Wait.. haven’t we seen this model before? Why yes, yes we have.

While the model looks fine in hand, it looks pretty rough in these photos – expecially blown up this much. The issue seems to be that varnishing the model simply messed up the finish of the metallic paint, as it looked quite a bit better beforehand – especually in hand. I’m not sure what the solution is whne painting high-shine metal, as neither gloss spray varnish nor Vallejo’s paint-on Metal Varnish really worked. Ultron suffered from the same issue some time ago – and now I know for sure that the problem with these shiny metal models isn’t varnishing when it’s too hot.

Given that the primary point of this model isn’t to get likes in social media nor win painting accolades – but to be used on a tabletop in games, simply not varnishing the thing isn’t really an option. Models like my Iron Warriors or Minotaurs don’t have the same sort of issue as their metallics are much more muted, and there’s a lot of other stuff happening on those models that draws the eye. On those models, metallic armour is the background – on these MCP models, a shiny metallic armour is the main event.

But – you might ask – why would you do this? Well, it simply came down to wanting more dice and another set of rulers (for 2 players) as well as additional set of the NYC terrain. Through the magic of maths, I worked out that it would only cost me AU$20 more to get a second core set with the tradeoff of not having an additional bodega building but instead getting an extra set of the 10 core characters. This meant I could then paint ’em in alt colours and give us both a chance to use, say, Iron Man or Red Skull (once I actually paint ’em).

Anyway, I decided to have some fun with the final shots of these using a ZC Toys Iron Man MKII that I picked up recently.

If you like this sort of thing, the ZC Toys Iron Man figures are miles ahead of the Marvel Legends, and don’t cost a lot more, being more like Hot Toys Junior.