They're not the '27 Yankees

 Time to make some drama from this Crisis

I don't know - I liked WandaVision.

In a plot twist more dramatic than anything Phase 4 ever managed, I realised I hadn't painted any Marvel Crisis Protocol figures for a year.

Fortunately, that had left me with a stack of unpainted birthday and Christmas presents to work through. Quite unintentionally, the figures packs I started with have a very Age of Ultron theme going on.

Scarlet Witch was up first, and she definitely had to be a subassembly, what will all that swirly hex magic to contend with. The good news about waiting to paint her was, by this time, I'd acquired a pot of Doomfire Magenta contrast, which is fantastic for this kind of glowing pink.

The rest of Wanda was just layering regular acrylics, the challenge being to keep it all red, and yet keep all the reds different. 

I'm very happy with this one, and I love the original costume design. Although I won't write off trying to get hold of a movie-accurate one too (third party sculpts abound).

With Wanda comes her twin Pietro, also in a comics-accurate costume, which is great, because that's the one I read about in the 90s - permanently irritable, massively arrogant, and a great foil to the other jokers of X-Factor.

This is a pretty dynamic model that plays fast and loose with the notion of a centre of gravity, so I might have to add weights to the base. I'm keen to try him out in-game since he is, as you can imagine, very fast.

Both Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are classic Avengers, which is why I've included them. They are not, repeat not, the start of my collection branching off into X-Men, because that would be very foolish.

Slightly more special ops is the Winter Solider. Straightforward enough - the challenge was making his black suit have some kind of depth and shade to it. And, of course, ensuring his hair was as glossy as a Timotei commercial.

Far more colourful is Vision. I was never that sure about the colourful palette for this synthezoid - it seemed more logical that he would be in his pure white alternate form (although that would have been pretty boring to paint).

His body was done with contrasts, so not to obscure that fine circuitry detailing, and the yellow cape took a couple of layers and glazes (but that's yellow for you).

I'm also happy with the blue glow around his knee, to show him phasing through the wall.

One of the things I've really enjoyed about following the development of the Crisis Protocol game is the evolution of the sculpts. By their own admission, Atomic Games have learned a lot in the few years since they launched, and that becomes evident in the latter models.

For example, Winter Soldier and Vision were fairly early releases, and their poses are quite static. War Machine and Falcon were a bit later on down the line, and they are far more dynamic, leaping around and using smoke or jet-blasts to propel them into the air.

As with Winter Solider, the biggest challenge with War Machine was to get enough variety into his silver-iron armour, and that was done with dark glazes and washes. The dash of blue with his arc reactor is a useful point of colour.

Finishing up with my favourite of the bunch - Captain America, Sam Wilson! I was initially disappointed not to have a Falcon model - and also because I'd painted this type of costume twice already. But when I got to layering on the blues and reds, I was really happy with the outcome. I even left off adding any fire to the smoke blasts, so the whole model remains red, white and blue.

So that's the next six done, plenty more to go (and I hope I get some bad guys again - I must have prioritised painting them first!)

Speaking of which, there was one stray henchman that I'd painted a while back to add some pinpoint villainy to the Criminal Syndicate - Benjamin Poindexter, aka Bullseye. In game, he's a cheeky 2 Threat with a nasty habit for picking characters off. To paint, it was great fun to slapchop Leviadon Blue on his costume, then pick out his accessories with Ulthuan Grey. 

And to finish off, his lower face and that characteristic psychotic smirk!