant bath; the old Spirit Host ghost I picked up at Salute; Manfred, an old Fighter; and a mounted Eomer that I picked up as a potential base for a mounted Robb Stark conversion for the ASOIAF project.

Although I wasn't able to remove the paint from the Heroclix (which after another rinse off I'm probably just going to paint over the top of. Or throw into a fire.), they are now however exceptionally clean, and somewhat soapy smelling, leaving my stripping pot looking like this:

Into which have gone the Avengers from the start of the post, just in the off chance that their paint is somehow different from the previous releases...