How To Mod Minis: The Versatile Wonder Man

I have made mention once or twice before about how versatile Heroclix minis are.  But to show just how versatile they can be, as well as showing how a little imagination can convert a mini into multiple variations, I thought I'd try a little project.

Our story begins several years ago, when I was making minis for one of my most successful Cthulhuween one-shots, a mash-up of H.P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness" and John Carpenter's "The Thing."  It was a delightful exercise in paranoia, and I will be sure to chronicle that particular adventure another time.  But it meant that I would need a bunch of minis in arctic gear, and that meant Heroclix and putty.

I got a bunch of clix minis and added hoods and fur collars with putty.  Most of these minis came from a big batch of them I had gotten years earlier.  My FLGS was selling Heroclix singles for a while, and I would come by and pick up one or two when a project called for it.  One day when I went in and asked to see the box of loose singles, the guy behind the desk said that I was literally the only person who ever went through them, and they were taking up valuable space behind the counter.  So he told me to just take the lot of them and good riddance.  This was a real boon for me, and I am still finding uses for some of that original batch of free Heroclix.

One mini in that batch was the Marvel superhero (and long-time Avenger,) Wonder Man.  He was actually one of my favorite characters from the brief time I read West Coast Avengers back in the late eighties, and he is even more of a favorite as a Heroclix.

Now, the character has had many costumes over the years, not all of them winners...

Don't judge; I've seen your yearbooks.

Luckily, the particular mini looks like this:

No Spandex, no jet packs, just a regular guy with pants, boots, a pocketed jacket with popped collar and glasses.  When I first saw him in the big lot of minis, I knew he had a lot of versatility, and knew I'd find a use for him.  Then, years later, the Antarctica adventure came along, and I found a use for him.  A little putty around the collar sculpted into fur, and voila!

The paint job leaves a bit to be desired, but it served admirably for the adventure.  But that was my only Wonder Man, and I sort of wished I had more, since there was so much more I knew I could do with that mini.

Flash forward a few years (a couple of weeks ago,)  when I saw a huge lot of 175 Heroclix minis going for cheap on Ebay.  They were all from the Avengers set, and there were multiples of each one.  I couldn't pass up the deal, and picked it up.  Included in the lot were no less than FIFTEEN WONDER MAN MINIS!

This was enough to really experiment with impunity, so I decided to take this opportunity to show just how versatile a mini could be, and how many different ways one could use a mini.

To start, I wanted to show how a simple repaint could entirely change a mini's character.

My first offering is your basic, everyday military officer.  I had to fold down the collar, and trim it down in the back a bit, but it I think it works great.  I could always go in later and add a holstered pistol if I wanted to further enhance it.

Next we have a big game hunter, fresh from safari.  All it took was some khaki and earth tones and yellow lenses for the glasses, and you're done.  I could accessorize with a rifle slung over the shoulder and a canteen or some binoculars.

So those are some easy modifications, but there are plenty more ideas, perfect for modern games, that would require no more than a repaint.

And if you are willing to do some minor modifications, there are even more possibilities for all kinds of games.

If you have the basic putty skills necessary to fill out the cuffs of the pants (I would suggest trimming them down first,) you could make yourself a resident of beautiful Miami:

The skin tone got a little wonky, but the powder blue guayabera shirt and the loafers with no socks just scream Calle Ocho.  This guy could pass for one of my neighbors growing up...

But maybe the modern era is not your bag.  If you want a more sci-fi look, I trimmed off this fellow's lapels, and removed his shades, and it changes the entire mini.

Here you have an instant stereotypical Corellian smuggler, complete with blood stripe.  I could easily add a blaster holster slung low on the hip for the added touch (shaggy copilot not included.)

Looking to get medieval on your game?  with a little head swap, some scraping to remove the jacket pockets, and some putty to form the flap of the tunic and a rope for a belt, we have a peasant.

Had to use some bras rod to make a neck for the new head, which was one I had snipped off a Orlock ganger some time ago.

The flaps for his headband were sculpted along with the rest of the neck.  I wanted him to be usable as either a Western-style medieval peasant or an Eastern style one (I just might have a seven samurai themed one shot in the works...)

"But what about Fallout" you ask?  "With your perpetual obsession of the post-apocalyptic sandbox, surely you will not leave out a Fallout-inspired creation?"

Fear not, gentle reader; of course I can see a perfect use for this mini in Fallout.

As you can see, Wonder Man works great as a roving merchant.  I used putty to make the backpack and pants pouches, as well as the hat and goggles.  Then I added an ammo box from the WW2 Germans I had leftover, with more putty for straps.  The same sprue gave me the ammo pouches that stick out the front.
Now he's ready to wander the wastes, pack brahmin in tow (to be modeled at another date.)

So there you have it: seven variations on a theme.  But I don't have to stop there: I could (and almost certainly will some day,) use putty to make the pants into jodhpurs, and sculpt a beret on top, and he will be the very model of an old-time director.  Remove the pockets of the jacket and paint it white and he's a field doctor.  All black or grey and he's the leader of a mercenary band.  The uses are (practically) endless.  So try looking at minis (especially any that you happen to have a bunch of,) in as many different ways as possible.

Akimbo Team, Go!

Twin Birthdays of Doom 2014: Where Mi-Go Dare

I've posted before about the yearly Cthulhu-themed Halloween one shot games my wife and I have run for the last decade or so, but we also run a second one in May, to celebrate our birthdays, which are both in that month.

This year, I decided to write an adventure set against the backdrop of World War Two.  I had seen a trailer for what looked to be just an absolutely awful horror flick called Castle Frankenstein (I believe.)  It involved Russian soldiers in WWII moving through German territory and finding the lair of Victor Frankenstein, who was employed in creating monstrosities for the Nazis.  Like I said, it looked really shlocky and gory, and just generally cheap.

But the core idea kind of stayed with me.  I started thinking how it could be adapted to fit within a mythos context, and the story began to form in my mind.  The player characters would all be U.S. paratroopers on a mission behind enemy lines to help destroy a Bavarian castle, where a shadowy member of Hitler's inner circle was involved with some kind of sinister experimentation.  The PC's mission was to disable the castle's air defenses, so that the bombing mission could succeed.

The story set, that meant it was time to start thinking minis!

In the interest of thriftiness, I am always trying to use minis that I already possess, so for the Americans, I decided to use the "Airborne Elite" figs from Heroscape.  This Milton Bradley board game is a popular one in mini modding circles, because for the money, you really did get an awful lot of useful (especially to modern RPG players,) miniatures in 28 mm scale.  Also, since it was a mainstream game sold in regular retail outlets, it was not difficult to find markdowns and clearance sales.  I own three sets.

Here they are, straight out of the box

I had already rebased some of the troops to use for the B-movie one-shot from last year.  But as you can see, the sculpting and painting leave a bit to be desired.  But a new lick of paint can work wonders, even on a less than stellar sculpt.  However, I knew I wanted an assortment of specialists (radio man, demolitions expert, sniper, etc.) and that meant some modifications were in order.

Two of my conversions with the stock models behind them.  The trooper on the right was the grenadier.  He was simply repainted, and I sculpted some extra grenades for him, including pins, but they don't really show up well in the photo.  My favorite is the BAR gunner, which was made out of the badly sculpted carbine you can see on the original model behind him, using putty and a paper clip.

This one generic trooper was modified into two specialists, the radio and the commando.  The command had the grenade in his left hand swapped into a knife from a 40K Catachan sprue, and the radio pack from that same sprue was mounted on the radio man's back.  I re-positioned the arm with the carbine, which meant re-sculpting almost the whole thing out of putty.  I then sculpted the handheld radio and antenna (paper clip) which again, you can't really see well in the photo.

Sometimes experiments go well, other times not so much.  I made the sniper by snipping away the front part of his clunky carbine, and gluing a sniper rifle from a sprue over it.  But the rifle was a   noticeably smaller scale, and didn't really line up right to look realistic, so I'm not too proud of it.  But when I had to ad an eighth character at the last minute (long story,) and wanted a bazooka man, it turned out better than I'd hoped.  The tube of the launcher is the plastic tube of a Q-Tip, and the flared end is actually made from a German Panzerfaust (from the German sprue I mention below.)  It certainly isn't perfect, but the effect works great I feel, especially for a last minute job.

Rounding out the squad were the demolitions expert and the medic, both of whom are Easy Company soldiers from Heroclix.  By now you may have noticed that all their eyes look terrible.  The truth is, I was rushing at the last minute (that happens a lot with these events,) and I had just painted the eyes, meaing to go back over them with flesh to narrow them up to realistic proportions (it's one of many ways to do eyes, and probably the best I know.)  But I forgot, so everyone looks like they are realy surprised anime characters.  Oh well...

The characters were briefed on their mission, and began in media res at the gate of Verhangnisschloss.  They had to fight a squad of German soldiers and they were in.

Most of these were metal minis from Wargames Foundry I picked up years ago for a Call of Cthulhu campaign.  The others were made from a boxed plastic kit from Wargames Factory, whose stuff I am becoming quite fond of, especially since I got them on sale. The guy on the left was also supposed to have his eyes narrowed, and instead looks like he is shocked about what he is reading.

But then they find the morgue, full of dead German soldiers.  This being a horror-themed adventure, it came as no shock that those same bodes began to stir and attack.  Nazi zombies.  Hell yeah.

And this is the real reason I had picked up the plastic German infantry set.  Polystyrene is easily the best of all materials to work with and modify.  So I got to cuttin'...

Here are some of my zombies.  I put them at the bottom of the priority list, so their weapons were not fnished, but nobody noticed.  The helmetless heads are from Wargames Factory's zombies.  Unfotunately, the guy in front leans over, so you can't really see that he has no lower jaw.

Some more walking dead.   I scraped the faces down to make sunken cheeks, and gave them plenty of injuries, such as 'Guts' there.  I also gave one a huge gaping hole with ribs poking out, but then I put the panzerfaust in front of it, largely obscuring it.  Oh well...

This guy is my personal favorite.  On a whim, I thought I would try carving away one soldier's face to look like exposed skull underneath.  I have to say, I'm more than pleased with the result!

Some more views of Herr Half-Face.  It's hard to see the teeth in the picture.

After facing the Nazombies, they continued on into the castle of horrors.  There they found cybernetically enhanced gorillas, because of course they did.  I mean come on, how could I have a crazy Weird War II adventure and not feature the kriegaffen, one of my favorite quirky inventions from Mike Mignola's Hellboy comics.

The fellow on the left (whose paint job is sadly lacking,) is the real kriegaffen, from the Hellboy Villains boxed set of miniatures I got as a gift a few years ago, and the one on the right is a 'straight from the box' version of the Horrorclix lab gorilla.  He was simply re-based, so I take no responsibility or blame for that paint job.  They were the first two kriegaffen the party met, and represented the first stage of the critter, with the larger versions appearing later in the encounter.  That is because I already had some larger version I was just dying to use...

This is Ape-X, from Reaper's Bones line.  Due to an odd confluence of events, I ended up with three of him.  Obviously he is perfect, but I'm a real stickler for not wanting identical models on the table, so two of them would need modification, including altering their bases.  I started with a moderate alteration on one, removing one of the gut plugs, re-positioning the arms, and then re-positioning the head to face a different direction.  I snipped the parts with a craft knife (cut carefully, kids!) and pinned them with paper clips.  I then filled in the gaps with green stuff and sculpted the fur and other bits to cover them.  This was one of the most ambitious attempts I had made to that time, it emboldened me to try even more outrageous mods on the remaining ape.

As you can see, I went for a more radical alteration in the third one's posture.  I snipped off the legs and reattached them in a leaning forward position.  Then I snipped off both arms and reposed them as well (the left required being cut in two places for this application.  Of course I had to reposition his head as well, or else he would have been looking down.  This all took quite a bit of work, and I was working on them in stages for a few weeks on and off.  But in the end, I think it paid off nicely.

The kriegaffen were a formidable foe, but they eventually defeated them all.  In the next area they encountered the Mi Go, the hideous Fungi from Yuggoth themselves.  It was they who had given the Germans their brain transplantation technology in exchange for mining rights.  It was revealed in this encounter that one of the goals the German commander, Colonel Von Ubelschwamm, was working towards, was to create a perfect body that the Fuehrer's brain could be placed inside, granting him immortality.  The prototype body was a mindless (literally) creature that they naturally had to fight.

The mini was the clay golem from Reaper's Bones line (God bless that Kickstarter) that I painted up hastily (didn't get the mold lines cleaned off, unfortunately,) with blue eyes, naturally.

After defeating the golem and the Mi Go (whose minis were not fully painted at game time, and I am therefore too ashamed to post photos of them,) they made it to the rof, where they found the anti aircraft turrets they needed to disable.

The turrets were an 11th hour stroke of luck.  I was (w)racking my brains on what to use for the turrets, and made a trip to my local toy store, where they just so happened to be having a big clearance sale, with some items 70-90% off.  Included in these markdowns were several sets of Halo Micro Ops playsets.  Now, these figures are way too small of scale to fit with 28mm scale, but the vehicles are passing in some cases.  And would you believe it?  They had a set with pop-up turrets.  These were perfect and I scooped up several sets.

But they were not alone on the roof.  Colonel Von Ubelscwamm had had his brain placed inside a powerful robotic war machine, armed with machineguns and panzerfausts.

This is another mini I did nothing to other than rebasing it.  It is "Gyrus" from the Horrorclix set "the Lab."  I've wanted to use this mini since I first pulled t in a random box.  I mean come on, it's a freaking robot with a brain in a jar!  That thing just screams "weird science boss battle."

And so t was.  However, before the final fight, I gave each player an envelope revealing their true, hidden mission.  People turned on each other in an orgy of violence and betrayal, and a good time was had by all.

Sadly, the forces of evil carried the day, and the world got a little darker blah blah blah...

It's a one-shot, what're ya gonna do?