Zombicide Invader - Lara

 

Lara turned out not-so-great the first time around.

The model was not fun to paint the first time, but I did learn quite a bit and the second round worked out better I believe. Overall there is a lot of skin to paint, but the already fine features are chopped up by the webbing into little bits here and there making it difficult.  

+1 to Dice Roll Combat at Blue is quite a powerful skill and sets the foundation for an extra combat action at Orange and another die in combat at Red.  This makes for a very flexible general combat powerhouse.  

Lara looks to be an homage to Leeloo from The Fifth Element.  I'm not sure why she is flashing her badge as I don't think it is going to slow down the Xenos...kind of an odd pose.

Lara had a bit of a traumatic experience... Her pants refused to cure even after weeks - I'm not sure if I again used Winton Payne's Grey as the pre-glaze for the pants, but it is entirely possible.  Regardless, after several weeks of tests, her pants were still not cured and I'd made quite a mess of them with all of the sponge testing.  Her skin was a mess to begin with and I really didn't like how it looked overall.  So...into the bag of Extreme Simple Green and the Ultrasonic cleaner she went.  My first 'stripped' mini...usually, I just move on and accept sub-optimal results, but the bad look and wet oil made the decision for me.  

Here are the photos pre-strip:

The last of her flesh ripped off

Here are the photos on the workbench after the second try:

Paints used on this model the first time around:

Paints used on this model the second time:

Zombicide Invader - Pink

Pink is a homage to Pris and is the second of three character homages from Blade Runner in Invader. 

The skills available to Pink allow her to be a fast (Zero-G Run), combat-oriented build (+1 to dice roll Combat with an extra combat action or bloodlust melee to follow).

As you can see from the workbench photos below, she got her hair colored before the final pics.  She would have had to be renamed 'Purple' if I left it as initially painted...  Not sure how I got so far off on the color, but I ended up changing it to be perhaps overly pink, but at least matches up with the name more so than the previous attempt.  

Paints used on this model:

Zombicide Invader - Squirrlley

Squirrelly is a homage to Roy Batty and the first of three character homages from Blade Runner within Invader.  Squirrelly could be played as a formidable melee character, but will take a while to develop due to the non-combat-oriented free search action at Blue.  

Another quick (for me) to paint miniature and a pretty neat-looking sculpt.  I would estimate that painting with oils shaves off at least 40% of the painting time to get to the same quality as acrylics.

Workbench Photos:

Paints used on this model:

Zombicide Invader - Plague Gang

 

The Plage Gang - all 5 of them.  You mean 6, right?  No, five.  Oh.

No idea why there are not six members to this gang like every other gang in the game, but five is what they came up with.  Perhaps they considered the ability to search in all zones - even hallways and exterior zones - to be powerful enough to expect that scenarios should use just five characters instead of the standard six.  That is kind of irrelevant to me and the gaming group since we generally run all the scenarios with just four characters to increase the challenge.

These minis all used a similar palette, are obviously related, and were all painted over two days so again I've included them in a single update.  Plus, I'm becoming much more efficient with the oils and have found that I'm able to paint them quite a bit faster and I've been accidentally missing some of my photo-taking responsibilities.  I don't have some of the paints used photos, some pre-sealing photos, or any of the primed photos...  I think I'll skip the 'Next on the workbench' section as the plain gray priming probably isn't really worth taking a photo of.

These guys (and gal) were fun to paint and went very quickly.  I like the common blue protective suits which nicely tie them together.  Macintyre gave provided the opportunity to try the oils out to weather his weapon - which is what oils are generally considered as most commonly used for.  I tried not to go overboard with it and as expected, they do indeed work really well.  

As far as skills go, some of these have some fairly rare skills (Camoflague, Ambidextrous, Shove) as yellow skills which could be nice.  

Trouble with Oils

These were a bit slow to cure - and still have a little residue when wiped with a sponge in certain areas.  Again, Winton Panye's Grey was the pre-glaze in the problem areas.  I went ahead and sealed them with the hope that it doesn't cause any issues.

On the workbench photos:

Paints used on these models:

Zombicide Invader - Dorian the Grey

Dorian was a quick & easy character to paint.  I like how his skin tone of purple-gray came out.  Dorian's skill set could be a bit more thematic, but I guess maybe he has some sort of telekinesis that allows him to 'Shove' at red. 

Doiran also had curing issues with the grey areas in particular.  The suspect Winton Payne's Grey was used as a pre-glaze and it is the prime suspect in the issues here.  

The gold did not seem to like to be thinned and in a dropper bottle as it was very globby and nasty to work with.  I emptied the bottle and threw it away.  The gold oil from the tube is not easy to work with either so I'll probably stick to adding acrylic gold accents or possibly make my own gold from pigments...or try out NMM, but on such small areas, it seems like that would be fairly ineffective.  

Paints used on this model: