In the Box - X-Men Starter Set

Today I'm happy to be bringing new content to this ol' site and a new series of articles - In the Box! In this series I'll be going over contents of various gaming products, starting with today's feature - the X-Men Starter Set for the Marvel: Crisis Protocol Miniatures Game. 

This set, alongside the Spider-Foes Starter Set, offer a new jumping off point for players looking to get into Marvel: Crisis Protocol. Maybe you're not a fan the characters of the Earth's Mightiest Core Set or you don't want all of the terrain that comes in it. Or perhaps you're a massive fan of these characters and only want to play them. Now, you can buy one box and get all of the measuring tools, dice models and cards for 10 models. Previously, you needed to buy characters two at a time and then tools and dice separately and you were still without Crisis cards or Team Tactics cards.

Its a full Roster in a box and you're good to go to start playing. They all share a theme and its at a lower price point than the Earth's Mightiest Core set, since it doesn't include terrain, which means less investment.

So let's take a look at what's in the box!

Adventures in Luminosity - 5/7/25

Hey everybody, today I'm going to talk about something I've been having a lot of fun with recently and that is fluorescent paints. For a while now, I've been using the brightest colors I could find for Marvel: Crisis Protocol spell effects, but they never really popped how I wanted them to. At Adepticon 2024, I picked up the Neon Colors pack from AK Interactive and have been playing around with them over the last year, so far with good results. 

But I wanted more. 

Review: Monster Fight Club Cargo Containers

Monster Fight Club has long been my go-to for wargaming trees and bushes, they fit in so well with Marvel: Crisis Protocol and the comic book aesthetic. Near the end of 2023, MFC put together a Kickstarter campaign for a container ship and cargo containers. I was very tempted, but I had just finished scratch building my own container stacks out of foam board and printed off scans of some 3D printed cargo containers I had painted. Over the last couple years, those stacks have seen a lot of play and they were starting to show some wear and tear, with the paper starting to peel away and getting fragile. So this year at Adepticon I decided to bite the bullet and picked up a couple packs of their 20' Cargo Containers and one pack of 10' Cargo Containers to replace my original ones. 

So for my first post back to paying attention to my ol' blog, I figured it would be a good idea to talk about them and give a bit of a review on what I think of them now that we've had the chance to use them in multiple games of Marvel: Crisis Protocol.

The Brushwizard Year in Review 2024

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.

Stay Tuned, True Believers!

Oh boy, it's been well over a year since I last posted anything to the ol' blog. Shame, shame. But while I haven't been posting any new content to this little ol' site, I have been anything but idle. In the year plus since I started playing Marvel Crisis Protocol I've become something of a terrain hoarder. 

Previously, I shared an article explaining my plans to build custom boards that interconnect with each other as well as an industrial board that featured many shipping containers. Well, that whole idea was a bit too large and it wasn't really something I could make a reality (at this time). Instead, I started working on individual terrain sets that I can use with premade gaming mats. 

The goal moving forward is to share indepth looks at each of these terrain sets, posting articles about scratch building some of their components, with instructions and even sharing pictures of the various characters I've finished painting.

I hope to get rolling on this all very soon now that life has settled down a little bit. So stay tuned!

Crisis Protocol - Shipping and Receiving

 I've been playing around with ideas for the city boards project and I've decided that it'll be best if I start with the Industrial sector first. This will allow me to get the hang of techniques and since the elevated train set is supposed to go on this board I feel like there's already progress being made. 

So with that in mind, I started scouting out the industrial areas of Spider-Man Remastered on PS5, looking around the shipping docks and warehouse areas for some inspiration. I think I've decided on a plan of attack now. 

Crisis Protocol - City Planning

In my previous update, I had mentioned that I was working with my FLGS on getting Marvel Crisis Protocol gaming days going at the shop. This has sparked the need to design a table layout that would work either as four individual play areas for game days or as a connected mega table for special events.

 For my current games, I've been using a city streets map from Mats by Mars, which is really cool and is marked with positions where tokens are supposed to be placed. So it makes set up easy, but players need to be able to measure their token placement properly for games that don't use these style mats, and it feels like it has actually hindered my learning of the game as far as token placement goes.

Also, if you've been around for awhile, you know that I like to dream big and that it was only a matter of time before I started looking at modeling opportunities. When we started talking about having gaming days at my FLGS, and I started working on a collection of terrain to bring to the shop, the time had come.

Deep into MCP and New Projects!

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.

Super Secret Christmas Present 2020: Inferno Squad

 Another Christmas, another secret Christmas Project! 

This time around I built a diorama of Iden Versio, Del Meeko and Gideon Hask during their mission on Endor from the video game, Star Wars Battlefront II. 

The idea for this diorama came about thanks to the Endor scenario in the game, where you end up fighting an AT-ST on the way to a landing pad while escaping the forest moon.  I had originally intended to use the official fallen AT-ST scenery expansion for Star Wars Legion as the base, decided against it after looking it over and opted for a 1:48 scale Bandai kit instead.

Let's take a look!

Adventures in Contrast: Star Wars Legion - Droideka Armor

Welcome back to Adventures in Contrast, where I show you all sorts of little tricks and techniques that you can do with Citadel Colour's Contrast paint system! The Clone Wars edition of Star Wars Legion arrived at my house thanks to my friend Dusty recently and I've been working my way through painting it all. My main objective for this project is to paint the models to a table top standard, without worrying about spending a ton of time on the. Especially since the droids and clones all are pretty simple paint schemes already. With that in mind, I'm using flexing Contrast paint to my advantage as much as possible.  In this article we will be looking at the Droideka and how to paint their bronze armor plating using Contrast. Let's take a look!

Miniature Showcase: Luke Skywalker's Crashed Snowspeeder

Ever since the Airspeeder was released for Star Wars Legion, I have had an idea for a diorama featuring Luke Skywalker and his crashed snowspeeder from the Battle of Hoth which was featured in The Empire Strikes Back. 

Unfortunately, I could never find a model I liked to represent Luke in his Hoth pilot gear. Fortunately, Fantasy Flight Games released a limited edition Luke Skywalker miniature featuring him in that outfit and I was lucky enough to score one from my FLGS.

With models in hand, it was time to get to go wild and finally bring this idea to life.

Miniature Showcase: Frodo at the Cracks of Doom

Many, many moons ago, around the year 2000 or so, the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game was released by Games Workshop. This game featured miniatures based on the character designs from Peter Jackson's The Lord of The Rings trilogy, which was right up my alley.

The original range was very impressive and filled with fantastic masterfully sculpted miniatures.  As time went on I would occasionally pick up a few  here and there, though I never got around to buying any armies or playing the game.

Frodo here came in a three pack of models with Sam and Gollum all based on the climax of The Return of the King. I had bought this set shortly after they released, mostly for the Gollum miniature since he was my favorite character in the trilogy.

For a long time I had grand plans to build a small diorama using all three of them. Though in the back then I lacked the skills to make it a reality. Unfortunately, in the intervening years, Sam seems to be been lost o the ages. I've searched my drawers and boxes of stored miniatures and he's no where to be seen. Maybe he walked off with the Ring?

At that point I had decided that perhaps a Gollum and Frodo diorama would be nice to build and was all set to make that happen. But in the end I chose to paint Frodo by himself because sometimes you just want to paint a specific miniature, ya know?

Miniature Showcase: Death Riders

Just before Adepticon 2019 I decided that my next army would be Imperial Guard, thanks to breaking the ice with my Commissar Yarrick conversion of Severina Raine. I had just come off building the Dreadnought list for Warhammer 40,000 Friendly Tournament that year, and was still in a slump with my Adeptus Mechanicus. So I was looking for something fresh, with a lot of options. It really didn't take that much convincing for me to jump on Imperial Guard either, due to my love of World War 2 and films such as Starship Troopers.

I'd always had a vague interest in that faction. But it wasn't until I read Dave Taylor's Armies & Legions & Hordes book that I really got the bug to work on them. Seriously, read that book it's a wealth of wargaming knowledge and inspiration.

I knew going into it that I was going to be transport heavy and the overarching theme would be mechanized infantry. With that theme in mind, I started looking at units in the Astra Militarum Codex and the Forces of the Imperium Index that went along with the idea of a highly mobile force.

Miniature Showcase: Lord Maarku, Knight Gallant of House Killkerran

Part of the joy that is 2020 is not being able to play Warhammer 40k locally. Luckily, my Twitter crew has started playing games via Tabletop Simulator. This has been a huge boon for us, since we can now play 40k together more often than just during Adepticon, if at all. It also allows us to play with list builds that consist of models we don't own yet. Thanks to this I revisited the Adeptus Mechanicus, an army that I haven't played in two years due to having a massive losing streak with them. I created a new list that included a Knight Gallant in it and a few other units that I've never given a fair shake. A few games in, I was hooked on this list and needed to scratch the Knight painting itch. After a few weeks, the local shop opened up after the Covid-19 shut down and I decided it was time to pick up one of those bad boys. In the time since, I've assembled and began the process of painting him up. Let's take a look!

Wizardry in Progress 2/26/20

This week has been a bit on the slower side of things, but I still feel like I've gotten a lot done. This week I worked on the beholder diorama some more, adding a few small details and playing with lighting. More work was also done on Legion models, I painted the roll mode Droideka, which I had originally passed on doing and I've started work on painting the two squad boxes of Clones and B1 Battle Droids that I received at Christmas. Last but not least, I picked up a new combat arm for the Contemptor Dreadnoughts to update the Dreadlist a little bit.

Let's take a look!

Wizardry in Progress 2/19/20

It's a very Star Wars Legion kinda time around these parts. I am deeeeep into this game at the moment and working my way through a bit of backlog of models so we can finally get the game on the table. This week I've been working on a few different character models as well as finishing up the Seperatists side of things by basing the B1 Battle Droids.

The goal is to be able to start playing the game asap and get some practice with the system, so I came possibly get some games in at Adepticon in March. I still have plans to add some Felucia style plant life to the bases as well. But I'll add that in at a later date.

But for now, let's take a look at what was accomplished this week.

Wizardry in Progress 2/12/20

This week was fairly productive and saw some more work on the Beholder diorama and a bit of progress made on finishing up the Star Wars Legion Clone Wars core set. Not to mention, I picked up R2-D2 and C-3PO for Legion on Sunday and painted them that very same day.

Wizardry in Progress - 2/5/20

Well well, what is this?

WIZARDRY IN PROGRESS!

I've not done one of these in a long time, even though projects have been getting worked on. Let's go over some projects that I've been working on over the last few weeks.

Miniature Monday: Léa

In May of 2019, Ouroboros Miniatures launched a Kickstarter for a line of female busts called Exquis. Originally I didn't pay much attention to it, since I had a bunch of other things on my plate, but eventually I couldn't resist ordering Léa through the Kickstarter campaign.

While the campaign was going I kept looking at this bust and dreaming of how I wanted to paint it up.

What color would the skin be? What about the hair? How do I want to do the hoodie?

After awhile I decided that I wanted to do her with a tan skin tone, with teal and magenta hair. But I wasn't sure what to do with the hoodie. I did know that I wanted to try some freehand on it, but not the design itself.

The model arrived and sat a few months on the shelf, due to other projects and a bit of intimidation.

Why was I intimidated? Well, at that point it had been well over a year since the last female bust I had painted, which was Kommander Sorscha. I had taken her to GenCon for Privateer Press' painting competition, and while she placed bronze I had messed up the shading on her face and she looks like she has a bit of 5 o' clock shadow going on.

Whoopsie!

Miniature Monday: The Child aka BABY YODA

No one was prepared for the cuteness overload that is Baby Yoda, aka the The Child, in the new The Mandalorian. After the first episode, the internet exploded with memes and GIFs, the likes I've never seen before.
Disney+ series,

Disney drastically misjudged the ravenous need of the Star Wars fandom for all things Baby Yoda. While there we toys, shirts and other branded goodies, none of them featured the world's favorite young green Force user. That's when the fandom stepped in and suddenly there were crocheted dolls, posters, shirts and eventually even 3D printed miniatures. Much to the chagrin of Disney execs, I'm sure.

I was lucky enough to get my hands on this one through Shapeways, before the listing was taken down. It is very, very tiny and very, very adorable!

In general, I'm not 100% sold on 3D printed models. I'd rather have a standard molded model kit any day of the week. But, even I am not immune to Baby Yoda Fever and I had an unreasonable need to purchase this little fella. Purchase him, I did.