Marvel Super Heroes – Children of the Ampersand

ULTRON

I finished Ultron today and although I think I could fiddle with him and add more details and highlights, I’m not going to do it. I know myself and I tend to get too obsessed with trying to make the miniature resemble the studio painted miniatures. I just don’t have that level of expertise and if I mess with a single miniature too much I end up getting distressed and I give up painting.

So I bought two Core sets of Marvel: Crisis Protocol. It has worked out because my wife likes a lot of the same characters I do, so having two of each is a godsend. It’s also fun because I can assemble on of them the way it’s “supposed” to be assembled and then play around with the other one. Or, in the case of Spider-Man and Black Widow, I have a second miniature to represent the new version of the “experienced” Black Widow vs. Agent Black Widow or Spider-Man vs. Amazing Spider-Man.

I washed the entire miniature with a mixture of Speedball Pink Soap and water, scrubbing it well to remove any chemicals. Then I used Pokorny Base Gray to basecoat the entire model, as well as, the base. Then I painted Ultron using Nolzur’s Marvelous Pigment’s Duergar Metal (which I am very happy to say resembles one of my favorite paint colors from the past called “Lucifer Bronze!) from the D&D Underdark Paint Set. I ended up having to do two coats using this color because I thinned the paint on the first coat and it did something to it to remove the metallic color. Then I picked out a few (not all!) of the areas of Ultron’s “power coils” using Mephiston Red from my Warhammer 40k Paints + Tools set.

As far as the base goes, I’m not a big fan of the tactical rocks. So I just washed it first with a watered down 2:1 ink:water mix of Liquitex Ink! Burnt Umber and then once that was dry I washed it a second time with Citadel Gryphonne Sepia wash (which is out of production but you could use Citadel Shade Seraphim Sepia.)

Then I painted the recessed pavement markers. I outlined them with Nolzur’s Marvelous Pigment’s Mithral Silver. When that was dry, I painted then inside with Nolzur’s Marvelous Pigment’s Angelic Yellow. To darken the yellow a bit, I added Averland Sunset from my GW 40K Paint + Tool set. Lastly, just to add some color, I decided to make some toxic looking acid stuff in the divet of the base. I used Citadel Color Technical Tesseract Glow.

GATOR LOKI, PAINTED

I got the chance to do some painting today so I slapped on some paints and finished up Loki.

September 22, 2021November 14, 2021 by Big Rich Categories: Marvel: Crisis ProtocolTags: Atomic Mass Games, Marvel Super Heroes 2 Comments

THANOS ENCOUNTER

I recently played through the Narrative version of the Thanos Ultimate encounter. Essentially, this is the EASIEST version of the encounter. I played my good friend “JG” who ran the Mad Titan and I played using a Crisis Team made of two rosters: Avengers and Cabal.

For Avengers I had: Captain America (Steve Rogers), The Incredible Hulk, Captain Marvel, and Ultron.

For Cabal I included: The Red Skull, Baron Zemo, Crossbones, Doctor Octopus, and M.O.D.O.K.

You can peek at the official Affiliation list (as of this posting) right here.

Basically the 36″ x 36″ table is set up as you see below:

The mission is “simple” but its not easy. There are no Victory Points scored in this game. (Usually in Crisis Protocol Victory Points are the main objective and how to score a win.) The Crisis Team made up of (this time) Avengers and Cabal had to defeat the Mad Titan.

Basically, the Crisis Team must interact with caches of energy to transfer them to pods that power a cannon in the middle of the table. Once there are at least one energy token on each pod, then the cannon can fire at Thanos. For each success scored, you place a Suppression token on him. Thanos cannot be damaged until he has at least one Suppression token, and for every three such tokens he loses a Defense die from his pool.

Thanos would win if he can either reduce the enemy team to 4 characters left standing or destroy their Stark-tech machines that power the cannon in the middle of the board. Thanos is of course very hard to kill with a lot of HP and good defense dice.

Long story short, my characters were running errands to pick up cookies and deliver them to the Stark-tech in order to power the zappy-gun.

I moved M.O.D.O.K right up to the middle of the board to run the zapper. He managed to fire the cannon once on Round 2, adding 3 Suppression tokens. This is the only time the cannon would be fired!

Cap spent his time running energy tokens from a cache to a pod during all four Rounds. He only tossed his shield once, and it didn’t score any damage.

Captain Marvel was either delivering cookies or blasting Thanos with Energy Blasts. Honestly she spent most of her time delivering tokens.

Ultron delivered cookies from the cache to the pod the entire time.

Red Skull did what he does, moving his allies around the board and helping Steve Rogers deliver cookies to the Stark tech to power the cannon. He died in Turn Four, but managed to help out with a lot of movement shenanigans before conking out.

Zemo was killed by Thanos on Turn Four, but up until that point he was doing a good job of annoying Thanos with strikes and counter-strikes. He did surprisingly well against the Titan. I didn’t realize that Bleed would be effective but it did managed to make the difference in whittling away at the big man.

Doctor Octopus was the first target of Thanos’s wrath. He was Knocked Out in Turn One and died in Turn Two. Luckily this allowed Zemo to poke, poke, poke the Titan in the meanwhile.

Crossbones didn’t do much except hold a pod point, and deliver cookies.

M.O.D.O.K. used his Psionic Blast to inflict a few damage here and there. Also, Bow To The Will of M.O.D.O.K. helped to move the Mad Titan off of points and away from the action a little.

But the real hero of the day was the Incredible Hulk! He managed to build up enough power during Turn Four to Strike Twice and Hulk Smash! twice inflicting between 3-5 damage each time (partly do to some unlucky rolls by “JG”) And using Cosmic Invigoration, Red Skull helped Hulk to activate twice in Turn Four, ultimately winning the game for the Crisis Team.

However, I should point out that it was a very close game. If Hulk had not done 3 damage with the last swing to defeat Thanos, then it is very likely that “JG” would have won with Thanos during Turn 5. Mainly because he only needed to either kill another Crisis Team member or destroy the last pod (he had blown up two already and I couldn’t manage to roll successes to fix it at all!)

It was a fun game. The win was literally down to the very last roll of the dice.

I had a lot of fun and look forward to my next game of Marvel: Crisis Protocol!

September 21, 2021September 21, 2021 by Big Rich Categories: Marvel: Crisis ProtocolTags: Atomic Mass Games, Marvel Super Heroes 2 Comments

DOC OCK IS READY

DOCTOR OCTOPUS

January 25, 2020January 30, 2020 by Big Rich Categories: Marvel: Crisis ProtocolTags: Atomic Mass Games, Marvel Super Heroes Leave a comment

Citizen V

Looking for a different look for Zemo in the Crisis Protocol game? Try the Thunderbolts.

January 25, 2020 by Big Rich Categories: Marvel: Crisis ProtocolTags: Atomic Mass Games, Marvel Super Heroes Leave a comment

Captain Marvel Outfit

This costume is an excellent reference for painting your Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers) figure from Marvel Crisis Protocol.

The following are some examples of alternative costumes I have considered painting.

One is of Star and the other is Bianary. Although not Danvers, still interesting options.

January 12, 2020January 25, 2020 by Big Rich Categories: Marvel Superheroes, Marvel: Crisis ProtocolTags: Atomic Mass Games, Marvel Super Heroes Leave a comment

DOCTOR OCTOPUS

“Hurry up and put me together you insolent fool! I must have my revenge on that Wall-Crawling miscreant!

December 11, 2019December 10, 2019 by Big Rich Categories: Marvel Superheroes, Marvel: Crisis ProtocolTags: Atomic Mass Games, Marvel Super Heroes Leave a comment

DOCTOR OTTO OCTAVIUS

Doctor Octopus (Otto Octavius) is a highly intelligent mad scientist, as most good Marvel villains. Doctor Octopus is typically portrayed as a stocky man with a bad haircut who utilizes four powerful, mechanical appendages, and is a prominent enemy and ally of the superhero Spider-Man, respectively as Doctor Octopus and the Superior Spider-Man. He has worked with the Masters of Evil, Sinister Six, and the Thunderbolts in the past. I’m excited to try out Doc Ock in Marvel:Crisis Protocol!

December 11, 2019December 10, 2019 by Big Rich Categories: Marvel Superheroes, Marvel: Crisis ProtocolTags: Atomic Mass Games, Marvel Super Heroes Leave a comment

STEALTH IRON MAN

The Stealth Armor paint job came to be because my seven-year-old demanded it. He even gave me his toy to use as a painting guide. For the Arc Reactor we used a tiny gemstone found at JoAnn Fabrics on clearance.

December 10, 2019 by Big Rich Categories: Iron Man, Marvel Superheroes, Marvel: Crisis ProtocolTags: Atomic Mass Games, Marvel Super Heroes Leave a comment

PAINTING HULK!

I enjoyed painting Hulk. As I discussed in a previous post, I used Martha Stewart Craft paints that I had picked up on clearance at a local Pat Catan’s store. You can still pick them up at Michaels if you’re interested.

I used three thin coats of Black Forest Green to build up the color on Hulk’s skin tone. When I was satisfied with the color, I painted his pants using Neutral Grey.

I finished the model by using a Chique Glow Highlighter Brush to drybrush the skin areas using Lemonade followed by Citron Green.

I finished the model by painting Hulk’s pants blue. I started with Primary Blue followed by a layer of Ultramarine Blue. I finished off with a few light washes of Citadel’s Asurmen Blue wash.

By the way, use this Paint Range Compatibility Chart when you’re mixing and matching paints!

December 5, 2019December 5, 2019 by Big Rich Categories: Marvel Superheroes, Marvel: Crisis ProtocolTags: Atomic Mass Games, Marvel Super Heroes Leave a comment

ASSEMBLE!

I have successfully assembled all of the figures from the Core Set, save for Doc Ock!

December 5, 2019 by Mad Hatter Categories: Captain America, Marvel Superheroes, Marvel: Crisis Protocol, ThunderboltsTags: Atomic Mass Games, Marvel Super Heroes Leave a comment

ULTRON, THE LIVING AUTOMATON

I have to admit that Ultron was a difficult model for me to assemble. I’m not even sure I got the leg plating put together correctly even with the assistance of the numbered assembly guide. Because I was having difficulty with the model, I altered his pose and tried to make it look like he was flying. My original intention was to still use the rubble on his base, but looking at the pose it looked more like he was executing a pirouette rather than running, jumping, or flying. After trying several poses, I decided to use two flight pegs from my bitz box and tried to make it look like he is either flying or jumping. I’m satisfied with the outcome.

December 5, 2019December 10, 2019 by Big Rich Categories: Marvel Superheroes, Marvel: Crisis ProtocolTags: Atomic Mass Games, Marvel Super Heroes Leave a comment

BASECOATS: IRON MAN AND HULK

Just in case you missed it, here’s the article about Iron Man.

I assembled Iron Man and Hulk. After allowing the glue to set overnight I was ready to start with some basecoating. The color schemes I decided to go with were (1) The Marvel Legends Hulk and (2) Stealth Suit Iron Man.

I prepped the models in my usual way, scrubbing them with a soft toothbrush and Mona Lisa Pink Soap. This helps to clean away any chemicals that might be on the plastic.

Let’s start with Hulk. I used paint from the Martha Stewart Satin line. I picked them up recently on 75% off sale at our Pat Catan’s store. So I started with a basecoat of Beetle Black on his flesh and Gray Wolf on his pants. I added two layers of Beetle Black before I decided to move on and use Seaweed which gave him a very dark green flesh tone. I ended up adding three thin layers of Seaweed by the end of the process.

When starting out, make sure to thin your acrylic paints with clean water until they have a thickness similar to milk. Don’t load your brush with too much paint at a time to keep it from flowing outside of the area you’re painting. Wipe off any excess paint from your brush on a paper towel or napkin. Using a few thin basecoats will help you to avoid obscuring too many small details.

And NOW … IRON MAN!

I planned on painting Iron Man the normal red and yellow. However, my seven-year-old son brought me his Stealth Suit Iron Man action figure and told me to use it for reference. And that’s how I ended up painting Iron Man in his Stealth Suit.

I basecoated the model with three thin layers of Beetle Black. I did this mainly because I did not want to obscure or gum up any of the tiny little details on the Iron Man model.

December 2, 2019December 1, 2019 by Big Rich Categories: Hulk, Iron Man, Marvel Superheroes, Miniature Painting, Miniatures, PaintingTags: Atomic Mass Games, Marvel Super Heroes Leave a comment

December 1, 2019 by Big Rich Categories: Hulk, Marvel Superheroes, Marvel: Crisis Protocol, ThanosTags: Atomic Mass Games, Marvel Super Heroes Leave a comment

ASSEMBLING IRON MAN

I picked up the Marvel: Crisis Protocol Core Set and started to assemble Iron Man and Hulk. I highly recommend using the assembly guide available on the Atomic Mass Games website available here. The models are roughly 40 mm in size and the game uses terrain features that are basically O scale (or gauge) or 1:48 in size.

The models are really nice. Not many lines to file down. They are “push fit” so you can test their assembly before gluing them together. Because Iron Man’s model has such small parts for the arms, I used a little box to keep them safe.

We did have one moment of panic where I dropped one of the arms on the dining room floor. My wife and I had to use a flash light to search for it on the carpet. Finding it, I decided that assembling over a tray was necessary and added the box for parts just in case.

I used Gorilla Super Glue but you can use any kind of plastic glue. When you glue the parts together make sure to hold them in place to avoid gaps that will need to be filled.