Wow, it's been well over a year since I've posted anything on the ol' blog. Personal life and the way of the world really brought my productivity down to a screeching halt.
But now ever since I returned from Adepticon 2022, I am in full on hobby mode once again! What started as building a team of models to play games with at Adepticon has turned into an obsession with all things Marvel Crisis Protocol.
It's been a wild few months and the hobby mojo is overflowing.
"I'll just buy this kit, because it's a diorama and I love Spider-Man...It'll be fiiiine." I said.
But the, friends were talking about playing the game at Adeption, which then turned into buying Miles and
Gwen to go along with Spider-Man, which in turn became a team of X-men and Deadpool to take to the convention. Followed by a Core box, because you know I needed the tools, dice and some extra cards in order to play at Adepticon...
And boy did that open up some flood gates. Here we are, almost three months later and I'm neck deep in Marvel Crisis Protocol, with over 50 models bought and painted. I've also put in a lot of effort to organize all of my cards with various dividers, which you can find PDF files of on the Resources page.
In the time since returning from Adepticon, I've also been in talks with my local game store about running a regular Crisis Protocol gaming group.
With that in mind, I've been working on building up multiple tables worth of terrain for game days and Now I'm also planning 4 gaming boards for events. It's going to be a long project, but I think it'll be worth it and I'm planning on documenting the progress on here to get things up and rolling again.
Let's take a look at some of the things I've gotten painted and built so far.
Apartment Building
| The first piece of terrain I painted up for Crisis Protocol was one of the official Apartment Buildings. I had bought it before Adepticon and had the idea to paint it with a copy of the Spider-Man and Miles Morales mural that is seen in the PS5 game, Spider-Man: Miles Morales. I originally hadn't planned on taking it to Adepticon, but was challenged by my friends to see if I could paint it in the week before the convention, and I did so with plenty of time to spare. This project was actually a huge boost of confidence for me as well, since previously I had only really done small freehand projects and nothing of this size since high school days, back in the 90s. It proved to myself that I could do freehand well and unlocked a new side of the hobby for me to explore more of, which leads me to my next two projects. |  |
Rogers the Musical Billboard
| After completing the Spider-Man mural and returning from Adepticon, where it got a multitude of complements. I decided that I needed to paint the billboard that came with the apartment building, and to paint it as a billboard for Rogers the Musical, from the Hawkeye tv show on Disney+. This was done by printing out the logo onto paper and then cutting out the shapes of the characters and letters, which were then used as a stencil that I would refine the edges and do a bit of clean up. The shield was painted the same way as well. Honestly the hardest part of this one was getting a smooth yellow background, which required a lot of patience and an airbrush. That way I would end up without brush strokes and a uniform color. |  |
Deadpool Unicorn Van
| While I was at Adepticon, I found a vendor called Black Site Studio. They have a 28mm zombie game, and a bunch of different vehicles to use with the game. I ended up buying a few different cars and this van, which I knew needed a bad ass mural on the side of it. But I couldn't decide what to do. Originally, I had thought of doing another version of Frazetta's Princess of Mars, like I had on my old The Great Cyclopean Gemstone Heist diorama, but decided against it. Instead, I randomly found a toy on Amazon of Deadpool riding a unicorn and decided that was going to be my subject. I'm glad I did too, because it is hilarious. |  |
Elevated Train
| While I was working on freehand painting projects, I was having my buddy Shaun of Resinmancers print off a gargantuan elevated train set to use as a centerpiece for a game board. This thing was way bigger than I expected. But it is super nice. The platform itself is kind of large though, so a lot of the time we've been playing with just the track on the table. But I definitely need to get another train car or two printed for it. Currently I have the track spray painted with primer, but I haven't moved forward with finishing it yet. Soon though. |  |
SR-71 Blackbird
| The main team I've been playing in Crisis Protocol has been the X-Men and while it is true that Atomic Mass Games is releasing a Quinjet for the game as a terrain piece, I really wanted to get my hands on a Blackbird for the game. Because, come on. Its the Blackbird! After some searching, I found a 1:48 scale SR-71 Blackbird from Revell. But, it was kinda on the steep side of what I wanted to pay for it. Luckily, I was able to find one in the UK for a reasonable price and hit that buy button. Hoo boy, this thing is a beast though. It is over two foot long from end to end and dwarfs everything else on the table. If it is going onto the table, it'll require a decent size clearing. But damn will it look impressive on the table. So far, it has been primed and sprayed with a dark blue, since I'm going for 90s X-Men coloring. I need to break out the airbrush to give it some highlights and then its down to detail work. |  |
Ground Scatter
| Large models are all well and good, but half the fun of Crisis Protocol is throwing things and tossing people into things. So thanks to my friend Chris, who you may know on Twitter as Rallyfox, I was able to get a boat load of scatter terrain printed. Vending machines, trash cans, phone booths, cargo containers and some large trucks were in that pile. Roughly 5 lbs of resin printed terrain. I'm ridiculously excited about having trash piles on the board for some reason. |  |
There's probably more I'm missing, but I think that's good for a first update. I did tease something earlier in this post about a four game board project, which you can see on Twitter, but I'll save that for another update at a later time. Because going over that idea will end up being a whole post all on its own.