Hey everybody, its been a long time. Life has been wild and I once again neglected my little corner of the internet here. But things have been interesting and productive! This year the ol' Marvel: Crisis Protocol addiction has once again fully overtaken my hobby time. I've done a bunch of terrain work, and a massive amount of character painting. But the biggest news, and the thing that got me writing again, I joined up with Goonhammer as a Marvel: Crisis Protocol contributor! I've mainly been focusing on painting tutorials, but I've also started dipping my toes into write ups of the MCP Ultimate Encounter scenarios.
I have a boat load of things to talk about and I'm planning to write more in depth articles for some of the terrain projects soon as well. So let's get to it and see what magic I've been up to.
Goonhammer Articles
Just after Adepticon this year I as invited to join the Marvel: Crisis Protocol team at Goonhammer. It's really helped reinvigorate my love of writing tutorials and articles. I was lucky enough to have all of the Apocalypse releases sent my way and that was an amazing project to work on. Overall, has it has been a great experience so far and I'm excited to see what 2025 holds. Here are links to all of the articles I've had published this year.
Painting Tutorials
Red Skull, Crossbones, Baron Zemo, Ultron, Black Panther Chosen of Bast, Namor the Submariner, The Hood, Dark Future Terrain, The Shrine of En Sabah Nur, Rejuvenation Chamber, Apocalypse, Weapon X, Sunspot, Ursa Major, Warlock, Crimson Dynamo
Reviews
The Worthy: Spiders on Patrol
At Adepticon this year I decided to enter Atomic Mass Games' Path of the Worthy miniature painting competition. I'm not really a competition painter, but I had a fun idea for it and decided to put something together for it. I decided to take an official apartment building terrain piece and saw it in half. I then built the billboard from scratch and hand-painted the Daily Bugle advertisement on the billboard. I then mounted Amazing Spider-Man, Spider-Man (Miles Morales) and Ghost-Spider to it.
It was a really fun project and I learned a lot about what the judges were looking for. I ended up walking away with a bronze coin for my work, which feels good too. I might give it another go at next year's Adepticon and see what happens again.
Terrain Projects
This was a pretty big year for terrain projects. Its hard to remember everything that was worked on over the course of the year, but here's a few of the big ones.
Apocalypse Terrain
As I previously mentioned, I was lucky enough to be given the terrain sets that were released alongside Apocalypse as part of a Goonhammer write up about the Ultimate Encounter. These pieces are super impressive and were a lot of fun to paint. I feel like I need something more for this board though, maybe some sand dunes or some larger Apocalypse statues. I'm not sure yet, but it feels very flat at the moment.
Asgardian Ruins
These were also sent my way via Goonhammer for painting tutorial write ups. I have a plan to use them for an Asgard table, my original plan was to do an interior setting, like a dining hall or something. But that's currently on the back burner while I try to come up with ideas for it.
Mojo Ball Championships
I picked up the Mojo Ball scenario pack for Crisis Protocol and we had a lot of fun with it. So I decided to build a terrain set dedicated to it. I build a bunch of obstacles based off of the original run of American Gladiators and covered them in holographic opal vinyl and white polystyrene stripes. I then started working on making tiles for the play surface. Its still not done yet, but it is slowly coming together. Its hard to work on in the winter time though, since I have to spray the paper for the tiles with spray glue and I don't like doing that inside the house.
Hydra Base
While I was at Adepticon this year, I picked up the rest of the pieces I needed to build a Hydra themed table. The previous year, AMG was giving out those kits as a perk of the Adepticon premium badge. I was lucky enough to be given a Hydra Tank by a friend of mine who didn't want his. This year I purchased the Power Generators and Turrets as well as a bunch of other smaller things for the table. Overall it turned out really well, but the snow is way too blue, so I need to tone it down a bit with some more white, I think, but for now its all finished.
Dark Dimension
Last year I built a table based around the idea of the Dark Dimension, but it also works as a strange alien lava planet too. I built up some floating islands and used a few 3d printed rocks for floating rocks. I felt it needed something more and I didn't like the base on the fiery portal. So earlier this month I painted up another set of floating rocks and trimmed up the portal's base a bit. It looks a lot better and now the board feels a bit more filled out. I might still add in some new interactive craters or something. I haven't decided. But for now, this one is finished as well.
Crisis Protocol Characters
This year I painted a whopping 62 unique characters! As of this writing, I now have a 78% painted Crisis Protocol collection! After Christmas last year I was able to buy up the kits I was missing, thanks to gift cards. This went against my original plan of keeping a low backlog and for awhile it felt like I made a tactical error in doing so. But its been nice watching the shelf of primed minis slowly dwindle. Of course, I was also keeping up with new releases as well, and it felt like the number of unpainted minis wasn't really going down. It didn't feel like I painted that many characters this year, but I'll take it! I currently have 44 models left to paint in the backlog, which means I'll be pretty busy next year too.
Here's everyone that was painted this year:
Star-Lord, Ms. Marvel, Medusa, Iceman, Professor X, Nightcrawler, Shadowcat, Bishop, Ghost Rider, Blade, Punisher, Doc Ock, Sinister Scientist, Doctor Voodoo, Thanos, Logan, The Wolverine, Rhino, Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme, Kraven, Taskmaster, Pyro, Nebula, Viper, The Blob, Baron Mordo, The Ancient One, Red Skull, Crossbones, Ultron, Baron Zemo, Namor, The Submariner, Black Panther, Chosen of Bast, The Hood, Electro, Sandman, Venom, Gwenom, Shocker, The Vulture, Scarlet Spider, Malekith, Red Guardian, Crimson Dynamo, Darkstar, Ursa Major, Apocalypse, Warlock, Sunspot, Weapon X, Maverick, Archangel, Crystal, Cosmic Ghost Rider, Beta Ray Bill, Ulik, Hela, Loki, Prince of Lies, Skurge the Executioner, Drax the Destroyer, Gamora, Angela, Ronan the Accuser and Thor, Hero of Midgard
I think that's going to cover most of it. I'm sure there's plenty that I missed... it was a busy year, I'm looking forward to 2025 and new projects. I still have a lot of Crisis Protocol to paint up and next year I'll be starting on some Cyberpunk Combat Zone too. I have a lot of terrain to finish up for Crisis Protocol and am currently sitting at roughly 40 unpainted characters, so I should be plenty busy in 2025.
Next year I also want to spin up things here again and post things that aren't part of my Goonhammer duties, including some new tutorials and overviews of my terrain set ups. It should be a good time!