Godlike

Godlike is the title of a table-top roleplaying game about superpowered soldiers in a WWII setting. It's been very influential in planning this whole project, although I will probably use its less-constrained successor Wild Talents for the actual rules.

Godlike is also an apt descriptor for these four, probably the most physically powerful characters that will exist in this campaign. Hercules might be available as a playable character since superhuman strength is his *only* power, but the other three are just as strong and can also fly and do other stuff as well, so they are all strictly NPCs. Fighting even one of them would be an epic encounter...

Bonus: another Superman vs Namor staredown vignette, using custom Chicago scenery (more on that later)...

A wizard is never late, nor is he early...

...he arrives precisely when he means to.

Here is a quartet of golden-age magic characters, arranged in order of ascending sartorial flamboyance:

The first is Doctor Occult. I could not find any actual minis of him, but since he's just a dude wearing a fedora and trenchcoat, I painted up a heroclix "Maggia Goon". He's definitely reaching for his mystic talisman, not a handgun.

Next is Zatara, golden-age father of the much more famous Zatanna. He's a heroclix Zatara, but fully repainted and with a bowtie I made from paper.

After him is Sargon the Sorceror, not to be confused with the ancient kings or fascist youtuber named Sargon. Another converted heroclix, the original model had an absurdly tiny head, so I replaced it with a plastic medieval Arab head from a historical kit.

Finally we have the Ancient One, washed and highlighted but not converted at all. The character was not invented until the 60s, but would have existed in the 30s, much like Howard Stark and Vandal Savage.

A Tale of Three Furies

My first heroclix order of the year just came in. Part of the order was a trio of Nick Furies (Nicks Fury?). I couldn't decide which I liked most and they were cheap, so I got all three.

And boy am I glad I did. Look at that scale difference! Included Commissioner Gordon and a Kingpin for scale.

Some heroes, some villains

Hi again. It's getting close to summer, which means it's blockbuster season. Which means superhero movies on the big screen, which means my interest in this project gets revived.

Here are some new heroclix. I think Human Torch is the only full repaint in this batch.

We Three Kingpins

A few weeks ago, I found a Kingpin mini in a $1 heroclix box at the local gaming store. The Kingpin character himself isn't going to be in this campaign, but it occurred to me that a big chunky bruiser in a suit might still be a good mini to have for this campaign, so I bought him. I added a "fedora" (17th-century floppy hat with crease filed in) and repainted him in non-kingpin colors, and he turned out great. So I bought two more Kingpin clix online, mildly converted and repainted them too.

Warlord Marine and Pulp Figures cop for scale

I love how the sculpts are different enough that they look like entirely different big dudes, and not just palette swaps of the same character. They will probably not represent specific NPCs, but rather "the big guy" within a group of thugs/minions. The Pat Roach of a given combat encounter, if you will...

League of Mid-Tier Heroes

These are the ten heroes I've painted up to be pre-generated characters, for anyone who doesn't feel like inventing a superhero from scratch. Some supers are off-limits for being too powerful (e.g. Plastic-Man, Wonder-Woman), and others are in the right power bracket, but I want to reserve them for plot-important NPCs (e.g Captain America, Batman). So here's what's left:

Phantom Lady, The Atom, Mr. Terrific, Blue Beetle, Green Arrow

Hawkman, The Bulleteer, Aquaman, Hawkgirl, the Crimson Avenger

About half are full repaints, with the other half just being washed and touched-up.

PS. modeling-wise, Green Arrow is the only interesting story here... the only golden-age version I could find was Starro-possessed, so I bought another one just to steal its head. I do have plans for the briefly-headless silver age Green Arrow mini though.

Heroclix touch-up test

I won't be doing a complete repaint of every clix mini I get. Some of the pre-paint jobs already look pretty good, and many have decals or other fine detail work that I would rather preserve than try to replicate. So I took a few non-essential minis* and just added some shading with washes, and follow-up highlighting where needed.

They need some additional touch-ups, but overall I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out, so I took the same approach with a character that actually does matter.

*by "non-essential", I mean that these characters are not strictly from the "Golden Age of Comics", nor are they required for the plot of my campaign, but they are thematically relevant enough that I may shoehorn them in somewhere anyway, depending on what specific subplots develop.

Heroclix civilians and cops

Most of the non-super miniatures will be from metals from Pulp Figures, but I've picked up a few "supporting characters" from heroclix bins as well. Also, purse lady is a model railroad accessory.

First Heroclix Repaints - Mad Science!

After a lengthy hiatus, I've made a bit of progress on this project. Here are the first of at least a couple dozen heroclix minis I'll be repainting to at least some degree. I wanted to start off pretty simple, so here are my four mad scientists.

The repainting isn't because I think I'm any better than the original factory painters. I just want the minis to match the rest of my collection. Honestly, these probably look worse now, not the least because I may have left them in the acetone a bit too long. Oh well, live and learn.

I do think the varying proportions through the heroclix line are pretty remarkable. Also, why are mad scientists always bald? I don't even have the Ultra-Humanite or Lex Luthor here!