Twinhammer Part 2: Exterior Paint Part 1: Base Layers

The Twinhammer, last seen in July 2023, has finally gotten a start on its exterior paint. I had a few evenings this week without the kids around, and I used it to work on the messy, space-consuming process of priming and sponging this two-foot-long ship.

The paintjob isn't finished by any means, but she looks a lot better than the unassembled, unpainted white/grey/black PLA that's been sitting in pieces on my shelf. Here are the colors that I used:

• Primer: Liquitex Basics Acrylic Fluid "Mars Black"
• Base layer: Craftsmart "Dark Grey"
• Layer: Craftsmart "Grey"
• Dark layer: Craftsmart "Deep Grey" 
• Accent: DecoArt Americana "Deep Burgundy" (DA128)

The Liquitex primer isn't something I use on miniature figures, but it's great for terrain and ships like this. It's opaque, matte, strong, and dries quickly. Also, the coverage is fantastic, so it usually only needs one pass.

While this ship will hopefully get more love before 2027, it's currently in a place where I can display it on my shelf without feeling bad about its state of disrepair.

Supervillain: Drillman

Half man. Half drill. All Drillman.

A new box of Stargrave miniatures was recently released with what it calls "Automatons," though the figures are far more cyborg than the robots I originally expected from the name. My first thought upon seeing the drill arms on the sprue was that I could---nay, must---craft a gentleman with the right to bear drills. This guy is kitbashed from four sources:

• Drill arms: Stargrave Automatons
• Head: Stargrave Troopers 
• Legs: Anvil Industry
• Torso: Catachan Jungle Fighters Heavy Weapon Crew

As noted in the title, Drillman is set to be a supervillain. It feels like it would be difficult to be a hero with the "drill arms" powerset. He has a traditionally secondary-color costume of orange with green accents. With the bright orange sunglasses, it's a distinctly '80s vibe. This is very easily the kind of comic book character that the '80s would have created for a single issue, not to be seen again for decades.

(Note: No relation to the Mega Man robot Drill Man. That name has a space in it.)

The Skeleton Horde 7: Heavy Cavalryman

One skeleton cavalryman rides into battle. This is from the Wargames Atlantic "Skeleton Cavalry and Chariots" box. This is the first one completed from a batch of five. They look nice, but they're kind of fiddly to put together, especially when it comes to attaching the rider to the horse. I ended up needing to mold some very simple saddles from green stuff in order to increase the surface contact area so that they'd stay on. I'm not particularly fond of the models, due mostly to the difficulty of working with them, but they do work. There are ten horses in the box, but only five armored rider bodies. You can have uniformly naked skeleton riders (ten in the box), but not ten uniformly armored riders. So, that's definitely a negative, too.

There are ten "standing" bodies in the box, presumably to man the chariots, and I've made up four of them as spearmen to join the ranks of the rank and file. This puts the two spearman regiments up to 15 skeletons each.

The total size of the Skeleton Horde is now 60 models, aiming for 63 models when the other four armored skeleton cavalry units are done. Quite the horde!

Supervillains: Flameskull Gang and Drones

The Flameskulls are a gang of high-tech criminals that wear glowing, holographic skull masks. Among their many gadgets---and definitely the most famous---are their skull drones. These drones also project a hologram to appear like flying skulls, and they have built in weapons and electronic warfare capabilities. The mastermind of the gang is Gray Matter, seen here in her flying technochair, surrounded by a swarm of skull drones.

The five gangers are built primarily from Wargames Atlantic Cannon Fodder, except for the heads. Their skulls are from the Citadel Skulls box while the four Drone skulls are Wargames Atlantic (which are a little larger). I once again removed the front parts from the Cannon Fodder rifles to make them a reasonable size and remove the "bayoneted lasgun" vibe.

Gray Matter is another figure from the "Sentinels Tactics Miniatures: Minions" box; the character is listed as The Broker. Once again, it's soft PVC, and the sculpt isn't great. I stuck a giant's skull from the Citadel Skulls box onto the front to tie it into the gang's aesthetic. Then, I just drybrushed and washed most of the figure in greys to hide the doughy sculpt and imply that she's hidden in the shadows. It works well enough, but I'm not entirely pleased with the finished product. A series of mistakes led her to be placed on a tall spaceship stand, which I installed into a custom-designed 3D-printed base; it was a lot of very unnecessary frustration, but it did lead to the idea for the drone swarm surrounding her.

• Skull and hands base: Vallejo Game Color Bonewhite (72.034)
• Skull and hands glow: Citadel Technical Tesseract Glow 
• Main basecoat: DecoArt Lamp (Ebony) Black (DAO67)
• Drybrush: Vallejo Basalt Grey (70.869)
• Light drybrush: Vallejo Stonewall Grey (72.049)
• Wash on everything but the skull and hands: Vallejo Game Color Wash Black (73.201)
  

The bases, either flat or textured, had a base layer of Vallejo Heavy Violet (72.142), then a drybrush or stipple of FolkArt Imperial Red (4669).

The "drones" can also be used in D&D as undead Flameskulls, the namesake for the gang, or as floaty magic skulls in anything that uses my skeleton horde.

Supervillain: Master Mountain

The gigantic martial artist known as Master Mountain is another recurring foe of Tempest. He's super-strong, nigh-invulnerable, and his tremendous bulk make him nigh-impervious to Tempest's wind powers. I guess martial artist supervillains naturally gravitate into Tempest's rogues gallery.

This figure comes from the "Sentinels Tactics Miniatures: Minions" box from Greater Than Games (publishers of the Sentinels of the Multiverse games). Interestingly, they released both painted and unpainted sets; I got the unpainted set for a grand total of six bucks. These PVC miniatures are doughy and cartoony, but they're not too bad. It's hard to find superhero miniatures.

This figure is "The Muscle," meant to represent one of the Chairman's lieutenants in the Sentinels Tactics game. I painted him up in a different style and popped him onto a 40mm poker chip base. The picture doesn't give a great sense of scale, but he's taller than most other heroic 28mm minis, and he's obviously wider.