Marvel Crisis Protocol - Expansions

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Marvel Comics – During the lock-down my family watched all the Marvel movies in chronological order, it was really fun to see how they tied everything together and had minimal inconsistencies that are easy to ignore. So it was pretty cool when I was sent these models to paint up for Marvel Crisis Protocol.

I’ve heard the game is really fun and might need to look into picking it up at some point, I just saw that they’ll be releasing the Johnny Blaze version of Ghost Rider which is pretty sweet. The models are a little larger scale which helps make painting a bit easier so my client painted up the first batch himself using the contrast paints. After that he got the painting bug out of his system and sent these over.

Starlord, Valkyire and Rocket are really cool models that will look nice on the shelf and the tabletop.

Dressing Up Your Deck - Starcadia Quest Scenery

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Board Games – Another Kickstarter Exclusive that really should be made available to the general public the scenery pack adds working doors, gun turrets and console screens to take the game to another level.

I tried dressing up the screens a bit with loose interpretations of some classic video game screens. I’m not 100% happy with the final results but I think they serve their purpose.

Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting

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Board Games – I watched Kung Fu Panda for the first time while flying to Aruba with my wife, for that reason it holds a special place in my heart. My kids enjoyed the series but it’s not their favorite so I was surprised at how excited they were to see me painting these models.

Contrast paint laid the foundation of these and I picked out the details with some traditional highlighting to bring out the detail.

Cosmic Colonies and Alien Frontiers Factions - Taking Space

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Board Games – Resource management games typically use plastic or wooden cubes in various colors because they’re cheap and easy to produce. This is fine however when a game includes sculpted versions of these resources it takes the game to a new level. Cosmic Colonies is one such game.

From the manufacturer:

Asteroids blast through the cosmos, each one packed with possibilities. One may be your perfect new home, but it takes a stellar team to build a cosmic colony...

Cosmic Colonies is an orbit-drafting game of building a home in the stars. Players must leverage their workers' unique abilities to gather resources and construct new buildings while cleverly expanding their colonies. Each round brings new opportunities — and new talent. Your old workers will blast off to other players, while their workers orbit around to join your team!

Also in this group I painted up the various resource tokens for Alien Frontiers Factions. Three little power plants and a rover look much better with a little paint.

Gardening for Fun and Profit – Tang Garden

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Board Games – I know many people have taking up gardening during lockdown and that’s admirable. However if you want to keep your hands dirt free and create something beautiful you might want to check out Tang Garden.

This is a unique game that has you creating a garden for the emperor during the Tang Dynasty. The tile laying game has unique 3D elements including trees, bridges, gazebos and of course miniatures. From what I understand you score your game by looking at what the miniatures can actually see and score accordingly. It seems like a cool concept that I’d love to play one day.

For now I’m happy painting up the models. These character pawns aren’t super detailed and are a little on the small side, but they serve their purpose. Once they’re painted to match the cards they blend in nicely with the other components to create a beautiful garden scene without getting dirt under your nails.

The Others Seven Sins - One More Box

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Board Games – Sadly although I’ve painted every model for this game and watched a ton of play throughs I still haven’t had a chance to play The Others: Seven Sins. The game looks super fun and I loved the dark theme, however the game is a little mature to play with the kids so until I can get a group together to play I’ll just enjoy the models.

This “final” box has Delta Team and a variety of corrupted citizens.

Blood Rage - Mystics of Midgard

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Board Games – Blood Rage is a viking game. I’ve painted several expansions for the game but not the core game. Much like many other CMON games it has decent quality sculpts for the various characters.

These are really similar to the miniatures from The Others and Zombicide, pretty decent for board game pieces but not quite the detail you get from a mulitpart plastic kit. I painted these up to match the cover art in simple reds, browns and blacks.

As I haven’t had a chance to play this game here’s a description from the manufacturer:

Known by many names (Seiðmenn, Völva, Vísendakona, etc.) and possessed of different powers granted by their connection to the gods, these warrior-shamans will be a boon to any clan able to recruit them!

Mystics are special units (neither Warrior nor Monster) that players can only employ once they've given their clan one of the Mystic Clan Upgrades. Each of these Clan upgrades adds 1 Mystic figure to your clan's reserves, which you can then use to Invade and battle normally. All Mystics have STR 2 and the special ability that allows them to Invade at no Rage cost. Clans are only able to recruit a maximum of 2 Mystics.

Besides adding Mystics to your reserves, each of these Clan Upgrades grants your Mystics a special ability. If you collect several different upgrades, each of your Mystics will posses all the abilities you accumulated, making them incredibly resourceful and strategic additions to your clan!

Western Legends - A Sandbox Game?

Board Games – Western Legends is billed as an open-world, sandbox game set in the American West, which to me sort of screams Red Dead Redemption the table top game. I’m not exactly sure how a board game can be an open-world sandbox, since that is typically RPG territory but that’s what this game claims to be. Board Game geek has it rated as a 7.7 as of this posting and it was nominated for several awards in 2018 so I assume the game lives up to its promise.

If you couldn’t tell by that vague description, I haven’t actually played this game. Much like many of the commissions that come across my desk I’m primarily concerned with how the models look and getting them painted to fit the theme and be functional.

For what they are these are decent cowboy miniatures, not a ton of detail and a little on the small side but they painted up nice enough.

Building a Fiefdom

Board Games – Fife is a board game that sounds pretty similar to other kingdom building games. The core game comes with cardboard chits to represent the structures in the game. With the upgrade expansion you get replacement miniatures for all the chits.

Looking at the images on Boardgame Geek of the board the plastic pieces will look amazing on the detailed board. I’m not sure if they have miniatures for the cardboard standees but if they do I imagine they’ll find their way to my table soon enough.