Marvel United: Luke Cage and Korg (Weekend of Cage!)

Marvel United: Luke Cage and Korg Painted Miniature

What’s that? MORE Luke Cage? That’s right, buddy, we have Luke Cage being represented in a third licenced game with a fourth miniature figure in three days! This time we have the Marvel United version, along with Korg who is along for the ride in getting a figure painted and off the desk. Korg presnted a …unique challenge for me. I got him painted, so a standard that I was pretty happy with actually, then took him outside for a varnishing, then sprayed the front of him …silver with the first blast.

oh.

oh dear.

So… I had essentially destroyed the painted model. Just like that.

Marvel United: Luke Cage and Korg Painted Miniature

Now, we’ve all heard of people doing this sort of thing by accident many times over the years, and I’ve seen people even swear off spray cans entirely because of it. But I look at it this way. I’ve been painting for nigh on 40 years now, and this is the first time this has happened. If I keep up my current rate of doing it I simply won’t have to worry about it because I’ll be (probably long) dead before it occurs again. Sweet!

Now in this case, I knew exactly what I needed to do. I needed to restart and get to work on the figure again as quickly as possible. I knew someone who has simply dropped models in the bin when this happened to them. I knew that for myself, if I put the model aside and let it sit, I’d simply resent the thing when I saw it and put off the repaint for months if not years. So I went back in immediately (after letting the silver dry) and went over it all entiely, and got it (re)completed the next day. It helps that Korg is not an especially complex figure, and so I was lucky enough that I was able to pretty well replicate the initial paintwork very closely.

One thing I did (and do) like about Korg is how his armour came out. It’s somewhat inspired by the work recently done by fellow Paint-Blogger Kuribo over on Kuribo’s Painting of a Fallout Security Guy. Kuribo did some lovely blends on the model’s armour, but I felt it looked a bit too clean. Kuribo replied that he felt the armour was supposed to look pretty pristine, but I thought that my own idea of Fallout’s vaults things would still be pretty worn down over the decades even if kept clean – so I wanted to try that kind of look on Korg’s armour – well maintained and clean, but worn and nicked through ages of use – as opposed to the beaten up & dusty look that Wastelanders or Orks might have. So this is my “show, don’t tell” version of what I was talking about.

marvel Crisis Protocol Luke Cage, Marvel Zombies Luke Cage Zombie Miniature, Marvel United Luke Cage Painted Miniature, Marvel United Korg Painted Miniature

So yeah, the impetus for painting these three Luke Cage figures came from seeing Argentbadger’s post again recently and then having it pop into my head that Luke Cage looked like a pretty straightforward model to paint – an easy win, if you will! Of course, with three different Miniature-related Mavel games in hand, it also meant that the most efficient way to try to eventually get all painted would be to do a batch paint of sorts. So… that’s what I did – working on all four pretty interchangably until all four were done, though not in the typical “army batch paint” manner where you paint all the boots, all the pants, etc – but ducking from one model to another over the course of most of a week, post-op. (And after the C:DMD Ghouls!) Now I have a character set up to play across four separate games – Marvel Zombies Hero mode and Zombie mode are related, but separate games – and both can use both figures!

Marvel United: Painted Core Set

Marvel United Painted Core Set. Captain America, Incredible Hulk, Black Widow, Red Skull, Ultron, Taskmaster, Ant-Man, The Wasp, Captain Marvel, Iron Man

I typically don’t overshare on this blog. At least I try not to. A big part of my job is managing the IT for a medium sized workplace but (almost) every week I also spend some time working with some young people at a local school. This group of young people all have an ID, many with ASD as well as various other diagnoses. One of the things I do when I’m there is run a boardgame session with one of the teachers there one afternoon each week. The idea is to encourage other kinds of gaming and social interaction to the usual ones of holding a game controller or a football. Not that there’s anything wrong with either of those things, but there arre also a lot of other worthwhile ways to interact socially.

Marvel United Painted Core Set. Captain America, Incredible Hulk, Iron Man

As part of this, I’ve facilitated the purchase of a small stack of engaging and accessable boardgames & tabletop games to supplement some of the usual, typical stuff that they have there. (Monopoly, Uno, Snakes & Ladders, etc). Things like Top Trumps, Zombicide, Zombie Dice, Risk.. a few others – and, as you can see here – Marvel United. A little more interesting than Monopoly…

Marvel United Painted Core Set. Captain America, Incredible Hulk, Iron Man

Over time, I’ve noticed a few of the students taking a long look at the details in some of the models. One of them really taking a long look at the individual Zombie Walkers from Zombicide and noting “oh, this guy’s a firefighter – cool” and another really looking carefully at the different Marvel United characters during a game I was running.

Marvel United Painted Core Set. Black Widow, Captain Marvel

And then a couple of weeks ago, I had a close look at my own Marvel Zombies Hulk. I usually give plastic models a light spray of white primer before cleaning the mold lines since it makes them stand out a little more, and so cleanup becomes a touch easier. I noticed how the particular spray I’d given my Hulk really made his well-sculpted musculature stand out..

Marvel United Painted Core Set. Black Widow, Captain Marvel

Over about a week, an idea seeped into my brain. Now, you guys know that while I do get a lot of stuff painted, it also can take me forever to get sets of models painted. I’ve barely touched my own Marvel United set. But what if… I relaxed my own standards a little in order to get them painted fast and then utilised Zenithal Spraying and Contrast-Style Paints to give a “Slap Chop”-ish  style a go?

Marvel United Painted Core Set. Ant-Man, The Wasp

I mean, the kids aren’t going to be super harsh critics. Not nearly what I would be to myself for my own models. (outside of trash like those D&D models!) And of course, I knew I could learn something about these techniques that I’ve never really used beyond lip service as well.

Marvel United Painted Core Set. Ant-Man, The Wasp

So… I did just that. I took two sets of models home with me, and over the course of the past two weekends I’ve (somehow) managed to paint everything from two of the (smaller model count) boardgames. In the end I also ended up drybrushing and washing and doing the odd bit of blending and fine detail as well where the models needed it… but I still got them done on a pretty tight timeline – even if it did take up most of my time on these two weekends(!)

Marvel United Painted Core Set. Red Skull, Ultron, Taskmaster

Are the models perfect? No. No, they’re not. Are there small “errors” – or at least places where I “could have done better”? of course – they’re all covered in them.

Marvel United Painted Core Set. Red Skull, Ultron, Taskmaster

But… are they finished? Do they look better than my own sets which are still unpainted plastic? Well, clearly the answer is a resounding yes to both.

Marvel United Painted Core Set. Captain America, Incredible Hulk, Black Widow, Red Skull, Ultron, Taskmaster, Ant-Man, The Wasp, Captain Marvel, Iron Man

Much more importantly – are the kids going to like them?

Well, they haven’t actually seen them yet. But I think they’ll go down pretty well…