Painted Doctor Voodoo

Here is Doctor Voodoo for Marvel Crisis Protocol. Doctor Voodoo is probably the current ‘meta bogeyman’ in that he is a very efficient brawler who is hard to take down but also has the ability to mess with scenario using his Brother Daniel superpower. I’d love to say that I’m taking the high moral ground and avoiding playing a piece which is obviously a bit too good… but I tried him out in an X-Men list last week and was impressed enough to add him to my roster for the next tournament.

Painting Doctor Voodoo turned out to be really fun. I’d never been more than vaguely aware of the character before I acquired the mini so I just went for a colour scheme based on the card art. Doctor Voodoo is a very evocative sculpt and even the ancillary stuff like the swirly smoky stuff he’s sitting on just felt really nice to work on. The face is particularly nicely sculpted, though as usual I came away with the feeling that I didn’t do it justice.

Next on the painting table: Enchantress.

Painted Myphitic Blight Hauler

Here is the second my Myphitic Blight Haulers for Death Guard in Warhammer 40,000. I’ve generally tended to run them as a pair so it’s nice to have some colours on this one, though I don’t have a lot more to say about using them on the tabletop than I did last time.

I’ve kept the painting of this Blight Hauler largely the same as the other one in that the armour is red and bronze, and the horrible fleshy bits are green. I’ve tried to switch up where I used certain colours in order to avoid having both Blight Haulers come out looking identical so for example the badge of Nurgle embossed on the front of the carapace is different. But fundamentally the painting experience was the same and I did find it quite enjoyable. I only have six more Death Guard minis in the Pile of Shame right now so hopefully I can ‘complete’ this project fairly soon.

When I first bought the Blight Haulers, for some reason I was expecting them to be much bigger than they actually are. I find these little Daemon Engines rather cute as the zoom around the table zapping fools with their various guns before trying to eat them in melee.

Next on the painting table: Doctor Voodoo.

Painted Ork Speed Freeks

Here, after much delay, is the completed army photo of my Ork Speed Freeks for Warhammer 40,000. I really enjoyed playing with this army and it was a very enjoyable project to work on and eventually finish. Of course, no project is ever truly finished and I may go back to the Orks at some point if the mood takes me. This lot is actually not even 1000 points (so less than half of a ‘normal’ army), though at the time we were playing at 1000 points so this worked for me with a few ringers to proxy for various other miniatures.

Needless to say, I couldn’t fit all of the buggies into my lightbox so I tried an outdoor photo with less-than-perfect results.

Painted Daredevil

This is Daredevil for Marvel Crisis Protocol. He’s a sort of taunt tank in the game, using his relatively high toughness to bring in multiple enemies to take him down, then when they fail to do so he punishes them with a very good area attack. On the one hand, this is pretty good as there aren’t that many area attacks in MCP and damaging multiple enemies in one action is very efficient. However, I haven’t found that Daredevil is really tough enough to reliably survive being dog-piled and so usually what happens is that he just gets decked. I definitely need to get some more games in with him to see what I’m doing wrong.

Daredevil must have been the quickest miniature I’ve painted in a long while. His suit is basically all one colour and he has only a tiny bit of skin showing; I think that I finished him off in one evening. That said, painting Daredevil was very satisfying because everything just came out exactly the way I was wanting it to. The sculpt is very clearly and noticeably Daredevil too, to the extent that it passed the ‘wife test’ (in which I show the finished characters to her and she guesses who they’re meant to be) which is perhaps more than can be said for some of the more obscure ones. My only criticism is that it’s only a matter of time before something terrible happens to his rope in transport; I’ve seen a few people take it off at the painting stage and just do Daredevil as though he’s using a baton.

Next on the painting table: Myphitic Blight Hauler (again!).

Painted Primaris Chaplain on Bike

This lady is a Primaris Chaplain on Bike, the final piece in my Adeptus Astartes (i.e. Space Marines) collection for Warhammer 40,000. She’s thematically linked with the Outriders I’ve painted up lately, at least in the sense that they’re all riding the same kind of motorbikes. Being an HQ unit, the Chaplain can be kitted out with various Relics and Warlord traits and I’ve had most success just tooling her up for pure offense and figuring that if she can get into melee and bring down something big I’ll be able to live with inevitably losing her on the counter-punch. That said, I’m not a very good player of the game so probably an different approach would be far better!

I absolutely loved painting the Chaplain. For one, she’s a blinged-up murderous space vicar on a motorbike and it’s hard not to enjoy such a concept. I have always had a soft spot in my heart for biker themed armies, right down to loving the original Speed Freeks formation in Epic, now some 30 years in my past. I kept the basics of the painting similar to my other Space Marines, especially the Outriders, in that she has green and white armour and a black and green motorbike. But even compared to other Space Marines, the Chaplain is covered in extra badges, purity seals, swimming certificates etc which really broke up the painting of the ‘basic’ colours and lifted the whole process for me. It’s also quite iconically 40K that one of her key bits of kit is a massive book to be carted around on the front of her bike. Now that I’m finished, I think that the main thing I would change is to spend a bit more time on her hair – particularly in the brightness of the lightbox it is too close in tone to her skin and it would really have benefitted from another round of highlights.

So with the completion of this Chaplain, I’ve now painted all of my Space Marines. Of course, all hobbyists know that such a project is never truly complete so I imagine that I’ll be picking up some more in due course. In the meantime, I’m going to try to find a way to get them all in a nice picture together for one final family photo.

Next on the painting table: Daredevil.