Paints used on these models:
The Driller Workers are the most numerous of the Driller Xenos with 43 in total. They were fairly fast to paint at around 15 minutes each. I probably could have spent more time highlighting or more carefully applying the red, but I didn't want to be painting Drillers for the rest of the year and believe that how they turned out was a good compromise.
Another shortcut that I don't regret was to completely skip removing the mold lines. Most of them are hidden by the painting technique and dark colors anyway. There is so much texture on these guys that trying to remove some of the mold lines would result in doing more harm than good. Trying to go through and get rid of all the mold lines would have likely doubled the time-per-mini. Generally, I don't mind putting in the extra effort for characters and other unique figures. I even cleaned up the original Invader Xenos as for the most part the textures were far less affected and a clean removal was possible. Anyway...glad to have saved time on these.
As with all Drillers, the pits can result in these guys providing an increased challenge due to the +1 damage required to put each of them down.
The Driller Abomination has the ability to create new pit zones. It is somewhat similar to the mold zone creation of the Spoiler, but it only creates them when granted an extra activation rather than every time it moves. That results in fewer pits which offsets the additional difficulty the pits create due to the protection they offer to all Drillers. Workers and Hunters require 2 strength to eliminate and Tanks require 3 strength to eliminate and can really cause problems with poorly equipped characters.
I'm not sure exactly what determines if a machine is a Bot or a Sentry Gun, but apparently, the ability to move is not the determining factor as this one can move quite quickly.
This model looks to be a homage to the Portal Sentry Turret as it is similarly shaped and has an extra leg. Similar to the Buddy Bot, I've never played the game it is represented in, but from the description, even the behavior is quite similar to the rules of Invader.
Paints used on this model:
Empusa was a fun and quick character to paint. The Perelyne Black is really fun to work with and lends itself well to blending with Radient Green and the Oxide of Chromium. Skill-wise, the focus of this character is to be able to move around the board undetected. Camouflage at Blue lays the way for speeding through missions. Predator at Orange allows Empusa to chew through large groups of Xenos in hand-to-hand which paves the way for the red skill of Unstoppable. Camoflague combined with Unstoppable allows this character to wander the board freely with no concern of being attacked. That combination could 'break' some missions, but if there are other characters playing the mission, the challenge will become ensuring the others remain alive to avoid defeat.
Pro.mo.d was a lot of fun to paint, although I had some initial concerns with how 'flat' the physical model was. It turned out that the cool gray metal stood out just fine from the green cape. The cape showcases perfectly the effectiveness of the oil paints. I could have gone a lot lighter and added more yellow into the mix, but I was pretty satisfied with the very little effort to get extremely smooth blends with the Perelyne Black and Radiant Green mixture.
Dual wield chainsaws? No problem with Yuko's Blademaster skill at Blue. Yuko has the potential for a very effective melee build. The sculpt featuring a single SMG is a bit misleading and the physical build doesn't look to lend itself to featuring Shove at Red, but I guess it may be her fierce determination that allows her to accomplish unexpected feats.
