Painted Assault Intercessors

These fine ladies are Assault Intercessors for my Space Marines / Adeptus Astartes force in Warhammer 40K. They’re the spiritual successors of old-fashioned Assault Marines, though for whatever reason they don’t come with the jump packs that were the main draw for their inclusion in armies in the first place. Nonetheless, Space Marines are as tough as nails and do just fine at close quarters and melee so this loadout of pistol and sword is quite fitting. In the event that I play Death Watch, the only downside of Assault Intercessors is that they don’t fit into any Kill Teams. Luckily, recent experience is telling me that I’m utterly terrible at 40K so I’ve stopped worrying about the relative power of any of my army options and just gone with rolling the dice with friends.

I adore the dynamism of the sculpts for the Assault Intercessors; though it is true that a close friend of mine quite uncharitably (but accurately) refers to them as ‘skippies’ since they look like they’re frolicking into battle. The heads here are mostly from Shapeways and I’m really impressed with the quality of the printing; I’d recommend them for anyone wanting to mix up their GW armies with alternative heads. The paint scheme is, of course, the same as my previous Space Marines. On the one hand, I do love the look of a fully painted coherent army. But on the other, more pertinent hand, I find it a bit of a drag to paint essentially the same scheme on 50ish models. Character driven skirmish games are my preference these days for that reason among others.

Next on the painting table: Boomdakka Snazzwagon.

Painted Shokkjump Dragsta

Here is Shokkjump Dragsta number two for my Ork army in Warhammer 40,000. I have acquired a third one of these kits so I’ll have a complete Force Organisation chart slot of them once I paint the last one.

I’ve kept the same general blue colouring for this Dragsta as I have for my other Ork buggies but in an attempt to make it stand out a bit from the first one I’ve put a few of the panels in red rather than white. I’ve also make some slight changes to the build; mainly cutting off one rocket and replacing it with the firing one that was spare from the Scrapjet kit and leaving the engine intake off the front so that the poor blood bag Gretchin from the Snazzwagon kit could fit on the bonnet. I’ve really enjoyed painting these buggies; they’re very quick and satisfying to put a brush to despite how large they are.

Next on the painting table: Assault Intercessors.

Painted Black Panther

This is Black Panther for Marvel Crisis Protocol, the third member of the Wakanda affiliation that I’ve painted after Okoye and Shuri. Not surprisingly he’s the leader of the Wakandans (though he does also have Avengers affiliation) so if I’m playing Wakanda then I’m certainly taking him. Not that ‘having’ to take Black Panther in my team is any kind of hardship since he’s a mobile control tank – hard to damage, gets around quickly (and can throw himself at people for even more mobility) and can push his targets around after punching them. I find Black Panther a very fun character to play and I’m keen to spend more time using the Wakandans on the tabletop, especially since I usually find I’m putting Okoye and Shuri into A-Force teams first.

Painting Black Panther was simplicity itself since he’s almost all one colour. I painted the suit black and then gave it a pretty heavy highlight in purple to bring out the contours before hitting it with the magic of Citadel’s Nuln Oil wash. The other bling on his suit was one of the few times I’ve deviated from the card art; all that jewellery type stuff is silvery-grey on the card but it wasn’t standing out enough for me so I’ve gone with a bright yellow to pop the colours a bit more. Another disadvantage of that black suit is that it’s hard to get a decent photo of the king.

Next on the painting table: Shokkjump Dragsta.

Painted Boomdakka Snazzwagon

Here is a second Boomdakka Snazzwagon for my Orks in Warhammer 40,000. Although there are limitations on the number of repeated units per army in the game, I think I max out at 9 of each type of buggy so I’m never going to have to worry about that.

The painting is largely the same as the previous Snazzwagon, though I put more red splash colours in and less white to make it a bit more distinguishable. I’ve also mixed up some of the extraneous pieces, for example I cut of part of the roof to expose the crew, I left the poor Gretchin tied to the front off (but don’t worry, he’s going to show up later) and I mixed up the heads of the crew with some of the other kits just for a bit of variety. Ultimately the buggies still look pretty similar but at least I can feel like I’ve made an effort to keep them unique.

Next on the painting table: Black Panther.

Painted Wasp

This is Wasp (or, perhaps more accurately, these are both Wasp) for Marvel Crisis Protocol. I really enjoy the character in both comic and film forms, and in particular I would have preferred if the MCU film ‘Ant-Man and The Wasp’ was just called ‘The Wasp’ since for me the story was about her and Ghost. Luckily for me, Wasp in MCP does not disappoint and is just as dynamic as her comic appearances would have you expect. She can change size, has extra movement built in on some of her attack types, can throw scenery at people; in summary I really enjoy playing her. Like Ant-Man, she definitely doesn’t want to get stuck in a brawl. In a recent game she flew halfway across the board in a single activation, slapping Wolverine and Ghost Rider in the process and then ended up next to one of the Secure objectives. Sadly for the story, she then failed the dice roll needed to score said objective and was beaten senseless by Wolverine for her troubles… but the process was still fun.

Wasp, as with most of the other MCP miniatures I’ve painted, follows the card art colour scheme. Luckily for me, I think that the black and yellow look really works well. Wasp’s wings are provided in transparent plastic so I glued them on at the end of the painting process and hit them with a blue wash to run into the cracks. I’m really pleased with the end result and I actually think that this is a perfect outcome: a paintjob that I like on a character I love to play.

An interesting bit of trivia for comic fans. In MCP the characters have their ‘real’ names in addition to their ‘made-up’ names, and each team can only have one of each person with the same ‘real name’. For example, there is a Spider-Man (Peter Parker), a Spider-Man (Miles Morales) and an Amazing Spider-Man (Peter Parker) – in your roster you could include both Miles and Peter even though they’re both Spider-Man, but couldn’t include both versions of Peter. In this case, the interesting part is the Wasp is Janet Van Dyne (the ‘old’ Wasp from the original Avengers dating back to the 60s) while Ant-Man is Scott Lang (the ‘new’ Ant-Man taking the mantle from Hank Pym). I find it intriguing that they’ve mixed the old and new characters like that; I guess there is also the opportunity in the future to release miniatures for the other two and somehow have a team that consists of two Wasps and two Ant-Mans (Ant-Men?).

Next on the painting table: Boomdakka Snazzwagon.

Painted Ant-Man

This is Ant-Man for Marvel Crisis Protocol. He’s a really fun character to play as his superpowers revolve around changing size between his normal and small forms and using his great mobility to be in annoying places. We’ve find this dynamism highly amusing on the tabletop though he does need to make sure to use that mobility to stay out of the way of any really big hitters as he won’t last long if She-Hulk decides to swat him. Ant-Man is in the Avengers affiliation but he doesn’t get any mileage out of the Captain America (Steve Rogers) leadership so I’m currently theorising that he’ll make good use of Kingpin’s leadership in Criminal Syndicate. That’s one to test another day.

Painting Ant-Man was interesting as there are two miniatures; one to represent him at normal human size and another as a tiny form. For obvious practical reasons, the tiny form isn’t as tiny as Ant-Man regularly goes in the comics since that would just be a blank base. I tried my best to keep the suit patterns on the small version identical to the big one which was not so easy as it looks since the large one has clear delineations on the mini but the small one doesn’t. As with most of the MCP miniatures I deliberately followed the card art; it doesn’t photograph particularly well as all the colours are dark but I’m happy with the way the end result looks on the table top.

Next on the painting table: Wasp.

Painted Kult of Speed

Since I’ve painted one of each of these Ork buggies for Warhammer 40,000 I felt that it would be a good time to share a ‘family photo’. The buggies are actually pretty cheap in the game so this lot only comes out at about 500 points; for context we usually play 1000 points and I think that the tournament standard is 2000 points. This was a really entertaining project so I do have some more further down the queue. Vroom vroom!

Painted Deffkilla Wartrike

Here is a Deffkilla Wartrike which is an HQ unit for my Kult of Speed Ork army in Warhammer 40,000. Since every other buggy is (not surprisingly) classified as Fast Attack, it’s important for game reasons that this HQ option exists as almost all armies require some form of HQ. In game terms it seems to be a bit more of a second line support model than the sculpt would suggest. Not that the Warboss riding the Wartrike here is any slouch when it comes to punching things with that ridiculous glove but rather it’s not particularly hard to kill him on the return swing and he provides a lot of utility to the other buggies via the Speed Waaagh! rule which allows nearby units to advance and charge thereby extending their threat range a fair bit.

Although the Deffkilla Wartrike is a fun sculpt I think I enjoyed painting it a bit less than the other buggies. This might be because so much more of it is just plain metal rather than chassis and so I felt that it fitted better to be painted black and silver rather than a lovely bright blue. Still, it was a highly satisfying miniature to paint and being the least fun of the buggies is still a pretty high bar to meet. GW has really shown why they’re the top as far as miniatures are concerned.

The driver is taking the current pandemic very seriously, even wearing his mask when going into battle and not just when going to the shops. Truly, he is the hero we deserve.

This Gretchin gets a lot of love from me for being a cute little critter calmly doing his job while everyone around is whooping and hollering. One has to imagine that a single wrong step from the Warboss when the Wartrike goes over a bump would see him sailing off into the dust though.

The Warboss is demonstrating that he has amazing core strength and balance as he’s seemingly not holding onto anything as his Wartrike careers all over the place.

Next on the painting table: Ant-Man.

Painted Steelhead Gunners

Here are a pair of Steelhead Gunners, solos for my Mercenary force in Warmachine. Apart from their scoring utility as cheap solos, their main purpose is to support the artillery pieces in the Soldiers of Fortune theme which in my case would mainly be my Steelhead Cannons. But actually I have to say that I’ve not really found even having one of these little chaps is a very effective use of points; they improve the damage and accuracy of the Cannons but in general I’m looking to use the Cannons to knock down low-defence pieces anyway and I just don’t need more support bloat in my forces.

The sculpts for the Gunners are identical but helpfully the helmet is a separate piece and the unhelmeted head looks like just a bald head anyway so that helps them to look a bit different. The colour scheme was the same green and yellow coats as for my other Steelheads and I was pleased to gets the Gunners painted up nice and quickly. As an aside, it looks like they were sculpted by someone who has never seen a moustache up close (or maybe it’s just that, as Rhulfolk, their facial hair doesn’t grow like humans) since their moustaches grow up the sides of their noses rather than across their upper lips.

Next on the painting table: Deffkilla Wartrike.

Painted Shuri

Here is Shuri, another character for Marvel Crisis Protocol. She’s an interesting character in the game in that she’s almost purely support in a game where only each team might only have 4 or 5 per side, but I feel that her input is still very useful. Shuri brings two main things to the game. Firstly, she has a very long range attack from her Panther Gauntlets that does very little damage but pushes away anyone hit by it which is great for board control. Secondly Shuri can use her own power (which she can end up with a lot of, especially in A-Force) to grant friendly characters re-rolls in a pretty big area. So she is well suited to standing in a backfield role, helping the rest of her team and pushing the other team around into inconvenient spots.

As with the other Crisis Protocol miniatures I have chosen to go with the card art for Shuri’s colour scheme. I’m not a huge fan of the way it looks; mainly I think that I needed to put a bit more work into highlighting the blue to make it pop out more from the black. But I wanted her finished to go to a MCP gaming day out and while I theoretically could go back and do more on Shuri, the reality is that I probably never will. Shuri’s comic art seems to have some facial tattoos too, but I didn’t even attempt them; too much risk of making a mess of the work I’d already done. Like Okoye, I didn’t really know anything about Shuri until I watched Black Panther but she’s an interesting and engaging character so maybe I will pick up a run of comics if anyone can recommend a series that features her.

Next on the painting table: Steelhead Gunners.