Carrion Crow – The Return

Since my last post on 19th August, there has been speculation in certain quarters as to the reason for my absence in the blogosphere – both posting and commenting.

I can categorically state that I was not spirited away to the Red Planet, fighting four-armed green warriors in the company of pneumatic scantily-clad natives, nor was I ensconced in an Arctic crystalline fastness, brooding in solitude. I was also not trapped in a either a Welsh coastal Village or digitised virtual world, with or without a spoon.

However, I may have been on a sun-kissed Mediterranean island…

I may have followed directions found hastily scribbled on a flyer in a hotel lobby to a certain ecclesiastical building…

And I may have found myself wandering subterranean passages, hewn from Limestone, where I encountered something that frightened me quite badly…

However, being made of somewhat sterner stuff that an Investigator with a low SAN score, I was not reduced to a gibbering wreck and returned relatively unscathed to the shores of good ol’ Blighty.

However, you don’t visit my blog to hear about my trials and tribulations – you’re here for the gaming stuff.

So, whilst the next instalment of The §ingularity War, which will feature two quartets of Cosmic adventurers battling to secure a valuable prize, still remains unfought, I thought it might be time to introduce the instigator of this war – Kronus.

Now, a fair old while ago, I was outbid on some Colossal scale Heroclix figures on eBay. However, I really fancied owning the DC Heroclix Anti-Monitor figure (which was part of the auction), but couldn’t find it at a price I was willing to pay. So, remembering that Eaglemoss did a range of statuettes of various Marvel and DC characters, I searched for this character from them instead and managed to get the figure for less than the original retail price – including postage.

And this is what it looks like in its original format:

Suitably imposing and an ideal character to be re-purposed, as it’s not quite as well-known as some of the other characters produced by Eaglemoss. Obviously, it would need re-painting to match my vision of Kronus, Rewriter of Reality, Destroyer of Universes and ALL-Round Bad Egg, so the first step was to give it a thorough undercoating of white, like so;

Having decided that my colour scheme would echo both Dr. Doom AND would follow the time-honoured tradition of villains wearing costumes that featured both purple and green…because villains apparently have very little in the way of fashion sense, I block-painted the various parts of Kronus in the colours I had chosen.

And this was the result;

Not bad, although it does look like he’s wearing green wellies (Wellington boots for our non-UK audience).

So, the GW Worm Purple parts were highlighted with GW Purple Ink, the GW Chainmail parts with a wash of Docrafts Noir and the GW Woodland Green with a wash of this mixed with more Noir. The base was also painted with Chainmail, then given a generous wash with GW Brown Ink, to give a oily metallic look. The eyes were my own “Pumpkin Orange” blend and the mouth was painted in Docrafts linen, then given a wash of Docrafts Burnt Umber.

And the finished article looks like this;

The actual shading is more noticeable on the real thing and my camera is playing up a bit, so it might not look quite a detailed as it actually is.

And to give a sense of scale, here he is with a Warlord Games plastic Cyberman fawning about his ankles, like some kind of tin-plated cat…

If you have a villain with a ridiculously convoluted and sinister plan, he should be a bit more impressive than a bald guy in a suit…

Now, that I’ve got my hand back in, expect posts on a more frequent basis.

The Crow has returned to it’s nest…