Hi-de-Hydra!

Complete one box of miniatures, two more appear in the painting queue...

I thought I'd be resting on my comic book laurels for a few months more, but after a couple more Crisis Protocol matches and I realised how much I bloody love this game - so onwards we go!

The first up is old Crimson Cranium himself - only the second time (I guarantee not the last) that I've acquired a character that I already have. Although, as with Thor, I could rationalise it because he comes on a different base size, with some unique accessories.

Painting-wise, despite being one of the big bads, once you have the skull done, the model is basically finished. This Red Skull is equipped with leviathan armour (presumably traded in for his Cosmic Cube), which adds a bit of spark.

(comic book lore: I think Red Skull's first return to challenge Captain America was foiled when he used the Cosmic Cube to cover himself with golden armour - and then Cap pushed him into the ocean whereupon he discovered that gold doesn't float.)

Being the master of Hydra, this Red Skull is accompanied by a unit of respawning grunts - Hydra Troopers (similar to the rappelling S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents). These were a colourful bunch to assemble, starting with my standard recipe for yellow: Zandri Dust base, Averland Sunset layer, Iyanden Yellow contrast, Averland Sunset layer, Yriel Yellow highlights.

The green was Luperical Green base and Warpstone Glow layer. I avoided metalics for their guns, since too much of it doesn't fit the comic book aesthetic (god help me when I paint Colossus), so I went with a Mechanicus Standard Grey base and Dawnstone layer.

I really like how they turned out, and given that they never seem to die on the table, I should be seeing a lot of them.

The most time-consuming, and most enjoyable, model of this batch had to be M.O.D.O.K. (Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing to you). This is the second design of the character, and really shows the evolution in sculpting ability over just a few years. The original one looks very static and a bit weird (not in the good way), whereas this one is very dynamic and looks absolutely bonkers (in absolutely the right way).

The face was fun to paint, as it was just a big giant head. The doomsday chair was more of a challenge, since it was sort-of gold, but I didn't just want to go with a Retributor Armour basecoat (which, in fairness, would have saved me hours of painting time). Instead, I tried to suggest a golden colour with Zandri Dust basecoat, Averland Sunset layer and Nazdreg Yellow contrast. Then a 50/50 mix of Zandri Dust/Averland Sunset and a very careful application (one pass, not to leave streaks) of Skeleton Horde.

It came out okay, and then all the colourful buttons and lights completed the effect.

Baron Strucker is a very good leader on the table, but when it comes to painting, he's not much more than a glorified Hydra Trooper, so he got completed in the same batch.

The weirdest paint job was saved for Arnim Zola, the computerised face in a robotic body. To make things easier, they did provide an actual face, so that can be sorted with with some aggressive drybrushing. And then you have a piece of clear plastic to act as a faceplate - simple!

Not a scratch, Herr Doktor. Not a scratch.

However, for reasons that I'm sure made sense somewhere, the piece of clear plastic was not faceplate-shaped, but comprised of half the front torso of the model. That meant that you had to prime and paint the face, assemble the model, prime the rest of the model (and hope you'd successfully masked the transparent plastic) and then paint the rest of the model.

When all that was done, basecoats and layers of yellow and purple were easy.

And that rounds out my Hydra affiliation considerably. Which is all to the good, since I think they make better baddies than the generic 'Cabal' and Monkey is busily assembling a team of Avengers to face them.