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.

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…

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.

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..

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?

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.

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(!)

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.

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.

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…