Marvel United: The Thing and Human Torch

CMON, Spin Master Games, Marvel United: Ben Grimm the Thing Miniature, Johnny Storm the Human Torch Miniature

Another couple of Marvel United miniatures today – and the final pair of April’s models. We have Ben Grimm – the ever-lovin’, blue-eyed Thing and his close compatriot, Johnny Storm – the Human Torch! Unfortunately I didn’t get Red or Sue completed in time for April and still don’t have them done for the intended group shot, so we’ll have to come back to the other half of the team once they’re done…

Originally, The Thing was one of the “easier” models that we’d picked out for Marouda to paint, but when we started playing through the Fantastic Four box I decided to take the lead on getting the FF to the painted stage and so painted Ben up fiirst.

CMON, Spin Master Games, Marvel United: Ben Grimm the Thing Miniature, Johnny Storm the Human Torch Miniature

Johnny was produced in a pretty nice clear red plastic, so I had to decide how best to paint him. I’ve seen some renditions of this model with Johnny’s blue uniform and human flesh painted in, with the flames around him being either left clear or painted in, but with models like this being on the less common side I preferred to lean into the transparency, so gave him some all-over treatments of thinned orange and yellow contrast, doing my best to remove it from the raised areas of the model and just adding in Johnny’s eyes, mouth and the Fantastic Four logo on his chest in white. Not especially realistic, but something that works for me in the comic-book context (and – let’s face it – also would for a fantasy or 40k model).

Marvel United: Groot

CMON, Spin Master Games, Marvel United: Groot Miniature

Something a bit different today – The Groot model from the CMoN/Spin Master Games Card/Board Game “Marvel United”. I skipped the first Kickstarter for this entirely since the game didn’t look very appealing, and I’m not especially a fan of Chibis or things like Funko Pops. Fast forward a couple of years and I saw people on a bargain forum’s game section discussing the original core game being on Amazon for a sing, and discussing how the second Kickstarter still had a pladge manager open that also allowed new backsers to get ALL of the previous stuff. I picked up the cheap game, we played it a few times and really enjoyed it – to the extent of going all-in on that second KS campaign including the first campaign’s stuff as well.

CMON, Spin Master Games, Marvel United: Groot Miniature

Unlike all too many of my (and probably your) gaming purchases, we ended up playing the game pretty frequently since then, as it’s an easy but tactical little game that I would recommend to others. Since I keep trying to encourage Marouda to do some painting, she eventually agreed to paint some of these as she felt that they looked easier to do. With some coaching, Marouda ended up painting a bunch of the basic parts of this model before I went over it for the final touches and details and effects. The plan was to also paint Rocket and post them up together, but it didn’t work out like that in April, so now we have a late-coming Groot for today’s post instead!