|
Monsterpocalypse
Mk 1
I moved my old 2008-2017 Monsterpocalypse efforts off to their own page. Some
of these pieces are fan characters and technically no more invalid in Mk 2 than
in Mk 1, but it represents a clean break.
Basics, Accessories
- Card File: Okay, not much to look at, I just took
a recipe-sized expanding file and taped a Monsterpocalypse logo to it. But it's
the right size for the Monster cards. Unfortunately, the tab labels don't work
well with gel pens, and tend to smudge. But whaddyaspect for $2.12?
Units
G.U.A.R.D.
I decided that, absent any special projects, I'd use the standard Cygnar color scheme
for G.U.A.R.D. Morrow knows I rarely use it in actual Cygnar....
- Repair Trucks: True, you can't use two Repair Actions
in one activation, but this gives flexibility to be on both sides of the map. I just
bought one of everything, which meant an extra blister of the units that came with the
starter. October 2018.
- G-Tanks: These were a bit of a hassle, not just due to sprues tearing chunks out of
the front end and needing greenstuff patches, but also because the turrets had oval "pegs"
that were too long to fit into the circular holes on the chassis, so I had to shave them
down to fit. October 2018.
- Rocket Chopper: I initially had more brass in the mix,
but it looked wrong, so I changed some of those bits to gunmetal. October 2018.
- Strike Fighters: As with the Rocket Chopper, I ended up starting with more bronze and
turning some bronze bits gunmetal instead. I considered freehand painting Cygnar swans
on the wings, but decided I wasn't feeling that masochistic. Given how the Strike Fighters
incorporate many 1950s retro jet elements, I decided to go with the style of the time and
paint the underside sky blue for "stealth" purposes. November 2018.
- Wave 1 Units: I got one of everything, the starter and
one each of the unit blisters. So that gave me exactly 15 units, enough for a full
single-monster battle. October through November 2018.
- Retro-GUARD: Dr. Satan's Robot Squad from Shapeways,
inspired by the "boiler with limbs" style of movie serial heavies, based for MonPoc
with the backstory being that these clankers were used to fight off the original Martian
invasion in the 1930s, during which the group that would become GUARD was formed.
July 2020.
- MR-Tank: Protectors get a unit that can reliably hurt Monsters,
and doesn't self-destruct like an Explodohawk. "They call me MISTER TANK." July 2020.
- Exo-Armor: I bet they try to get into arm wrestling matches
with the Shinobi units from Shadow Sun. July 2020.
- Wave 2 group shot: The new unit blister with the new giant
robot. August 2020.
Planet Eaters
This group gets to be based on the Legion of Everblight, with whom they share some
motifs and motives.
- Red dyed bases: I decided to spice up my Destroyers by dyeing
their clear bases red. First lesson: don't try to dye more than one at a time, they stick
together and the parts that touch end up undyed, oops. Can't really even it out after
additional dyeing. Second lesson: don't let the water actually boil, the plastic will
start to "Shrinky-Dink" a little. November 2018.
- Chompers: Lots of armor to distress for the desired bony plate
effect. My first attempt suffered both from too little contrast
in the blue wash, and too much lighting. I reduced the number of lights turned on in my
photo area for the second try, and deepened the blue wash on the first one to match the
other two. January 2019.
- Destructomite: Being almost entirely armor and very little
flesh made it harder to really evoke the desired theme here. January 2019.
- Explodohawk: I did try more blue energy effects in other
vent sections, but decided that it looked too busy. I have three more that I will try to get
looking about the same now that I've finished one. January 2019.
- More Explodohawks: Finally finished the other three, and
tweaked the first one a little in the process. February 2019.
- Crawlers: Being mostly armor plate on top, like the Destructomites, made it harder to bring
out the Legion look, but I think I managed it. While priming these, I finally noticed that
they have eyes on what I'd always thought was just a beak. February 2019.
- Pinkeye: the first one I finished, I made the eyes pink to
make it more clear that the big circles on the back were not eyes.
- Smiler: and then I noticed that the "beak" had teeth, so
I painted them on this one, but went with blue eyes. I considered going back and painting
the teeth on Pinkeye, but it was already on the base, and I didn't want to risk paint
splatter.
- Comparison shot: I got better focus and contrast on this
than on most of the other Crawler shots, so I kept it.
- Belchers: BRAAAAP! March 2019.
- Elite Belchers: Pink energy and darker armor to distinguish them
from the grunts.
- Grunt Belchers: Blue eyes and energy, more subtle blue shading.
- All together: I tried to make the grunts noticeably lighter on
the armor, but the difference ended up more subtle than I'd hoped. I also went easier on the
blue wash, although that was always meant to be subtle.
- Planet Eaters Wave 1: All of the above, plus Gorghadra and
Rogzor. Technically, Rogzor is more of a wave 1.5, released alongside the Harbinger Comet
Shard.
Shadow Sun Syndicate
Sleek and anime-inspired? What else but the Retribution of Scyrah? Of course, this is pretty
close to the standard SSS colors, but less gunmetal and more blue glowy. I decided to dye all
the bases light blue, but the light blue dye led to a dark purple-blue on these bases, oops.
- Shadow Gate: First one I finished, had a bit of trouble getting
this all-metal mini glued to the base. I tried putting in some water effect paint to smooth
out the glue splotch, but the results weren't particularly satisfactory. (Like the S-type
Shinobi below, it also had a tab for insertion into a standard minis base, I snipped it off
and dremeled down the result to get a flat bottom...but it ended up being a slippery flat
bottom.) August 2019.
- Interceptor: The column it sits on is supposed to just be painted black
or something, I guess, but I made it a glowy blue energy column. An unarmed but fast cargo craft
designed to carry Shadow Gates into position (Mk1 later had C-type Shinobi who could be
deployed by Interceptors as well). August 2019.
- S-Type Shinobi: All-metal again, and with a tab on the feet for slot-style
bases? Was this design approved before the base style was, or something? I didn't damage the feet
too badly by snipping and filing the metal tabs off after painting...the tabs were the best option for
holding the figures while I painted (using an alligator clip). August 2019.
- Sun Fighters: "I'll do panel lines, it'll be easy if I use a wash."
Narrator: "It wasn't easy at all." Nice flight bases, so no hassles with attachment. September 2019.
- Shadow Sun Group Shot: And done, at least with the first wave of the
Shadow Sun Syndicate. September 2019.
Lords of Cthul
I thought of Cephalyx or even Everblight for these, but decided Cryx fit them best thematically.
Instead of a shiny insect-shell black, though, I used the new Black 3.0 to try to get a "walking
void" effect. Then Necrotite Green for eyes and maybe some highlights, and Beaten Purple for
the highlights on tentacles and some other details.
- Meat Slaves: Barely mobile incubators for the Cthul, I decided to
go with human flesh tones and just have the tentacles in void black...more disturbing than the
studio scheme of green flesh. It's just a wafer-thin mint.... July 2019.
- Taskmaster: Oddly, getting paint to stick to the metal arms was
harder than getting it on the resin. July 2019.
- Squix: The flying units for the faction, I decided that the membranes
of the wings would be thin enough to let some light through...but twisted. July 2019.
- Spitters: Cornucopias of death. July 2019.
- Group Shot: All units, all three monsters (the only thing that
can fill the inky void inside Cthugrosh is beer, apparently). July 2019.
- More were released later....
Terrasaurs
Trollblood colors for these savage but sorta benign guys.
- Brontox: The spawn-camping specialist unit of the Terrasaurs
done with rocky plates inspired by the Trolls. November 2019.
- Spikodon: My method of painting up the spikes made it hard
to simultaneously make the lumpy bits of the hide look right, but after several layers
of trying I decided to just leave it looking cartoony. November 2019.
- Carnidons: Like miniature versions of Terra Khan mixed with
Armodax. They appreciate the occasional brewski, too. November 2019.
- Raptices: Plural of Raptix is most likely Raptices, given
the precedents of index/indices and matrix/matrices. November 2019.
- Wave 1 group shot: November 2019.
Martian Menace
I was thinking of using the Convergence of Cyriss colors here, but I had too many steel
or gray groups, so I decided on the Red Planet...Khador.
- Basing concept: Rather than using the generic "whoosh"
flight bases, I decided to mount them on red energy pillars, AKA Lego "transred" rods.
The Power Pods don't fly, but the rest use this idea. (Ares needs a wider column, so I
used the stem of a plastic goblet.)
- Power Pods: I decided to go nuts with the neon paints,
which are kinda goopy and hard to do sharp details with, but I think it turned out
pretty well. The glow effect on the bases, less well. March 2019.
- Saucers: I had to use a UV flashlight while painting to
make sure I'd covered up neon in places I didn't want it...a little dab of red neon on
top of fandango red would be pretty much invisible otherwise. March 2019.
- Hunters: The lone wolf snipers of the faction, not as
effective as Explodohawks, but less likely to draw "KILL IT NOW" responses. May 2019.
- Vanguard: The basic vanilla units of the faction, with an
elite to lead them. May 2019.
- Wave 1 group shots: Both monsters, all the units, and the building (which is technically
not factioned). March through May 2019.
ÜberCorp International
As a rather mercenary lot, I decided to use one of the major Merc color schemes from Warmachine
for these guys, the Steelheads. They're mostly steel, dull brown, and olive green, with some
accents in gold.
- Group Shot
- Carnitrons: Robotic knockoffs of the Carnidons.
- Proof of concept: Before going in on all the figures, I decided
to take my time on one and make sure I was happy with the color scheme, and understood how
those particular paints in my collection might cause problems. January 2020.
- All four: I decided to pick out the Elite by swapping the green
and brown colors. I accidentally glued the legs of one of them on backwards, but decided to
leave it as a nod to how UCI stuff tends to be on the low-quality-control side. (Big gap in
time here because I had surgery in late January and it took a few weeks to be able to sit
still enough to paint, and then a few more weeks to feel like getting back to these.) March
2020.
- Robo Brontox: What it says on the tin, basically. I ordered one extra, got two extra
by mistake.
- Shinobots: Robot knockoffs of the S-type Shinobi. Tricky to
paint because they have small feet, so just sticking them on putty wouldn't work, and gluing
to a clear base before painting is more hassle than it's worth. So I left on one of the
(inappropriate for MonPoc bases) tabs on the bottom of the feet and held it in an alligator
clip. Once everything else was done, I removed the tabs and touched up the relevant feet.
March 2020.
- Shinobot Gunners: Not based on a particular SSS unit,
but you can always cover for flaws in design by adding bigger boom. I ordered one extra,
got two and a half by mistake. The half goes in the bits bin for a future monster to
chew on or something. Same foot tab issues as the Shinobots. March 2020. (Forgot to put
the &UUml; on them, later added it to the sides of the launchers.)
- UCI Jet: Knockoff of Sun Jets but with the Interceptor's teleport
tech. Another case of ordering one extra and getting two. April 2020.
- A.A. Ape: Okay, it's only a unit, but if Terra Khan is Godzilla, this
is about King Kong size. Technically, the left fist is supposed to be touching down on the
base, but I didn't quite het it assembled to allow that. June 2020 (May was mostly spend on
the three Monsters).
- U-Tanks: Hovertanks that aren't directly a ripoff of any other
faction's stuff (kind of mixing G-Tanks and Shadow Sun's Interceptors, though). June 2020.
- Robo Brontox: Ordered one extra, got two. Okay. Robotic
knockoffs of the Brontox, natch. July 2020.
Green Fury
In Mk1, these were auxiliaries to the Terrasaur faction, but Mk2 has made them their own thing,
ecoterrorists who are more or less on the Protector side, but often as not protecting the
world from humanity, not for humanity. Haven't decided if I'm going to get any of this faction
other than the convention exclusive Sgt. Titanica. (Okay, I got Grizzi, but still not interested
in the units.)
Zerkalo Bloc
An entirely new faction, these are interdimensional invaders from a world where some version of
the Soviet Union (called the Zerkalo Bloc) took over the world and then started seeking new worlds
to conquer. I went with the colors of another late-game faction, Warmachine's Crucible Guard, a
sort of teal/light blue and copper scheme. Their theme is a sort of steampunk meets dieselpunk and
Soviet brutalism, so they have chunky mecha and LTA (lighter than air) craft.
- LTA Gunship: Danger pillow. October 2022.
- LTA Fighters: Pointy danger pillows. October 2022.
- Vorota Walkers - Mobile teleport gates. I did the stargate-ish
portal effect using color shift pearl white with diorama water effect paint on top of it.
October 2022.
- SPARs - Yeah, I realized a year after assembling and priming these that
I glued one together sideways, oops. He's on a strafing run, I guess. Adorable little mecha
spiders carrying giant missiles. October 2022.
- Propo Walker - A propaganda unit, it has no direct attacks, but can
buff allies and debuff enemies. October 2022.
- WW-82 - 1982 model War Walker, the vanilla unit of the Zerkalo Bloc.
October 2022.
- Group Shot - All units and monsters. Finished November 2022.
Monsters
G.U.A.R.D.
- Defender X: Inspired by Cygnar elite WarJacks, with light gray
(or white) accents in addition to the standard blue, steel, and bronze.
November 2018.
- Just the wingpack: I finished this first, so decided to take
a picture of just the wingpack.
- Front view
- Left flank
- Rear view
- Right side
- From below (Nice side benefit of the clear base, all that work on stuff
only visible from below isn't wasted!)
- With Warmachine Laser Knight: Back when I decided I wanted to get
into Warmachine, I ordered a bunch of stuff using my Volunteer Points. While I was waiting for it to ship,
I took an un-based spare Hyper form Laser Knight I'd gotten in a parts lot from someone, and modded
it into a sort of Warjack.
- Sky Sentinel: Using the same basic color scheme concept, although I didn't
shade the GUARD belt buckle as harshly this time. All views in one picture this time. July 2019.
- Nova ESR: GUARD gets its third giant robot, focused more on search and
rescue. Group shot of all three "monsters". August 2020.
Planet Eaters
- Gorghadra: One claw snapped off when I was trying to remove the sprue stuff, but rather than try to
repair it I distressed the area further. Battle damage! March 2019.
- Rogzor: This one was a "wave 1.5" release, but I got it before I was done with Gorgy, so I finished it
not too long after. March 2019.
- A third monster (Xixor) has been released, not sure I'm going to get it.
Shadow Sun Syndicate
The Zors have normal-size feet and wide stances, so my usual tricks for mounting while painting would not
work. I ended up drilling holes up through the boots and holding them on pins, but that's not stable
enough for during painting, so I had to hold onto the legs while painting the upper part, slowing my
progress because I had to wait for things to dry hard lest I slough paint off.
- Zor-Raiden: The glow lines on the blades are zig-zags, which
turned out to be a lot harder to paint in. In retrospect, I should have carved the lines
deeper before assembling it, so that a wash would be more effective. September 2019.
- Zor-Maxim: I put it together the way that looked right, and only
discovered when the painting was almost done that I'd put the arm blades on backwards. I prefer
this to the officiall configuration, though. September 2019.
Lords of Cthul
- Brewgrosh: A GenCon 2018 exclusive mold of Cthugrosh,
chugging a water tower full of beer while sitting on a restaurant that's a regular
Privateer Press haunt during the 'con. I decided to paint him up like an evil sack
of beer, and put him on top of a new (and newly destroyed) location for my current
comics and gaming shop. The resin seemed to be a bad mix, I had trouble getting any
primer to stick, and there's a sort of crackle effect that happened despite my
efforts. Ah well. Primed and Future-coated in the
hopes of the primer not rubbing off during painting. October 2018.
- Cthugrosh and Yasheth compare black paints. While
Black 3.0 isn't quite the light-devouring substance I'd hoped, it's definitely a
lot blacker than regular black paint. July 2019.
- Regular Cthugrosh: As with many buildings, I had to add putty to the underside
to get it to stick to the poster putty I use to keep them on a handle for painting
(handle seen in the picture above). July 2019.
- Yasheth: The somewhat smaller footprint made it a little harder to keep him on
a base during painting. I decided to make the claws bone (with a green undertone)
but leave the wing spikes black, just to make more of a difference with Cthugrosh.
Yasheth is more of an energy drink guy. July 2019.
- Ulgoth is in the queue.
Terrasaurs
- Terra Khan: The not-Godzilla of the game, shown here with a
rather large keg of beer. A bit darker blue than most of the Trolls upon which I based
this faction's colors, but I decided that would help distinguish it from Armodax (and I
used the darker blue on the elite units). November 2019.
- Armodax: The not-Anguirus, much more Ankylosaurid than the
kaiju he homages. He has no beer, but I imagine he's belching after draining a container
ship full of it. November 2019.
-
Martian Menace
- Ares Mothership: Big saucer with claws, mounted on a more impressive energy shaft
(made from the stem of a Valentine's Day plastic wineglass). All views include regular
lighting and UV lighting. April 2019.
- Deimos-9: A tripod in the more literal sense, a bit of a hassle to assemble and base
(mine also had some molding flaws, but mostly in the greebly bits). May 2019.
ÜberCorp International
- Mecha-Maxim: The "second wave" UCI monster, but I
finished it slightly ahead of the others. My decision to light up all those vent
slots with energy really came back to bite me, you can see that I stopped trying
to get all of them super-sharp, especially on the head. Because the feet are resin,
I was able to drill out 1/8" holes and use Lego pieces to secure them to a Lego
base during painting. May 2020.
- Cyber Khan: the Kiryu (MechaGodzilla) to Terra Khan's Godzilla. Mine came with a
defective left arm, having not had the metal fill the mold entirely. Rather than try to
reconstruct the entire missing part (or send away for a replacement), I sculpted a chunk
of battle damage for that shoulder. I tried the same mounting trick as with Mecha-Maxim,
but the metal feet prevented that, so I wrapped foam around the partly-painted tail tip
and put a clip on that to act as a handle while I painted most of the figure, then I
painted the tail last. May 2020.
- Gorghadratron: The token Planet Eater in the first batch,
Mk1 Monsterpocalypse had UCI go more heavily into Cthul bots, so expect to see more later,
at least in units. Same "hold by the tail" painting trick due to metal feet. Unfortunately,
spending more time clamped led to the foam permanently reshaping the paint layers, so the
tail is a touch lumpy. June 2020.
Green Fury
- Convention version Sgt. Titanica: A 2019 convention
"exclusive" (available through the PP store), I incorrectly assumed it was following
the usual pattern of making a sexy female version of a non-sexy non-female (or at
least not obviously female) model, but I was wrong. Sgt. Titanica is merely in a
more revealing outfit and drinking beer from a tanker truck, but is normally a sexy
giant woman. Given my mistaken assumption, though, when Trans Visibility Day rolled
around in 2020, I knew what my theme would be. (I also changed the beer truck to
Scourge/Black Convoy from Transformers, and the beer suds are now Energon.) April 2020.
- GRIZZI: A corgi mascot of the Green Fury who got into a stolen bit of mutagen from
the giant furries faction (haven't gotten any as of 2021) and became gigantic. But
still adorable. My original plan was to do it all in glow-in-the-dark paints, having
found several colors of it from Folk Art, but the paints covered very badly and hardly
glowed at all, so I gave up on that plan other than using the blue on the eyes. Then
I took an older DecoArt GitD paint (no particular color) and went over the claws and
the pupils of the eyes, and it glows okay. August 2021.
Zerkalo Bloc
- Voyaka 099 - Russian for soldier or legionary, this is the
big gun among the Zerkalo Bloc's giant mecha. November 2022.
- Komkor 001 - Russian abbreviation for Commander of Corps,
the C3 specialist mecha. November 2022.
- Zavod 075 - Zavod is Russian for factory, and that's what this is.
It chews up enemy units and manufactures Bloc units. I think it looks like a giant BOPPER.
Maybe a BOPPER factory that built itself some OGRE treads. November 2022.
Buildings
All the buildings will also need to be painted, with cardboard Apartment
Buildings coming in the starters to hold people over. Once they start
selling blank bases (early 2019) I expect I'll make more custom buildings
or even re-base some of my Mk 1 customs. Hey, they won't be less
tournament-legal than before!
- Votive Building: The starter set buildings
are nice and cheap, but they're also pretty light and will tend to blow away
if your gaming table is near any sort of breeze source (like a door to the
outside). Dice containers have been used to make them stronger and more
stable, but I don't buy lots of dice. While looking around for wooden blocks
of the right size, I found 1.5" diameter LED votive candles...a perfect fit,
and now the building can be made to glow! Mounting squares used to attach
the building to the candle, and I placed them a little too low, leading to
some bulge. November 2018.
- All 12: $6 worth of LED votive candles
and a sheet of small mounting squares left over from when I wasn't allowed to
put nails in walls, and my Apartment Buildings all flicker warmly.
November 2018.
- Martian Command Post: I started this at the same
time as several units and the Martian monsters, but it turned out to be a quicker
job. Not really loving how the clear paint works on the base, but it's supposed
to represent light shining out of the windows and stuff. March 2019.
- Harbinger Comet Shard: The Planet Eaters base
building, so I dyed the base square red to match even though technically buildings
can no longer be tied to a faction anymore. May 2019.
- GUARD HQ: The GUARD base building, done in colors
inspired by Cygnar livery. I considered adding some tiny vehicles to the base, but
the ones I had available weren't quite the right scale (and the base doesn't have
a lot of open space anyway). May 2019.
- Statue of Liberty: This had some serious mold
issues, but I was able to get them fixed. Paint job is shiny, since in a MonPoc
world, it'd be getting destroyed and then rebuilt-with-superscience so often it'd
never get the time to develop the green patina. May 2019.
- Skyscrapers: These suffered only a little from molding issues, but it was a
consistent problem, with little details near the bottom. One I modded to remove all
those corners, the other only had one missing so I replaced it. Annoyingly, these
were both from a super oily batch, even after soaking and scrubbing I couldn't
get water-based primer to do anything but bead, so I had to scrape it off and
redo with fume-laden Tamiya primer. Hence some lumpyness in the final paints.
June 2019.
- Imperial State Building: I considered adding a zeppelin
mast on top, but decided it'd just break off (or attract burning zeppelins). Did this
at the same time as the SKyscrapers, but the smaller size and slightly less oily resin
let me finish it while they were still in basecoat touch-up. It's not the Empire
State Building, because that name and likeness has licensing fees attached.
June 2019.
- Void Gate: The Lords of Cthul themed building, based on the
skyscraper from Ghostbusters, but with a less sexy emerging evil. July 2019.
- Shadow Sun Industries: A bit more hasslesome than I was
hoping, between a combination of my white primer not being very primer-y and my light blue
being thicker than I thought it would be (loads and loads of visible brush marks from
the drybrushing on the windows). Still, came out decently in a Retribution of Scyrah
style color scheme. August 2019.
- Mount Terra: Okay, so I decided to paint the Terrasaurs up
in a Trollblood color scheme, but Mount Terra felt off to me as a result. Trolls aren't
egg-layers AFAIK, and they're more about cold mountains than volcanoes. Then I had an
epiphany, to replace eggs with kegs, which would still justify the building's "help spawn
new units" power. I ordered some miniature kegs on Shapeways, Dremeled out the eggs and
placed kegs wherever they seemed to fit. Then I used snow putty to add beer foam, and
Squadron gray putty to build up some supports for kegs I'd just glued to the side of the
mountain. November 2019.
- Downtown High Rise: Not even a little happy with how these
turned out, but I'm also not keen enough on the (slightly warped) mold to want to strip
'em down and try again. Calling them done. December 2019.
- Corporate Headquarters: Somewhat inspired by the Mk1
Privateer Press variant of the mold, I went with gloss black frame and chrome windows.
Didn't turn out as nicely as I'd hoped, but at least better than the high rises.
December 2019.
- Power Plant: I didn't care for the big seams in the cooling
tower, so I tried to smooth them out with liquid Green Stuff, but they ended up still
pretty visible. Ah well. December 2019.
- Communications Array: Yeah, the secondary tower
leans to the side a bit, not a lot I can do to unwarp resin. January 2020.
- Industrial Complexes: I got two because if I ever
actually play, it's useful to have two. Decided to not try the "direction of sunlight"
shading trick I usually do, these were tricky enough in even lighting. January 2020.
- Tokyo Triumph: I did my own Tokyo Tower back in Mk1 (see
link at top of the page), before an official one got released (Mk1 actually paid the
licensing fees for some of the landmarks, Mk2 did not). So, I didn't want to do it again
the same way. Unfortunately, all of the other Eiffel-like towers out there follow the
Eiffel model of being just metal colored, which is boring too. So I decided to get weird.
January 2020.
- UCI Industries: Back to the faction-themed buildings.
The Steelhead colors look pretty bad on here, which is kinda the point. UCI's whole
schtick is Not Quite Getting It. I didn't use neon paint on the windows and panel
lines because they don't actually glow...it's just paint and tinted windows. Cheap
knockoffs of all the cool toys. March 2020.
Writing
Leaving this section in just in case the newly tweaked canon inspires me to
write more fanon. See the Mk 1 page for my older
fics.
|
