Night Fright & Leech

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Night Fright gently eased Leech into a turn towards the primary portal. They were both ready to feast on the horrors in the souls of any unfortunates whose paths crossed their own. Yet somewhere deep down, Night Fright could not escape the feeling he had experienced something very much like this once before.

As ever, this has taken a while to finish!

I finally got around to assembling the mini in January (see here for the WiP) when I worked out how I wanted to manage to lift the model up. I did not want to use a transparent strut, and I did not want it to be attached by an object, since more often than not neither is too satisfactory a solution for my liking. I have seen some flying/leaping models lately supported by capes and trailing cloth, and that gave me inspiration when I saw some smoke effects from Tabletop Art.

I had a plan.

And like any plan, and as any regular reader of this blog know, my painting plans rarely survive contact with the enemy; the enemy in this case being my ever-fleeting motivation.

Well motivation returned in the past few weeks and it is finally complete. I am pretty pleased with the outcome and think that this very cool sculpt by Paul Muller will both fit in with and stand out from my Necroplane and wider collection of Villains.

In a nutshell, Night Fright is some kind of unliving remnant, possibly from outside the Necroplane, and he rides atop Leech, the wildest of the Nightmare Engines.

In the upcoming Pulp City SE, Night Fright & Leech is a Level 2 Speeder. Speeders can use more Movement Actions than other Roles. they are much, much faster as a consequence, but generally less hard-hitting. Except when it comes to Night Fright & Leech. This Nonliving partnership has one of the most powerful Overrun Actions in the new rules; an Action Type that allows a model to crash through a number of Targets at once. Arguably the only better Overrun may be Seabolt's, but that should be clear when the new rules are formally unleashed.

For my Necroplane, currently I have Doom Train and the soon to be released Papa Zombie and Comte Vendredi to complete. There are a few other Pulp City minis I have yet to finish so hopefully soon I will have more done to show off. The horror-themed Necroplane could be a cool choice for this year's Hallowe'en Madness, so I must get chatting to Rob about that very soon.

Dr Red

Some beings are born to be leaders. The problem of Ape Revolution Committee is they have a few too many alphas in their ranks.

When Channel 4 mentions the bravado actions of A.R.C., Guerilla is usually the one mentioned. But only a few outsiders are aware that most of the progress made by the primates in the last years was sparked by the twisted mind of the alpha orangutan, the self proclaimed Dr. Red. Although his first attempt to take over the group while still in the space ended up with Guerilla beating him to a bloody pulp, Red mastered the art of patience.

Took a long time this one, it really did. Base colours were splashed about with hairy stick abandon when I was gripped with some great momentum, and as is always the way with momentum, it petered out...

Work on Dr. Red started many months ago, when I saw a short-lived resurgence of focus, and then he essentially got pushed further down the painting queue, generally in favour if some minis that were simple, or perceived to be simpler, to paint. I finally knuckled down slowly over the past week or so to occasionally dab some acrylics to the thing, and I have to say I am moderately pleased with how he turned out. Yes his power glove device could have benefited from a free-hand red star or some such, but lacking the confidence to pull of a weathered look to such an option as I would choose, I instead shied away from doing so. There are some parts that have or will be touched up a bit further before varnishing.

Dr. Red offers some useful Team-building options: Tactician 1 (adding AP) and a couple of Actions specifically intended to aid or buff other ARC members, and his Team Power can also offer help. He offers some ranged attack options with Throw Then Think, and Weapons Crate - if taking this Resource, seriously consider also taking Guerilla, Howler and/or Gentleman (with an ARC majority) to maximise benefits. Lastly, he can even stand up to moderate close combat attacks fairly well, so he is a good all-rounder.

Necro GI's

These Necro GI's are finally done. Not brilliant, but at least finished enough for my purposes.

I think I first posted about these on the blog back in July - so it has taken around 4 months or so to get them completed. They probably haven't had very much work on them, but that is likely because the approach I was first using on them was quite off-putting. So I eventually salvaged the paint jobs to a certain extent, but I wish I had started on them in a different way.

The sculpts are excellent in my view, more superb work from Paul Muller whose aesthetics suit the Pulp City range, and the Necroplane in particular. So with that in mind any short-coming are simply down to ye olde Pulp Citizen, and nothing more. I will try and see it as a lesson learned, even after years of painting, and maybe a sign of my outlook on the painting hobby changing as well.

In game terms these guys are amped-up contagious zombies with guns; what isn't there to like about that? I reckon they will be a given in most games using Necroplane for me going forwards - especially as there is already a formidable coterie of Supremes available. I painted 4 in anticipation that I will always need more during an Encounter. I love the simian-like aspect to them as well - it evokes a certain primitive feel to the minis.

Well, most importantly they are finally done. so what next? Gorgoroth, Taurus Captain? Xyllian, Master Sagittarius? Iron Train? Skyline? Time will tell.

Dr. Tenebrous

The dark tentacles of Tenebrous' agenda reach beyond Necroplane and its schemes. If the Supremes were ever aware of whom his contacts are among the Supremes and politicians on Earth, they would be afraid to ever fall asleep.

One of my two WAMP entries, Dr. Tenebrous has been in my 'to-do' pile for quite some time. Of course, when one paints at the speed of a comatose snail, that sense of 'some time' is kind of relative.

The mini was sculpted by Paul Muller and has a great spandex villain look in my mind; he has a design that would not look out of place as a threat to the Avengers or the JLA. The base is from the Maxmini range for Pulp City - it is actually the Ace of Wraiths base, but since it so closely echoed the swirling cape effect on Dr. Tenebrous it seemed a perfect choice to me.

Dr. Tenebrous is the big bad leader of the Necroplane Sub-faction. The Supremes of the Necroplane are determined to steal away life force from the Earthly plane for their own nefarious ends, and that is just the kind of thing Tenbrous specialises in. Like any Level 3 Supreme he is formidable enough, but what he does is add some buffs for Necroplane minis, as well as allowing the Necroplane to incorporate Forgotten allies as though they were Necroplane themselves - when more Forgotten appear this will give a very wide array of options for players wanting to focus on these deathly invaders, let alone future possibilities for Necroplane Supremes.

I don't quite know why it took so long for me to start this mini, but I painted it fairly quickly by my standards, and I am reasonably pleased with the results - although the gems are not great, that is an area that I need to practice on. The colour scheme uses a very similar palette to the one I used for my other entry - natural as they were painted at roughly the same time. It is a colour scheme I am pretty happy with and that I think works quite well.

Howler

You would probably call Howler the "early adopter" since when his mates just started appreciating the convenience of wearing clothing, using guns and explosives, Howler is truly enjoying life as it comes.

Crime is a disease. Meet the cure. The tag line for the 1986 Sylvester Stallone movie, Cobra, seems very fitting to apply to a mini sculpted with that movie character in mind. Howler was a mini that I wasn't too enamoured with when I first saw it, although I don't know why. When it came to painting it however, that all changed. I really enjoyed painting the model, and finished it quite quickly, basing the colour scheme on the classic 'Cobra' image.

In game play Howler offers good mobile fire support, which can be exploited by Hero or Villain teams. He can also offer battlefield control through two of his exclusive actions - Howls and Stare Down. At heart though, Howler remains a quintessential 80's action hero, which means he works best alone in some ways.

In my view this is a great fun sculpt by Paul Muller, that confounded my initial reservations, so much so that it is one of the most enjoyable models to paint that I can recall in years.