“Now Where Are the Ghostbusters?”

For those of you who have been faithfully following my Ghostbusters project, you may have been wondering exactly the same as the Mayor in Ghostbusters II, as whilst there has been progress made on the firehouse HQ, we have seen little in the way of actual Ghostbusters…

As the firehouse has had the majority of the basic painting done now, it meant that I could actually concentrate on other parts of the project, i.e. painting the figures.

However, before you start cheering, I have to confess that I may have got a little distracted, so whilst there has been progress on the Ghostbusters, it’s not as much as you’d expect. Hopefully, as there’s other Ghostbusters project stuff to show you, I will be forgiven.

So, to the answer the question posed by this post, here are the Ghostbusters…

Not a huge amount of progress – an additional coat of GW Kommando Khaki on the jumpsuits and trousers of the crew, all footwear has now been block painted and the ‘buster on the far right has had his hair painted. And that’s it.

But I haven’t been sitting on my laurels, so let me introduce you to representatives of Ghostbusters rival in the field of paranormal investigation and elimination – EcTerminators, Inc.

The figures are from Moonraker Miniatures, from their Future Skirmish range, the two on the left being Troopers with Light Lasers, one helmeted and one bareheaded and the figure on the left being a Female Rebel, whose backpack I removed as I was intending her to be a Ghostbuster. However, as her outfit is very similar to the Troopers, I decided to make her additional support for them instead. Each figure is £1.50. The name ‘EcTerminators’ comes from an adventure published for the Ghostbuters RPG published by West End Games, namely ‘Scared Stiff’, which was one of only two good ideas in the adventure, the other being the introduction of the Ectosabre…

I see EcTerminators, Inc. as being a cross between the Ghostbusters and a SWAT team, with military style uniforms, hi-tech looking equipment and modern flashy vehicles, so appearing to be a more professional organisation than the local Ghostbusters franchise. Do we like big corporations like EcTerminators, Inc. or Gozer-Cola coming along and taking away the livelihood of local businesses? We do not!

However, there are worse things out there…

If the Ghostbusters (and Ecterminators, Inc.) have been operating for a number of years, effectively incarcerating spooks, spectres and ghosts in containment facilities, surely some-thing from the Ghost World will have noticed and possibly organised some form of retaliation, a team of entities armed with the latest in ecto-tech, and sent them into our world. And if they had, they may be known as Soul-Takers and might look something like this…

The above figures are a squad of Marro Warriors, from the first Heroscape boxed set. I’ve always liked these figures, as they combine techno-organics with undead-ness and as I had two sets, I decided to repaint the spare set as my Soul-Takers. I initially painted them GW Rotting Flesh and then trialled a wash of GW Worm Purple mixed with the black on one of the figures. It looked absolutely awful. So, out came some GW Red Gore and they were repainted red, which looks a lot better. The general idea is to have them look like they’ve been flayed, armed with soul-rifles made from bone, so variations on reds and pinks will be the order of the day, with touches of white. I also discovered that I started painting a Mirliton Bloodsniffer of Chaos (which was originally Grenadier’s version of a Hound of Tindalos), which looks like this:

In exactly the same colours. As it is effectively a flayed, skeletal hound, it looks like my Soul-Takers may have got themselves a tracking beast…

Finally, a couple of repainted Heroclix figures. The first is Freak from the Invincible Iron Man subset:

When I saw this figure, I knew that I would have a use for it, but wasn’t sure what that was going to be. However, when I started the Ghostbusters Project, I immediately knew how I was going to repaint it – as the spirit of a murderer sent to the chair…

So, after an undercoat of GW Mithril Silver, the exposed skin was painted light grey and the tattered remains of his prison uniform was painted orange. A wash of black was then followed by dry-brushing with Mithril Silver, although this doesn’t show up very well in the picture. The eyes and mouth were picked out with gloss white, then given a further wash of black. Not entirely how I thought the figure would come out, but I’m pretty happy with it. It’s an inexpensive figure (mine cost 29p), and as you can see from the picture above, is fairly substantial.

Our final figure initially started out as Blockbuster from the DC Heroclix Legacy subset:

However, after an undercoat of black, then a coat of blue ink and his eyes picked out in orange and you get this…

A shadowy figure from the Ghost World, possibly the ’employer’ of the Soul-Takers…? It also struck me that this figure would make a good super-evolved simian, as the facial featured are quite ape-like. This figure is even bigger than the Freak, but cost the same amount of money, a paltry 29p.

So, that’s all we have for this week. Join me midweek for more ‘Beyond Ghostbusters’ and next weekend, where hopefully I’ll have got a little bit further with everything.

You know who to call…