Painted Acolyte Iconward

This is an Acolyte Iconward, one of the HQ options for Genestealer Cults in Warhammer 40,000. Since we’ve generally only played very small games of 40K lately the Iconward has been my Warlord and got a special gun for his troubles – the Oppressor’s Bane which really turns on everyone else’s shooting by effectively guaranteeing a Crossfire marker on my target of choice. The main trick for the Iconward has been that he allows recursion for nearby Core units so if I can avoid losing the entire Neophyte unit in one round then I can bring back all of the interesting weapon teams and have another round of attacking. Interestingly, this rule also allows recursion for units that don’t have it natively so I’ve been able to bring back dead bikers from time to time too.

The Iconward got the same treatment as the Neophytes in terms of colour scheme but I did spend a bit longer tidying up the more noticeable imperfections in the paintjob. I wondered about whether to branch out from blue and yellow for his flag (icon, I suppose) but eventually decided that introducing a wider palette wouldn’t really be any improvement. The blueish skin works rather better here as Acolytes are more obviously alien than the otherwise generally rather human-looking Neophytes.

Next on the painting table: Drax The Destroyer.

Marvel Crisis Protocol tournament report: Not Quite Halloween Heist 2 22Oct2022

Once I again I took the train from Edinburgh to Stirling so I could play a Marvel Crisis Protocol tournament at Common Ground Games. This time I was accompanied by Gareth, Simon and Stephen; I always like to travel with friends and enjoy chatting about our plans and rosters on the way.

Characters: (10)
—Thor, Prince of Asgard (Thor Odinson) Threat: 5
Enchantress (Amora) Threat: 4
Heimdall, The All-Seeing (Heimdall) Threat: 3
Loki, God of Mischief (Loki Laufeyson) Threat: 4
Skurge, the Executioner (Skurge) Threat: 3
Valkyrie (Brunhilde) Threat: 3
Bullseye (Benjamin Poindexter) Threat: 2
Hood (Parker Robbins) Threat: 3
Winter Soldier (James “Bucky” Barnes) Threat: 3
—Malekith The Accursed (Malekith) Threat: 7

Tactics: (10)
Odin’s Blessing
Rainbow Bridge
Brace for Impact
Patch Up
Hood’s Gang
Meet My Executioner
Sibling Rivalry
Mission Objective
Dark Reign
Midnight Phantasmagoria

Secure Crisis: (3)
Deadly Meteors Mutate Civilians (Threat: 17)
Mutant Madman Turns City Center Into Lethal Amusement Park (Threat: 18)
Portals Overrun City With Spider-People! (Threat: 18)

Extract Crisis: (3)
Fear Grips World As “Worthy” Terrorize Cities (Threat: 18)
Struggle for the Cube Continues (Threat: 17)
Spider-Infected Invade Manhattan (Threat: 17)

My roster this time is Asgard, and there are two reasons to pick them. Firstly, I somewhat recently picked up Heimdall and Skurge from the mighty Panzer Harris and I was excited to use them. Secondly, I ended up getting Malekith from Allan (which is a long and different story); since Malekith is The New Hotness and I figured that he fits well into Asgard I made my selection. My very first rosters included all the Asgardians and I’ve gradually removed the ones that I found I never actually played and added in a few splash characters. Notably I like Hood for some cheeky healing and much needed mystic attacks and Winter Soldier (and Bullseye) for hanging around on a back point and utilising their long range. In the end I added Dark Reign to my tactics cards as I have enough Cabal affiliated characters that I could actually run Malekith as my leader if required, but (spoiler alert!) I didn’t have any intention of actually doing so. As it happens, I’ve only played one game with Malekith so far and he really needs to do a lot to pull his substantial weight in a team, so unless we ended up in a no-brainer situation for him I was sort of using him more as a threat than having much intention of putting him on the table today.

Game 1: Steve playing Asgard

I was really looking forward to this test – Steve is a very strong player and his roster has a lot of overlap with mine, though he’s leaned much harder into the Cabal cross-over. I was almost certain that he would play Malekith into me so I was quite glad to draw a reasonably wide scenario; my worry was that Malekith would find the Skrull and force me to deal with him for it. I took Skurge and Enchantress partly so I could use their Meet My Executioner card and have another way to reduce the very high number of throws I was expecting. I won priority and picked Secures.

Extraction: Mutant Madman Turns City Centre Into Lethal Amusement Park
Secure: Skrulls Infiltrate World Leadership
Threat: 18
My team: Thor, Enchantress, Heimdall, Skurge, Hood
My cards: Brace For Impact, Hood’s Gang, Meet My Executioner, Odin’s Blessing, Patch Up
Steve’s team: Thor, Valkyrie, Winter Soldier, Malekith
Steve’s cards: Advanced R&D, Escort To Safety, Mission Objective, Odin’s Blessing, Patch Up

Round 1: A lot of this game is going to come down to how soon the Skrull turns up, and how far away from Malekith it is at the time. I start out by sending Enchantress up on the left; she flips the Trap but doesn’t find the Skrull. Winter Soldier flips his Trap and shoots her for no effect and Skurge follows his mistress’s lead on my right. Valkyrie plays Advanced R&D to give her power out to Thor and Malekith. Heimdall fails to find the Skrull on the left. Steve’s Thor uses For Asgard but fails to hurt Skurge so Hood plinks a couple of wounds off him. Malekith charges into Skurge and throws him into Hood. Thor throws his hammer at Malekith; it’s trivial for him to remove the Shock condition but I could possibly add more conditions depending on how the game goes and he can’t get rid of them all. The score is 2 – 1 to me.

Round 2: No Skrull so far which is overall OK by me. I think that I can overwhelm Winter Soldier and (probably) Valkyrie on the left and start coming across to support the rest of my team; I just need them to hang on in the face of Malekith. In the worst possible activiation for me Malekith dazes both Skurge and Thor, then finds the Skrull and finishes up by flipping my near right Trap. Oh dear. Hood shoots him for not much effect, mainly so that he’ll actually get an activation before Thor probably dazes him too. Steve surprisingly activates his Thor next, throwing Mjolnir at Hood and then strolling back to flip the rear right Trap. Heimdall continues my run of dice for this turn by teleporting to Winter Soldier, failing to hurt him, failing to flip the Trap and then immediately being dazed in return. Good work Heimdall. Enchantress shows him how it’s done by dazing Winter Soldier and taking that point despite only rolling two dice for it. Finally Valkyrie flips my back left Trap. The score goes to 6 – 3 to Steve.

Round 3: I need to get that Skrull out of Malekith’s hands, otherwise the game plan remains the same; at least I get to go first this time after the disaster of last turn. Thor frustratingly leaves Malekith on a single wound but does at least daze Steve’s Thor by repeatedly throwing Malekith into him. Malekith KOs Skurge despite my using both Brace for Impact and Odin’s Blessing to try to keep him in the game. Heimdall has clearly learned from his mistakes last time and KOs Winter Soldier. Valkyrie hurts Heimdall and Enchantress stroll back to reflip my back left Trap. Finally Hood only needs to put a single wound on Malekith to daze him but can’t manage it. At least he does flip back my Trap on that side. The score goes to 9 – 6 in Steve’s favour and Malekith gets dazed by the Trap. Evidently this was so exciting that I forgot to take a photo.

Round 4: This is going to be quite tight – on the left Heimdall and Enchantress should be able to deal with Valkyrie but I’m expecting to take a lot of damage over on the right especially as Malekith will go first and almost certainly collect the Skrull again. Malekith does indeed collect the Skrull but Steve’s dice go a bit cold and he doesn’t manage to drop either of my character over there. I figure that it’ll take a lot longer for Steve to chew through Thor’s wounds than Hood’s so I go with the little chap first. He plays Hood’s Gang and unloads into Thor, again annoyingly leaving him fully powered up and on one wound. I am the new Adam. Steve’s Thor hurts mine but doesn’t drop him. Heimdall goes back to his old ways and bounces uselessly off Valkyrie; she KOs him in return and flips that Trap. My Thor pours damage into Malekith but can’t finish him; he does KO his evil twin by throwing Malekith into him yet again. Hood uses some of the massive amount of power he’s amassed to Patch Up Thor. Enchantress retakes the back left Trap; she’s doing a great job for only rolling two dice at it each time.  We go to 12 – 9, still in Steve’s favour.

Round 5: This is going to come down to dice – if either Thor or Hood can still stand after Malekith finishes with them I’m fairly sure that I can drop him and see out the game. Otherwise it’s probably curtains for me. Malekith KOs Thor and dazes Hood, so that’s pretty much the end of it I reckon. Enchantress does at least daze Valkyrie. The score goes to 15 – 12 to Steve.

Round 6: I just need to get lucky here. Malekith’s dice desert him (deserved in my opinion after the rolls he had last turn) and he leaves Hood alive on one – crucially all the nearby terrain had already been destroyed so there was nothing to throw him into. Enchantress can’t hurt Valkyrie so she charges back in. However Steve gets greedy and uses up all her power trying to daze Enchantress and doesn’t quite pull it off so Valkyrie can’t afford the power to throw Enchantress off the point. She fails to roll the two successes needed to flip that Trap. So all the luck has been on my side this turn but I need it to continue as I still have to put one more wound on Malekith (allowing Hood to collect the Skrull) and flip the point with only two dice. We roll it out… Malekith goes down… the Trap gets flipped… my dice have saved me! The game now ends at 17 – 16 to me.

Wow, what a nailbiter of a game! I will admit to having been extremely fortunate with the dice in the final round, but overall I think that the luck was pretty average between us. I could have made my life a bit easier in the final round by transforming Hood into his demon form after he survived Malekith’s last attack so he could charge back to being relevant, but it didn’t end up mattering. Steve played his game very smoothly and I do love to get a game which is as close as this. Looking back I wonder if I should have not attacked Valkyrie with Enchantress in round 5 so I would have had priority; as it turned out it wasn’t needed but it would certainly have made my nerves a bit steadier!

Game 2: Steve playing Web Warriors

For the second game I’m up against another Steve, this time playing Web Warriors. I lose Priority and we end up with the highly thematic combination of Spider-Infected and Spider Portals. I bring in Loki this time as my own experience playing Web Warriors is that they can sometime struggle to generate enough power to use all of their cool superpowers and the Loki tax is quite annoying for them.

Extraction: Spider-Infected Invade Manhattan
Secure: Portals Overrun With Spider-People
Threat: 17
My team: Thor, Loki, Valkyrie, Bullseye, Hood
My cards: Brace For Impact, Hood’s Gang, Odin’s Blessing, Patch Up, Sibling Rivalry
Steve’s team: Spider-Man (Miles Morales), Black Cat, Moon Knight, Venom, Black Panther
Steve’s cards: All Webbed Up, Aunt May’s Wheat Cakes, Disarm, One-Two Punch, Uneasy Allies

Round 1: There are a lot of scenario points that need power spent to deal with them out there, and I have more power to spend on them, so my plan is just to look after scenario first and look for attrition second. Black Panther flips the left Portal and gets places forward. Hood comes to him but does no damage before picking up a Spider-Infected. Bullseye hits Black Panther but fails to flip my home Portal; helpfully Venom does the same on his side of the board. Loki takes my Portal but gets moved back so he’s not in range to get the central Spider-Infected. Moon Knight and Black Cat collect a Spider-Infected. Thor does the same and flips the right Portal before being placed behind the building, so Spider-Man comes in and flips it right back. Valkyrie charges Black Panther hoping to score at least one power to try the Portal on that side but does no damage. The score is 4 – 3 in Steve’s favour.

Round 2: Well, the scenario plays didn’t go as well as I had hoped but I still think that it’s my best move to staying ahead here so I’m mainly going to be going for points over attrition. However Black Panther is in quite a vulnerable position close to Hood so if the opportunity presents itself to daze him then I’ll definitely need to take it. Moon Knight and Thor get moved by the Spider-Infected; at this rate Thor is going to spend the whole game walking back into position. Black Panther tickles Valkyrie and pushes her off the point and Hood dazes him. Moon Knight takes the back Portal and Valkyrie takes the one on the left as no-one is really in range to do much fighting at this point and we’re both playing a bit cagily. Venom commits to the centre and hurts Bullseye who uses Parting Shot to move toward the far Portal; sadly in his own activation he fails to flip it – two failures from two. Spider-Man throws the poor villain off the point. Loki walks over and takes that Portal and Black Cat fails to flip it back. Thor retakes the one on the right. The score goes to 10 – 7 to me.

Round 3: I’m quite well set to hold scenario points here as I have all of the Portals so I mainly just need to keep controlling the Web Warriors and avoid them taking too much off me. Thor again gets moved by the Spider-Infected and ends up right in the middle of the scrum. Venom plays Uneasy Allies and smacks him for about 15 damage so I use Odin’s Blessing. A second attack uses One-Tow Punch and leaves my leader on one health – that’s my line! I feel that I have to go with Thor now as he’s fully powered up, so he throws Venom into Spider-Man and dazes the little chap before getting a timely Patch Up from Loki; Thor then uses For Asgard to Stagger Black Cat. She decides to run away with her Spider-Infected. Valkyrie rolls crazy dice to KO Black Panther. Moon Knight would need to flip a Portal to even stay in the game but Steve doesn’t spot this and spend his activation dazing Valkyrie. We end it there as I win without taking more actions; 16 – 10 to me.

That was a very enjoyable game and Steve was a fun opponent. I think that this is just the kind of game where the difference in experience between us meant that it was always going to be slanted in my favour. It was quite fun to try to play more of a control and scenario game than my usual bloodthirsty attrition approach. I look forward to playing Steve again when he’s had a few more games under his belt.

Game 3: Stephen playing Web Warriors

After playing two Steves in a row I get a break with a Stephen! He’s even playing Web Warriors. I win priority and pick Secures as the extra power needed for my roster of pay-to-flip crises will be annoying for Web Warriors to deal with. Stephen chooses 18 threat this time so I go with the same team as last time except for ‘upgrading’ Bullseye to Winter Soldier for the extra threat.

Extraction: Fear Grips World As ‘Worthy’ Terrorise Cities
Secure: Portals Overrun With Spider-People
Threat: 18
My team: Thor, Loki, Valkyrie, Hood, Winter Soldier
My cards: Brace For Impact, Hood’s Gang, Odin’s Blessing, Patch Up, Sibling Rivalry
Stephen’s team: Spider-Man (Miles Morales), Amazing Spider-Man, Black Cat, Moon Knight, Venom
Stephen’s cards: All Webbed Up, Brace For Impact, Inspiring Monologue, Lethal Protector, Recalibration Matrix

Round 1: My plan last time to focus on scenario ahead of attrition seemed to work well so I’m basically going to aim for the same here; hopefully I can starve the Web Warriors of power between that and the Loki tax. That said, Hammers does lend itself to a rather fighty approach so I suspect that turn two onwards will involve a considerable amount of punching. Thor takes the Hammer on the right but fails his roll on the Portal and gets placed for his troubles. Stephen, to my huge suprrise, doesn’t just go after the left Hammer but instead throws Amazing Spider-Man into Thor for basically no effect. Valkyrie gratefully saunters up to collect the left Hammer and flips the Portal. Venom also fails to hurt Thor and Loki takes the Portal on the right while ‘sharing’ his annoying power tax as widely as possible. Hood flips my home Portal and Winter Soldier picks up the Hammer there, meanwhile Moon Knight take the far Hammer, Black Cat takes back the right Portal from me and Spider-Man flips the last one on Stephen’s side. The score is 5 – 3 to me.

Round 2: That felt quite fortuitous, and Stephen has concentrated all his characters in one corner. Obviously on the one hand this is quite bad for me as it means that Thor and Loki and pretty heavily outgunned on that side, but the good news is that it means that I can swing in with the rest of my team and keep scoring the left and home Portals until Stephen gets round to them. Thor dazes Black Cat and draws out Brace For Impact by throwing that huge annoying building. Venom pulls in Winter Soldier and leaves him on one wound after I use Brace For Impact on the throw that would have finished him off. Loki reflips the Portal on the right and uses Patch Up on Winter Soldier for a rather anaemic two health. Amazing Spider-Man dazes Loki in return but actually I’m fine with this as it turns on his even more annoying aura. Winter Soldier moves over and unleashes a Red Fury into Amazing Spider-Man for no damage after all three attacks are done. Moon Knight joins the scrum on the right but fails to flip the Portal there because of the crazy number of characters contesting it. Hood shoots a few wounds into Spider-Man and then gets thrown away for his troubles. I don’t think that Valkyrie has the speed to get over and flip the unprotected far Portal which I want her to do so instead she moved and charges Spider-Man. Venom uses Lethal Protector to take the hit instead. The score now goes to 11 – 5 in my favour.

Round 3: I’m in position to see this game out if I can stay even on attrition so I’m switching here to fighting the Web Warriors. Black Cat applies a very short-lived Stagger to Thor, pinches his Hammer and runs off. Valkyrie throws Miles into Venom and attacks the latter, dazing both; she then walks over to take the far Portal. Moon Knight has a good turn, dazing Winter Soldier to collect his Hammer and then flipping the Portal on the right. Thor dazes him in return and takes the Hammer back. I make a mistake here and go after Amazing Spider-Man with him when I should have retreated, so Amazing Spider-Man dazes him easily and picks up both Hammers. He follows that by punching Loki for seven damage so I’m glad to be able to play Odin’s Blessing to keep him in the game. Loki flips the right point back to me and we finish at 16 – 8.

I’ve enjoyed every game I’ve played with Stephen and this was no exception – it’s been great watching him get better at playing MCP with each event. I think that the game was overall quite even but Stephen made a mistake in letting me have the left Hammer and Portal then compounded that by never really coming out of the far left quarter – this meant that I just had free points coming in each turn from the two Portals that were out of his reach without having to worry about defending them. I got a bit too bloodthirsty with Thor at the end but I’m not certain that I was keeping him alive anyway against Amazing Spider-Man and I had enough points coming in from elsewhere that I could afford that error.

Game 4 – Grant playing Avengers

For the final game I was paired up with Grant who’s been very consistently performing well at events here since they started being run so I knew that I was in for quite a stiff challenge. He’d also just seen off Gareth in the previous round. I won priority so picked Secures again to keep the power pressure on my side but we ended up also playing Cubes so there would be no shortage of power going round. I was torn between Enchantress and Loki and picked the former mainly to accompany Heimdall so I can do the Siren’s Call into Forfend trick for some extra attacks.

Extraction: Struggle For The Cube Continues
Secure: Mutant Madman Turns City Centre Into Lethal Amusement Park
Threat: 18
My team: Thor, Enchantress, Heimdall, Hood, Winter Soldier
My cards: Brace For Impact, Hood’s Gang, Odin’s Blessing, Patch Up, Rainbow Bridge
Grant’s team: Captain America (Steve Rogers) [leader], Black Widow, Captain America (Sam Wilson), Deadpool, Hawkeye, Ms Marvel
Grants’s cards: Avengers Assemble, Bird of Prey, Brace For Impact, Disarm, Escort To Safety

Round 1: With Cubes on the table I need to stay in the scoring early so I’m planning not to do much attacking in the first round again. If I can get an early lead on the Cubes I’ll be in a good place to maintain parity for the rest of the game. I also am unlikely to lose priority as I’m playing five wide vs Grant’s six so I can afford to be a bit gallus when the fighting starts. Thor gets us underway collecting the Cube which is nicely positioned behind the trees. Captain Sam makes an extremely cheeky move, charging right across the table to pick up the near left Cube but fails to hurt either Enchantress or Heimdall in the process. Enchantress is clearly unimpressed and one-shots the poor chap, collecting the Cube fragment and flipping that Trap. Hawkeye flips the far left Trap but fails to hurt Enchantress, who is living rather a charmed life so far. Hood collects my near right Cube and Ms Marvel take the opposite one before gently tickling Hood from afar. Winter Soldier fails to hurt her in return and also frustratingly fails to flip the near right Trap. Deadpool picks up the last Cube and Captain Steve flips the last Trap. The score is perfectly balanced, as all things should be, at 4 – 4.

Round 2: Enchantress uses Siren’s Call to move Captain Sam into a nice line for a beam (Heimdall uses Forfend but does no damage) and dazes Deadpool on the way. Captain Sam uses Bird of Prey to daze her right back and steal that Cube along with the one dropped by Deadpool. Thor dazes Captain Steve who was using Bodyguard to keep Ms Marvel safe and then throws Ms Marvel away. She comes back to hurt Hood who transforms into demon Hood out of range of a second attack. He charges into Black Widow, does nothing useful and then gets dazed by the Counterstrike, which is rather annoying. Heimdall fails to hurt Hawkeye and fails to flip the nearby Trap, but helpfully Hawkeye is just as inept in return. Winter Soldier dazes Ms Marvel, the score goes to 9 – 7 to Grant. That was a turn of rather disappointing dice, and failing to flip Winter Soldier’s Trap in turn one has cost me quite dearly.

Round 3: Ms Marvel throws everything she’s got at Thor who has to use Brace For Impact and Odin’s Blessing to stay in the game. He dazes Black Widow and flips that Trap; Grant uses Escort To Safety very cleverly to make me waste the rider from For Asgard. Deadpool uses Maximum Effort into a Dance Party which takes Heimdall to one wound, but clearly the Asgardian is determined to make up for last turn’s total failure as he casually KOs Deadpool full health. It’s better to be lucky than good! Hood zaps an Empowered Dark Lightning into Captain Steve, doing nothing to him but hurting Ms Marvel with the splash damage. Hawkeye dazes Heimdall then Enchantress finishes off Captain Sam. Captain Steve dazes Thor and flips the Trap there yet again. Winter Soldier collects the dropped Cube and flips back the far Trap. The score is now 14 – 11 to me.

Round 4: There is a lot still to play for here in terms of points but I think that I have a big enough attrition lead overall that I can probably hang on just by not letting things get out of hand on the left. Ms Marvel throws Thor at Winter Soldier – he rolls heroically to dodge all the damage but her attacks daze him. Enchantress does the Siren’s Call and Forfend trick with Heimdall to KO Hawkeye. Grant passes (which was rather surprising to me) but does play Disarm on Hood, making him a very sad villain indeed. Thor makes it irrelevant by rolling the like the god he is – he throw Black Widow into Ms Marvel to KO the Inhuman, smacks Captain Steve to trigger the throw into Black Widow (which KOs her) and finishes up by KOing Captain America. The game ends at 23 – 11.

What a fun game! I think that we both had moments where our cool stuff just worked but the dice were definitely in my favour at the end. Full credit to Grant for being a gentleman about it, I’m sure I would have been less serene after watching Heimdall and Thor kick off to KO five characters between them. One of my criticisms of MCP is that it can be quite swingy with few dice being rolled each time and it only takes a couple of key rolls to really change the outcome of a game.

After winning all four games I get to come in first place, which is rather gratifying even if I do have to thank some extraordinary luck a few times for saving me. Of course, winning is a small cherry atop the very large cake which is playing four games. Thanks to Steve, Steve, Stephen and Grant for four very enjoyable games of Crisis Protocol, and as always thanks to Allan for running the show.

Painted Loki, God of Mischief

Here is Loki for Marvel Crisis Protocol – Loki, God of Mischief to give him his full in-game title. Unlike most of the other Asgardians, Loki is a very subtle character in game. He has no throws and his attacks are rather anaemic. However, he has an ability to increase the power cost of enemy superpowers within a massive range four which can be totally back-breaking in some match-ups. On his injured side, this ability also prevents enemies from exploding their Critical results too, so it’s like applying Hex to a huge chunk of the board. I’m still trying to get to grips with Loki on the tabletop as he’s very dependent on positioning and also is borderline useless against teams that aren’t relying on their superpowers to get work done. I think that probably I need to consciously just have Loki in every team for a serious run of games until I can work out how to get the best out of him. One of my favourite things is that he shares a Tactics Card with Thor to let the latter throw Loki around; it’s called Sibling Rivalry but it’s clearly meant to be ‘Get Help’ from Thor: Ragnarok.

Loki’s miniature is just a lovely sculpt with the right level of disdain on his tiny face. I was almost surprised that AMG put the little horns on his hat; of course they’re iconic but they’re also a bit of a pain for assembly and even in comics I don’t think that he always wears that exact version of his hat. I had a few moments on Loki of ‘what is that bit supposed to be’ – in particular he has some odd texture bits at the end of his sleeves that I ended up painting as metal but are perhaps meant to be something else. My only other critique is that Loki’s right foot is actually sculpted into the weird swishy magical thing on the ground so it’s not possible to just leave it out unless you fancy sculpting a new foot for him, which obviously I didn’t. Still, it gave a nice opportunity to widen the colour palette for the miniature so perhaps I shouldn’t complain.

Next on the painting table: Acolyte Iconward.

Marvel Crisis Protocol video battle report: Asgard vs Guardians of the Galaxy

This is a video of the second of four games of Marvel Crisis Protocol I played with Allan (of Midlife Crisis Protocol fame) at Common Ground Games in Stirling. The games were several weeks ago now but it takes him some time to do the editing and so on before the posting. All credit to Allan for making the video, I just got to enjoy a fun game.

Painted Steelhead Arcanist

This is a Steelhead Arcanist for Warmachine Mercenaries. He’s the same sculpt and has the same rules as the other one I painted a few years ago, but for some reason I never put him back in a box when I took a break from the game. As a result the Arcanist has been staring longingly at me from the side of my painting table until I finally cracked and put some paints on him. It’s not my finest work – especially the eyepatch which I just couldn’t get to work at all – but I’m very glad to have him off the ‘to do’ pile.

Next on the painting table: Loki, God of Mischief.

Painted Hawkeye

This is Hawkeye, another of my miniatures for Marvel Crisis Protocol. Perhaps not surprisingly, Hawkeye’s main trick is that he has the longest ranged attacks in the game. This is probably just as well as his defences and health are both pretty rubbish so staying away from attackers is really his only way to stay safe. Hawkeye has good play on any Crisis that involves someone sitting on a back objective as he can still contribute perfectly well while doing that. In addition to his damage output, which is fairly average for his cost, Hawkeye can stick some really annoying conditions on his victims; I sometimes think that this is more useful than any wounds he’s able to plink off.

The MCP mini for Hawkeye is closer to his modern costume, which in some ways is a blessing as his purple tabard from the 70s and 80s was pretty ridiculous even by the standards of that time. Although I quite like the no-nonsense approach of his costume in the MCU I wanted to keep with tradition a bit and include a decent chunk of purple on Hawkeye along with the otherwise rather utilitarian look. Overall I’m pretty happy with how he’s turned out, though I just can’t get the shades to look good no matter what I do with them.

Next on the painting table: Steelhead Arcanist.

Painted Green Goblin

This is Green Goblin, the leader of the Spider-Foes affiliation in Marvel Crisis Protocol. He, along with Star-Lord, were the biggest beneficiaries of the AMG rules changes from the end of last year; in particular Green Goblin’s leadership ability went from being almost worse than useless to a rather cheeky increase in damage for almost all characters. I’ve enjoyed playing Green Goblin a lot as he’s very mobile and hands out conditions very easily with his builder. He’s also one of the characters who changes most when flipping his card, moving from a mobile skirmisher to unhinged lunatic in a manner most befitting of his personality swings in the comics.

I absolutely loved painting Green Goblin, especially that delightfully characterful face. I remember once reading that early comic writers often used green and purple as signifier colours for baddies (er, and also Hulk) and Green Goblin is the pinnacle of that trope since he’s entirely made up of both of those colours. I thought about making the exhaust from the glider have some hints of orange in the middle as though it was more like a jet engine but I eventually decided that I preferred it just in grey.

Next on the painting table: Hawkeye.

Marvel Crisis Protocol video battle report: Asgard vs S.H.I.E.L.D

For the first time ever, I got to appear on a YouTube video battle report. I got play four games on video at Common Ground Games, of which this is the first – my Asgard vs Allan’s S.H.I.E.L.D

This is video is courtesy of Allan from Midlife Crisis Protocol; all credit to him for the video editing and other technical stuff. If you’ve ever wondered what my hands look like, this is the moment for you!

Painted Kraven the Hunter

This is Kraven the Hunter, one of Spider-Man’s classic villains as imagined for Marvel Crisis Protocol. Kraven is a bit of an oddity in the game in that he has two builder attacks and no spender but he has plenty of ways to use that power. He’s pretty easy to deal with and certainly doesn’t want to get into a mix with a lot of enemy characters and he often struggles into a big brawler as he has no crowd control at all. I’ve enjoyed him most out on a flank where he can bully other characters in his weight class. Kraven also has access to Fearful Symmetry, the most hilarious and useless tactics card in the entire game. If Kraven can personally KO Peter Parker then you can take him off the board and replace him with your own Spider-Man as he dons the costume. I’ve never taken this card but I don’t think I’ve ever actually been in a position where I could have used the card even if I’d somehow been able to access it as a free sixth card. Credit to AMG for putting such a mental card into existence.

Painting Kraven was a lot of fun, and it provided a very interesting contrast to the bright colours of other superheroes since he’s meant to be wearing animal pelts. I spent a fair bit of time doing the leopard rosettes on his tabard – I was initially worried that they were too bold and tried to make them more muted but now that I look again I wonder if I overcorrected. For some reason I also found Kraven’s face fascinating and spent ages on it; the result works just fine at tabletop distance but is a bit too Groucho Marx when viewed in super close-up photos like this.

Next on the painting table: Green Goblin.

Painted Achilles Ridgerunner

This is an Achilles Ridgerunner, a fast attack choice for my Genestealer Cult army in Warhammer 40,000. It helpfully works just like it looks like it ought to – very fast with one big death cannon strapped on the back. So far we’ve only being playing very small games with this force so it’s proven quite annoying for my friends to bring down; however I think that this will not last when we move up to bigger points values and I’m facing some competent anti-tank weapons. Nonetheless it has been fun kiting away from things and zapping away with the attached mining laser.

I wanted to keep the overall blue and yellow scheme for this force and I’m not sure that it works so well with such a big object. I like it thematically that the Ridgerunner is high visibility since it’s meant to be a utilitarian industrial vehicle rather than a purpose built war machine, but I don’t like the way that it looks like a big yellow brick. I think if I paint another one of these I’ll try to break up the yellow with more blue markings. Otherwise I’m really satisfied with the results here, especially considering that I’ve been deliberately trying to keep to quick and dirty paint jobs on the GSC forces.

Next on the painting table: Kraven the Hunter.