Phalanx

Phalanx is my third Pulp City Supreme this month (yay!), and finishing him means I have hit my planned goal for the year (more yay!) with a few months to go. Painting Phalanx also takes me to 142 painted Pulp City minis, which leaves me just 8 more short of the next milestone achievement of 150 painted minis from the range. I will probably have to commit to a big picture of them all when I get to that stage (I did something similar when I went past 100 a few years back).

Phalanx is a member of the Forgotten, forged by Hellsmith to lead the Mecha Spartans. If his body is ever destroyed, he is reborn into a Mecha Spartan shell, transforming it into his traditional form.

In game terms Phalanx is a typical Forgotten, on a 40 mm base as most of them are. He is tough and hard-hitting despite being a Support Supreme, and with cheap (Level 1) Mecha Spartans around, you can keep him in the game a long time.

I cleaned up and prepared Phalanx at the same time as Cro Mag. The painting on this one was super quick by my standards, started and finished on the same day, with a simple palette and use of washes, a bit of dry-brushing and simple highlights. That said, I am pretty pleased with how he turned out despite the fast turnaround. Not sure what my next Pulp City painting will be, although I want to get TINY! and Grimmsham done as soon as I can, and maybe White Tiger and 100 Voices too. If I get 3 more minis painted fro the range before the end of the year, then I will have exceeded my 2014 and 2015 combined output.

Phalanx
Villain, Support, Level 2, Science
40 mm

Mr. Kraken

Mr. Kraken is the 130th mini I have painted for my own Pulp City collection, and after losing a lot of painting momentum overall in the past month or so, it has been nice to get another mini finished, especially for Pulp City and more especially for the Forgotten.

The paint job was done pretty quickly simply because I needed to feel as though I had finished something. I struggled with some of the highlighting to be honest, but it is done.

As soon as we devised the concept of Mr. Kraken I knew it was a mini I would look forward to painting - who doesn't like the idea of a Lovecraftian corporate raider!

In game terms, Mr. Kraken is a Blaster whose Actions offer Damage, Mind Control and Suppress as FX. He also excels at targeting models with Trump MIND (who often will also have Trump SPIRIT, the Trait which defends against his Actions). Like all members of the forgotten, Mr. Kraken is a dangerous proposition - their downside as a team is that they are mostly Level 2 Supremes, meaning they will often be outnumbered, and they will often struggle to generate AP without good planning. His biggest weakness will be his low non-Trump AGILITY, making him a ripe target for sniper types who can stand off at good range (such as Gentleman, Ba-Boom and Trojan).

Mr. Kraken
Villain, Blaster, Level 2, Mystery
40 mm

Comte Vendredi

Comte Vendredi
Villain, Support, Level 2, Mystery 
40 mm

It has been far too long since my last painted Pulp City mini. I can only apologise!

Comte Vendredi is a minor spirit who has grasped power within the Coven, with particular mastery over the ranks of the Dead Guard. The mini depicts the tiny entity atop the shoulder of a Dead Guard host/platform.

In game terms, Comte Vendredi is a formidable and very durable Level 2 Support, especially when compared to comparable Level 2 Support models in other Factions.

I knew in general terms how I wanted to tackle Comte Vendredi as soon as I saw the mini, however when I started painting it my choice of green felt wrong, and that stalled motivation, until I over-painted the green with a different shade at a much later date, and I knew then how I wanted to proceed.

Comte Vendredi is the 120th Pulp City mini that I have painted. I have just today done a little projection of how many more minis I will need to paint to paint everything currently available now and due with the Kickstarter, plus a couple more duplicates, and it looks like I have a whopping 70 or so minis to go - let alone what future plans we have for further out! I really must start finishing more Pulp City minis much more quickly!

Wildman (New Hero Starter)

Wildman
Hero, Brawler, Level 2, Nature
40 mm 

My first Pulp City minis painted since January, and only my second of the year. That needs to change. I have now painted 118 Pulp City minis in my personal collection (some of them more than once; I have painted a further 3 for 'mini exchanges'), and by the end of the year I want that to be at least 130. I have a few part-painted so that is not beyond the realms of reasonable possibility.

Wildman is one of the new Hero Starter Set minis. The new Starter Sets have been designed to have as few parts as possible. The Hero Supremes are all one-piece, making it quick and easy to prepare them for gaming and painting. The Villain set requires only minimal assembly on two minis, and the third is one-piece like the Heroes.

Wildman himself epitomizes a lot of key design features of Pulp City: Supreme Edition. He is on a 40 mm base which has an important impact as Size Matters in SE. He is able to pool dice very well based on his base size, his Brawler Power, his movement type (Bounding), and a built-in bonus to his core Combat Action (Rending Slash), meaning when he unleashes 5 dice or more for Rending Slash he gets to use another Action called Shrug Off for no cost. He is a tough hombre.

On painting him, I wanted to keep it simple; I thought about painting a tartan pattern kilt, but knew that I don't have the skill, so settled for plain black. It meant I finished Wildman quite quickly and right now, with so many minis to paint from so many games, completing stuff is key. Anyway, another cool looking James Van Schaik sculpt which I am sure many can't wait to use in their own Teams.

Iron Train

Tony was a simple man, working on the railroad before he became a Supreme. Iron Train is the iconic defender of Pulp City, loved by crowds and his colleagues in the Heavy Metal team. Relying on his supernatural resilience granted by the armor, Tony can withstand almost anything Villains bring to the battlefield.

I promised some new pictures, and here is the first. Iron Train (sculpted by Edgar Skomorowski - Degra) was one of the earliest Pulp City minis, yet it has taken me until only the past week or so to actually finish it. It has been in the 'part-painted' queue for quite some time, and this was my second attempt (the first was dunked in the stripping bath).

I am glad that the mini is finished, and although the paint-job is not brilliant, I am quietly pleased with how it turned out. Certainly not a professional standard, but good enough for me. And of course it helps to build up my Heavy Metal forces further. I liked this mini from the outset, but when I started slapping it with one of my old 'standby' paints (GW Bolt Gun Metal) it just looked a horrible mess. That was the turning point for me to try NMM, and while I have a long way to go, hopefully I am improving here and there.

On the gaming table Iron Train is a bit of a beast. While he has a lower than average AP Allowance, this is more than made up by his Trump Traits and Skills. Basically the guy is tough as nails and only really vulnerable when his Mind or Spirit is called on.

Iron Train can dish out a lot of hurt and can take it too; he can do well standing toe to toe even against a couple of other Strength Trump foes as I recently found out to my satisfaction. In that regard Iron Train is fairly forgiving, but don't get overconfident - Gemini Y can shut him down for the Round quite easily for as little as 2 AP (3 AP if trying to make it count with a Power-Up).

One of his greatest assets is shielding his Team-mates - don't overlook his capabilities in that area; he can take the Damage - most of the time.

Stoner Hawk

Stoner Hawk's powers come from communion with the Earth, as he is able to call on the powers of stone and shape it in different forms and reinforce his body with its durability. His skin becomes covered with the sandstone and his hands turn into deadly weapons. There is a peril, though, as in the stone dwell all sorts of malicious spirits that beg him to stay inside and lull him into the sleep that never ends: the stoner slumber.

I seem to be on a run of finishing painting James van Schaik sculpts recently - no bad thing, because as I have said previously, he is among my favourites.

Stoner Hawk was a model I was a little wary of painting at first. Nothing to do with the quality of the sculpting, but instead that visually he didn't fit anything terribly familiar.

Take the Mysterious Man mini for example; even though he is a Villain, the hood and coat evokes Bruce Willis' character from the movie Unbreakable. So the obvious route is to paint that coat green (I didn't of course, but there were very specific reasons for not doing so). With the 'spandex-y' models in the range (Solar, Nuclear Jones, Harrier, Sister Bedlam etc), well the wealth of inspirations is near limitless for a comics geek like me. For a model like this, even though there is an 'studio' version painted up, until I could get my head around what I was going to do I was a bit stuck.

I settled on the grey stone rather than sandstone (from the background) simply to better fit the basing I have been doing. The red and the blue was to tie into the main colour themes of my Heroes (believe it or not, I do plan these things!), and after I realised those two choices were made, then things were clearer and it was quite quick to get painted. I just need to work on some rock formation markers to match the model.

Six Feet Under

Six Feet Under never steps back. His traumatic experience in Hellrock prison stripped the remnants of his sanity.

I finished and photographed Six Feet Under (also referred to as 6FU by some players) last week, however my camera appears to have 'died' as you may have noted from recent posts. Having photographed the mini, I was not going let that deter me. I ordered a USB SD memory card reader and voila, was able to access the pictures I had taken of Six Feet Under and Tangent.

I had started Six Feet Under at the same time as Hellsmith, planning to paint and finish both together. With both being over sized I found it slow, laborious and somewhat disheartening as I didn't seem to be progressing very fast. So I put both to one side and finished Tangent instead! Then while getting towards the end of Tangent I revisited Six Feet Under and finished him within a couple of days. Following that, I started (and quickly finished this time) a second Hellsmith with a completely different paint-scheme to the (as yet) unfinished first Hellsmith. Funny how these things work, isn't it? Anyhow, I am fairly pleased with the results for Six Feet Under. The model has had a little extra minor work since the photographs, but obviously I won't be rephotographing it imminently.

The sculpt is yet another by Jarek Smolka, who has sculpted most of my painted Pulp City minis thus far. As for gaming with Six Feet Under, well one tactic is to take him with Trail and Blood Rose and deliver 6FU as a 'melee bomb' to beat down a target. He will probably struggle to survive unsupported, but it should be brutally effective.

Father Oak

I really love this mini. I say 'mini', but that seems an incongruous description - the model is big! That said, it was harder to paint (and photograph) than I originally expected. The Father Oak sculpt is by Sergio Alonso Leon.

Father Oak is a quite literal force of nature, with no particular allegiance (he is a Hero/Villain in Pulp City terms). The model is excellent, and a superb take on a treeman. The concept was half of a winning entry into a contest run by Pulp Monsters (the people behind Pulp City).

Generally with big models that have large(er) surfaces that are not simply flat, I think they tend to be more manageable for painting. What I found with Father Oak was that I had to try to refine certain skills that I have relied on for years. I am not the world's greatest painter, but I like to think my technique is 'adequate bordering on effective' (ie you can 'tell what it is'), but I honestly found Father Oak to be more of a challenge than expected.

Not due to size, but instead due to the textures that are represented (bark, vines and robes), as well as the pallette to use. Trees are rarely just brown as such, even though we often think of them that way, which makes painting a tree or even treeman in a satisfying way something that is worth thinking about. I don't know if I am fully satisfied by the end result, but what I did was use grey as a highlight before using brown washes.

To get things started...Rook

This was an early photograph I took (I only started doing so a few months ago), so hopefully it shows a little of where I was before we get to where I am now. Rook is a big, bad bruiser of a Villain. The game pits Heroes versus Villains in the streets of Pulp City, and Rook is certainly one of my favourite models from the game. The model was sculpted by James van Schaik, who is rapidly becoming one of my favourite sculptors. Rook serves darker and more powerful forces than he (as he works for the Coven), and on the tabletop he does it pretty well.

Rook can spend all of his APs to go crazy with the Tremor Halberd or go defensive and protect any Supreme he is guarding. It takes some time to learn how to use him, but after that - Jason King (Rook) is the boss.