A Demo Game For Old Times' Sake

I ended up holding a demo game of Monsterpocalypse. I didn't play myself, instead walking both sides through the game phases and explaining the rules as we went along. For the most part I tried to leave both players to make their own decisions, but I did push them to use power attacks (which I walked them through) for several turns after the monsters got close enough, and gave suggestions on good plays when they asked towards the end of the game as the monsters' health started to get really low.

It was pure G.U.A.R.D. versus pure Empire of the Apes. We played using only base rules and models stats, with none of the rules on the models' cards (except High Mobility ofc, and sometimes Flight). The game was close, with King Kondo managing to pull off a rare win against Defender X. I believe both players knew a little about 40K but had no actual wargaming experience, and both seemed to enjoy the game. They seemed perfectly happy to not bother with the card rules; I think for their very first game just the core rules were enough for them to worry about. There was a bit of a discussion about the game's availablity, and it was nice to be able to say that there are digital models available.

Khan's Maximum Effort

I met up with Contwrath for a game of Monpoc. Luckily we both had a bit of free time, so we were able to meet up a bit earlier and take our time with the game. On a whim I pulled out Defender X and a bunch of ground-based G.U.A.R.D. units, to go with Terra Khan and his little Raptices. Contwrath was running Dynastavus, Xixorax, and the basic 15 Swarm units.

Game 1:
Contwrath put down his map with River City Rampage facing up. I asked him how many apartments per side he wanted us to play, and he randomly settled on just six, which seemed reasonable since the map seemed a touch low on foundations. I won the roll and chose to go first. My initially plan was to focus on shooting down his units and blowing up buildings on his side to make it hard for him to generate power.

I brought in as many units as I could, focusing on tanks so I could move them to hopefully do some shooting, but I did also prioritise grabbing power nodes and controlling buildings where possible. Contwrath pretty much did the same.

Khan shot an insect on a power node, while Defender whiffed his blast attack against an apartment.

Contwrath repositioned his monsters but didn't spend any of his action dice.

I pushed up some units but didn't really get much done.

Contwrath took a second unit turn and, with his great mobility and accuracy, fairly easily knocked Defender X through three buildings, dropping him down to just three health.

Unable to focus too much on a single monster, I had Defender and Khan throw the two big bugs back into the buildings on their side, for three damage each. I then tried to step into positions that didn't give easy line-ups for throws or slams into buildings.

Contwrath brought in some more units and I tried to position mine to make it impossible for the Swarm monsters to align with Defender for a power attack, using the Repair Truck to put out a fire to allow my units to get where they needed to be.

Thanks to super-damage on Dynastavus' Brawl attack, the two Swarm monsters were able to finish off Defender with just Brawl attacks.

My Raptix on the central power node used Hop to clear room for Khan to align with Xixorax and throw him into a building. Khan then Stepped up to a position where it would be hard to throw him into a building.

The Swarm units put a point of damage into Khan. I moved up some units, putting out a fire with the Repair Truck that might make it easier for Khan to align with Xixorax later. I tried to clear insects off power nodes, but most of my attacks whiffed.

Xixorax tried to throw Khan into the hazard behind him, but missed. Dynastavus did a couple of points of damage with a Brawl.

Khan moved onto the rubble the the repair truck had extinguished, and the Raptix Hopped next to Xixorax before Khan body-slammed him onto another hazard and Stepped away. This left Xixorax on just one health.

The Swarm units killed a couple of mine and tried to set up for more power generation.

I brought in more Raptix and spread them around, then focused as many ranged attacks into Xixorax as I could, managing to knock off his last point of health.

Dynastavus spent a ton of power dice to throw Khan into a distant building, knocking him into Hyper.

Unable to line up for a good power attack, Khan settled for a Brawl followed by a body-slam onto an annoying insect, for 4 damage thanks to the Raptix.

Running low on power dice (I forget why by Contwrath actually should have had a couple more dice but forgot to trigger something), Dynastavus whiffed one attack but landed the second, leaving both monsters on three health.

I tried to kill more insects to disrupt Contwrath's power general, but whiffed a couple of attacks.

Contwrath focused on killing the remaining Raptix; thanks to his combined attacks with the Elites he had no trouble hitting, but missed the one on the right.

I Hopped the Raptix next to Dynastavus, knocked her down to one health with a Brawl with Super-Damage, then finished her off with a Super-Damage slam into a hazard.

It was a great game; I was working really hard all game to try to deny Contwrath power dice and reduce sources of damage into Khan, even if it meant making it harder to inflict damage in return. And even then it was very close; if a couple of whiffed Swarm attacks had not had such cold dice it might have ended differently. The Repair Truck was actually a big help, letting me clear the board of hazards that were a problem for the flightless Khan. The Raptix were stars; Hop not only allowed them to coordinate with Khan to trigger Super-Damage, it also allowed them to get past the river, and just generally helped me to get them where I needed them. Khan really showed his potential here; he has weaknesses but he can do a lot of damage if you can set it up.

The Swarm monsters are mobile, accurate, and hard-hitting; they are tough cookies to be sure. They also seem to be able to generate decent amounts of power even without a good power base; my focus all game was on disrupting his unit power generation, but Contwrath never seemed to be that low on power dice. His early double monster caught me by surprise and put my on the back foot early, and I didn't expect the late-game throw into the distant building either. Even without the Raptix in the last turn, Khan could have body-slammed Dynastavus into the hazard behind him first to drop her to one health, then finished it with a Brawl (which might actually have been the safer option as I would have had more action dice). But my way was more fun.

He Is Legion... Naire

I painted up Legionnnaire for a friend. I used the official colour scheme as my inspiration, but using glazes over metallics for the colours. The teal came out quite nicely. The orange basically ended up as copper, which looks nice enough (if a little patchy in places). I considered yellow for the glows, but ultimately stuck with blue like the studio model. One thing I realised was that a lot of the larger areas that looked like they should be glowing were actually pointing downwards, meaning the glow doesn't really show up that well when viewing normally.
Legionnaire
In the past I have painted my Monpoc models before glueing them to the clear bases, but that can be a hassle so I've changed the way I work. I glued Legionnaire to his base using superglue mixed with Green Stuff World 2400 Dye For Resins Black. After fixing the model in a painting handle I modified from Aktalion's painting handle, I applied a protective layer of Talens 052 Liquid Masking Film over the base (top and bottom). I used a grey primer, most likely Tamiya 87064 Fine Surface Primer Light Grey.

I airbrushed a basecoat of Vallejo 71.073 Model Air Metallic Black thinned with Green Stuff World 1880 Airbrush Retarder. This was a very frustrating process as the airbrush kept getting clogged; I think the paint was getting old and a bit lumpy, perhaps I needed to shake the bottle more? I ended up using a printer resin filter to filter the airbrush paints after that to try to avoid any more stoppages.

After the basecoat I applied a zenithal of Vallejo 71.072 Model Air Metallic Gunmetal, which I over-thinned with the airbrush retarder, required the addition of some P3 Mixing Medium to get a useable consistency. I think I airbrushed this from too low an angle, maybe 75 degrees, as it covered too much of the model and didn't leave enough of the black metal basecoat. I followed this with Vallejo 72.052 Game Color Silver (again with airbrush retarder and mixing medium used together to try to get a useable consistency) from around 15 degrees above.

I edge-highlighted the whole model with Scale75 SC-66 Speed Metal. This is a very bright, whitish metal, that I use for my highlights because it's brighter than most silvers. However I do find it hard to manage the consistency to get a fine enough flow for delicate highlighting; at least that's one reason why my highlights were a bit thick and rough. I found I needed to use low-magnification reading glasses just to be able to focus enough on the model in front of my face to be able to do highlighting; my vision has deteriorated somewhat and it looks like I'm going to need reading glasses to paint from now on. It's a little depressing, but hey: it could be worse. Trying to match the studio model's teal colour, I mixed together around 10 drops of P3 Turquise Ink and 14 drops of P3 Blue Ink, with at least 20 drops of Vallejo 73.596 Glaze Medium. This gave quite a nice teal, and the flow was very manageable for laying down a thin consistent glaze in a single coat. For the orange, I experimented and ended up with a mix of P3 Red Ink, a little P3 Blazing Ink, and a lot of Glaze Medium (at least as much glaze medium as ink). I wasn't able to control the quantites as well so I don't know exactly how much I used. I also used a touch of unthinned Blazing Ink for the golden badge on Legionnaire's waist.

I picked out a few spots of the remaining steel to shade with a roughly 1:1 mix of Citadel Shade Nuln Oil and Glaze Medium, just to add a touch of definition to some of the more detailed areas where I didn't think any of the previous colours made sense. Iirc this was basically the small barrels on each side of each hand, and the turbine-like details in the feet (which I decided I didn't want to try to apply a glow to). I made a very thin black using a mix of Vallejo 72.751 Game Air Black, Glaze Medium, and P3 Mixing Medium, which I painted into the panel lines and recesses. This gave me more control than a black wash like Nuln Oil, without being too dark. To be honest a lot of the panel lines were deep enough that they looked pretty good without the additional shading, but I did it anyway because I felt it would improve the contrast and make some of the boundries look a little cleaner, and it might have looked a bit strange if I shaded the areas that did need shading but then left the panel lines unshaded. One thing I found interesting is that the copper areas ended up feeling less orange-y after shading the recesses, as the recesses had ended up more intense and saturated than the raised areas. You can see the effect in the photos below, which were taken part-way through the shading process: I basecoated the glowing areas with Vallejo 72.021 Game Color Magic Blue. I then applied a wash of Citadel Colour Shade Drakenhof Nightshade, which may not have been necessary. I painted a layer of The Army Painter WP1114 Warpaints Crystal Blue, then I drybrushed the glows and the surrounding areas in the Magic Blue. This was followed by a layer of The Army Painter WP1432 Warpaints Ice Storm. I felt the Crystal Blue was too close to the Magic Blue to be worth drybrushing, so instead I drybrushed a mix of the Crystal Blue and Ice Storm (over a smaller area). This still didn't work too well tbh. Anyway, I followed it with a layer of Formula P3 Morrow White, then a drybrush of just Crystal Blue (over an even smaller area).

I had intended to stop here, but I wasn't happy with how it was looking. So I went back over everything with a very light drybrush of Morrow White. I think this helped a lot; not only did it noticeably brighten everything, it also caught the edges around the glowing areas, significantly improving the "cast light" effect. I considered trying to apply a shade of dark blue to recesses immediately around the glows to increase the contrast (a surprisingly effective little trick I picked up from a fellow going by GuitaRasmus), but I decided it wasn't needed. Then (actually after the first varnish) I decided it actually was needed in some spot, so I carefully applied a pinwash of Drakenhof Nightshade into the recesses around many of the glows. And I'm glad I ultimately went back and made the effort because I think it did significantly improve the look of some of the glowing areas, such as the eyes and the gun. After all this I varnished with Mr. Hobby GX 112 Mr. Color UV Cut Gloss then Mr. Hobby GX 113 Mr. Color Flat (both thinned with Mr. Hobby Mr. Color Thinner 110). Finally I removed the liquid mask from the base, giving brushing it under a bit of running water to clear off any residue.

The glazing was quite experimental; last time I tried to glaze colour over metals (on my Exo-Armours) it didn't work and I ended up stripping the paint. So I actually applied a layer of matt varnish after highlighting the bare metal, before starting the gloss, so I would at least have a chance of removing the glaze without having to strip the whole model. And I'm glad I did because that helped me fix a couple of problem spots later, using a touch of Masters Brush Cleaner on a fine brush to slowly clean away some mistakes so I could repaint the areas.

Luckily the glazes did work quite well. I think a lot of this has to do with the Vallejo glaze medium; not only does it help achieve a good consistency/flow for glazing, it also SIGNIFICANTLY increases the drying time. Which helps a lot because it makes it much easier to get a consistent thickness of paint over larger areas; most acrylic paints would start to dry too quickly to go back and move paint around on a larger area to even it out. Also, it was TREMENDOUSLY helpful for keeping the work neat - very important when a zenithal means matching the exact tones to fix mistakes is quite hard - as any mistakes did not dry for quite a while, so it was usually very easy for me to go back and clean any spillovers mid-layer, and then go back and continue working on the layer without it drying out.

Funny thing is I had previously written of the glazing medium because of the long drying times; these had been interfering with my attempts to build up transitions by layering glazes. But it was absolutely the secret ingredient in this particular paintjob. Which is very cool; it's another tool in the toolbox, you know?

The glows didn't turn out as nicely as I would have liked; the rest of the model is pretty bright, which makes it hard for the glows to stand out, and the blue colour blends into the teal a little bit. Plus it just looks a little desaturated; more whitish that blue, you know? Still, I think that final white drybrush and dark blue shade basically rescued the glows. Ultimately I think they look OK.


Overall I do think he looks pretty nice. The glazes did not give me as intense a metallic colour as using straight coloured metallics have in the past, but they do allow me to apply a single zenithal coat over the whole model then tint the areas as needed. Trying to get shading/gradients across multiple areas using actual coloured metallic paints would probably be a much bigger and more challenging job. So I would say it was a successful experiment, and I leaned something I can use in the future.