Masters of The Universe Battleground. (She-Ra and Swiftwind, page4)

[The Voivod]

I've struggle with making pics of these models for some reason and the ones I've ended up with are still a bit darker than I like.
But It's been a while since I finished scareglow and Ram-man and now I've added Stratos.
Merman is getting paint at the moment to finish the base box and first expension wave.

Scareglow. Who? I really don't recall this character and as such wasn't really looking forward to paintingg him. His glow ended up a particulary nice challenge, however and not something I get to paint a lot. I used GW warpfire glow. Just picked up a pot, not noticing it was a contrast paint. I think these paints have there place, but I prefer to add diferent hues to shades and highlights. I decided to paint the glowing parts yellow and add some blue in the recesses before applying the contrast. I liked the result and ended up adding just a little more highlight. I think he looks rather cool.



Ram-man.
The toy gets a bad rep. It feels cheap and is hardly posable. The "ram" effect is maybe not that spectacular. He is one of the few toys I had (and I still have it). I just love his design. The brutal centurion that just headbutts everything. The big parts of NMM was a challenge, but I decided not to make it to realistic. The suggestion of NMM is enough. We all now the grey in the cartoon was supposed to be iron anyway..



Stratos.
I don't know why I'm just not too crazy about this design. The big parts of grey felled a bit dull.
In the end he wasn't too complecated so it was nice to have a model that was finished in a few relaxed sessions. The red is way brighter Irl.

[Daeothar]

Great stuff again, and they do look even better IRL 

Now stop dallying and paint Hordak's lot! 

[DivisMal]

Cool new stuff! Ram Man is particularly nice!

[BeneathALeadMountain]

Excellent and I especially like Ram Man; I think your chosen technique and colours are spot on and take me straight back to weekend mornings!

Balm

[The Voivod]

Thanks again.

This week I finished Mer-man. I wasn't looking forward to this model as he seemed fiddly with a lot of yellow NMM parts.
I ended up enjoying painting him immensly.
I started up with a bit of an experiment that ended up getting me into the groove immidiatly. Having purchased the entire xpress colour range by vallejo, this seemed a good point to use them. I gave the yellow parts a good coating in the darker yellow, followd by sepia. This gave me an immidiate fantastic base for NMM yellow as it required just a bit of hightlighting.
I ended up redoing some part, to make the loincloth look like softer and the trident look like actual sharp and tough metal.
I think this might even have ended up as the best out of the bunch. Once again I am so pleased with the popping colours.
There's some wet black paint still on the base. I was impatient to get a picture.


He is going to be the last for a short while. I do have the horde box, wave 3 and the dinosaur expension to be done left. But for now, as some new X-men models have been announced, Marvel Crisis protocol sirens call is becoming irresistable. I've primed some old favourites and do something different first.
I'm sure to return to Eternia beofre long though. It has been a fantastic experience to paint so far.

[DivisMal]

Superb!

[Daeothar]

Can't wait game with (or against) him tomorrow 

Oustanding work on the NMM; you're getting good at this!

[BeneathALeadMountain]

Awesome, a great advert for the game (and express colours).

Balm

[Golgotha]

Mer-Man has come out a treat you can be very pleased with that one. Think the colour choice is perfect whilst still being a homage to the original toy and character.

[The Voivod]

I'm now setting up the game for a re-match.
Last week ended in a hard fought draw. Not a lot of characters taken down, but the objectives kept us on our toes.
I made two list that I felled where balanced. Fliing it with some of the more Iconic characters. I had to add the show special models of Panthor an Battlecat.
A roll of decided Daeothar would play the heroic forces of Eternia and I was taking the role of the evil warriors. Nyaaaaah...


As fitting for the hero of the show, He-man and his faitfull feline friend held the center. He really was tanking everything I was throwing at him, tying up Merman, Evil_lyn and trying to stop Skelletor from breaking through and reach the objectives.


Caught of guard by the sorceress' speed, the evil warriors quickly regrouped and stopped her an Teela from a fast and well planned steal of the first objective. If it wasn't for Evil-Lyn's force blast the objective would've been lost immidiatly. Teela eventually fell to the fury of beast-man, but held her own for longer than anticipated, costing me vital glory points, as I was sure I would take her down in round 3. I barely got her down in round 4. This did score me the objective as well, however. Skelletor broke free from the ranks and had scored a second.
On the other side of the battlefield, He-man had scored one on his way to the center.
Luckily Daeothar was having his usual luck with the dice and his own gambit to score on a glorycard did not pay of at all. At the end of the battle, non of the Evil warriors where taken down.


All was not lost, however, as the sorceress proved near unstoppable. It was either let her race through the battlefield towards objectives or weaken my line of defence. I did try some desperate attempts to slow her down, but it was too little too late. With Daeothar having one objectve more than me and me taking out Teela, the point difference was negligable. It ended in a draw. Skelletors plans once again foiled by that muscebound buffoon.

Tonight we'll switch sides.

[LouieN]

a good read.  Thanks for the report.  The mines are great

[Daeothar]

Yeah; that was a great game

But it had nothing on yesterday's rematch, switching sides. Too bad there are no pictures of that, because it was epic!

As in every game we have played so far, there were 5 objective points on the board. Two each in both deployment zones and one in the center of the board. But the two in your own deployment zone were non-scoring for you.

I deployed my Skeletor (riding Panthor) and Evil Lyn in the center, Beastman on the left flank and Merman on the right flank.

My idea was for the two flankers to get to the objectives on the far side, and the center elements to quickly grab the middle one and then fall back to defend the objectives on my side of the board.

And that's basically what happened.

Skeletor, going first, grabbed the center objective in the first turn, pretty much unopposed. Beastman and Merman both ran forward, using cover on the flanks and Evil Lyn hung back, using her magic to put a curse on ManAtArms, who was skulking around a bit of cover on the other side of the objective.

On the opposite side, Heman hung back a bit in his deployment zone, doing some buffing up stuff (probably just making his pecs dance a bit and annoying Battlecat), the sorceres doled out some blessings and edged forward, while Teela moved up a lot faster towards the objective in the left of my zone. Both of them were on my left flank, but intervening terrain shielded them from both Beastman, Skeletor and Evil Lyn.

At the end of the turn, Skeletor had secured the first objective in the middle, and I felt quite confident things were going to plan.

Turn two, had me run Merman further up the board, staying in cover all the time, while ManAtArms moved to intercept. But he was a long way off still.

Beastman ran around a corner and headbutted the sorceress in the nose, keeping her from advancing and blessing. In the meantime, Skeletor retreated (as he would), rounded a corner and made it into combat with Teela. But both his and Panthor's attacks were feeble, and Teela held on strongly.

This left Heman to deal with Evil Lyn. He used his mumbojumbo powers to basically blaze across the entire board and easily made it into combat with hapless Lyn. She may be a (pale) looker, but the's about as tough as a warm stick of butter up close, so that went predictably bad for her.

However; she hung on for dear life till the end of the turn. Things were still going according to my cunning plan, but Eternia's goodytwoshoes were putting the pressure on.

Third turn had Merman dash over to the rightmost objective and claim it. The position of ManAtArms made it so that he remained in cover from that gun nut at all times though, so all was goodevil.

Heman then reacted to Evil Lyn and gave her a fatal smackdown, putting my magic artillery out of commission. Nyaaa!! He then proceeded to attack Skeletor in the back, like the fur thong-wearing backstabber he is. But Skeletor held on for dear (un)life.

Beastman b*tchslapped the Sorceress back to where she came from, evening the odds again and moved towards the third objective, now just a mere few hexes away. But Teela, seeing her bestie getting pulped by Beastman, disengaged from Skeletor to pursue my hirsute hero, getting booted in the behind by Skeletor in the process, but not enough to make her stumble.

So the fourth and final turn began.

Merman ran out towards ManAtArms, who was already eying up Beastman in the distance. So he did his swampy magic and created a large patch of rough terrain at the feet of ManAtArms, right between him and Beastman. He then moved out of cover to take a potshot at him, simultaneously drawing the focus away from ManAtArms, as he was forced to react. But Merman, still being at full health easily weathered the shot and then used his freeze ray to effectively immobilize ManAtArms. Yes!

Heman continued to beat up Skeletor, but old skull face managed to weather all that he could dish out. It hurt though. Another Nyaaa!!

Skeletor did the same to Heman, but with predictably less epic results.

Then ManAtArms used his sniper rifle to shoot Beastman. Twice. However, this only resulted in the evil muppet getting more angry. But this also hurt. A lot.

Then Teela got into combat with Beastman and hurt him some more. he struck back and at that point, at the very end of the final turn, both combatants were down to just a single healthpoint.

Beastman was just two hexes away from the third objective, and could not reach it because of his being in combat with Teela.

I held two objectives, against Voivod's zero, but he had managed to meet the requirements of his two epic fate cards, turning the entire brawl into another draw.

HOWEVER!

Just as we were about to tally up and end the game, I realized that because Beastman was grievously wounded, he received another activation! It all hung in the balance now; accept the status quo and go with another draw, or go for broke and try to disengage from Teela.

She would get a free strike, which Beastman had to survive. If he survived though, he would be able to collect the third objective and secure the win for evil, but if she hit him, he would be down and victory would go to Heman's forces.

Ah what the heck, right? I went for it; all or nothing. Teela rolled to hit and did so with 4 out of 5 dice; because it was a free strike, she hit at 3+.

I then rolled for Beastman's not insignificant physical defense and rolled 3 successes of 4+, one of which was a 6. And in this game, a result of 6 allows for an extra die to be rolled, but this succeeds only on a 5+.

I rolled another 6...

Beastman succesfully weathered Teela's feeble swipe and made a leap towards the third and final objective. Victory to Skeletor's forces; evil had prevailed (for once)! NYaaa!!!

This was by far the most tense, actionpacked and fun game of MotU I have played so far. It all came down to  the very last diceroll of the entire game! Just plain epic

This would have made for one heck of an episode, were it not that Skeletor never got to win in the cartoons of course...

[The Voivod]

It has been a while, as I have been focussing on other project and some real-life stuff, but with the new fight against evil box set coming out I felled like doing some MotU again.
The great rebellion is a bit weird. The collection doesn't feel complete without She-Ra and her companions. As a kid I was allready a bit confused by how Mattel handled this. It was obviously an attempt to get some girls into MotU and the cartoons mostly felled the same, with mostly some even brighter colours. But the toyline was completely different, with different outfits and hairstailing products. It felled like Barby with swords. Weirdly enough She-Ra's main enemies, the Evil Horde, was released as more foes for He-Man to fight.

I didn't much care, as the cartoon was just as fun as the main one. And I practically watched anything animated, growing up with a slightly younger sister.
Still, I don't have the same feeling with this line. I don't really recall anyone besides the main cast, so I might just end up painting this box and call it a day.





First an easier one. Glimmer is one of the first characters introduced in the same cartoon as She-Ra. She wasn't to difficult, which is always nice. The artwork in the box (some of the worst Archon has ever made so far) showed her with purple hair, but the cartoon had it bright pink, so that's what I went for. Not much to say. Fun and easy. I ended up painting the staff in a NMM, just to get some more colour differantiation in the model.


And her mother, Queen Angella, also introduced in the pilot. I enjoyed painting the bright pink. Not a colour I get to play around with much. I also hadn't painted any angelic model in my entire career in the hobby and painting her wing was fun. I added some very light purple and blue on the wings in the recesses before painting over it with dilluted xpress colour white. The effect is subtle, but worth it I think. I am very pleased with the sword. I had allready finished it and was just browsing youtube before calling it a night, when I stumbled upon a new technique and ended up re-doing it in about 5 minutes for a much better result.

I have batch painted all the skin of the models in the box, plus the convention exclusive She-Ra and Swiftwind. Planning on finishing this in the coming weeks.
The colours one these is even brighter than the other characters and the Marvel mini's I have been painting the last years. I do enjoy it and it would be nice to finish of an entire faction again.

[Daeothar]

Having seen these in  the plastic, I can confirm that the pictures don't do the paintjobs justice.

Especially the sword is really nice 

It'll be fun to get a game in with/against them...

[The Voivod]

I didn't really recall much about this character, but Frosta was great to paint. Playing around with different hues of blue, made her a really interesting challenge. I really like her colour scheme. the cold colours really contrasts with her skin tones.



Setting: the design studio of mattel in the 80's.
Dude1: We have to decide on names for these girl characters for our new range. So the first one has the powers of a scorpion. Thoughts?
Dude2: How about Scorpia?
Dude1: Awesome. So this one has frost powers.
Dude2: Frosta?
Dude2: You're on a roll. So this one can cast spells.
Dude2: Cast...aspella.....?
Dude1:.... Holy Crap , you're a Bloody genius....!

I didn't much enjoy this one, for the most part. The spinning disk just looks a bit weird. It was kinda fun to paint the bright yellow, but it is meant to glow and I just really couldn't be bothered with the required object source lighting to get a good effect. In the end, when I just pushed the contrast on her hair and the blue of her costume, it did feel like it kind of clicked into place and was more pleased with her than I expected I would be. The name just remains baffling. I know the entire range has names that are extremely cheesy, but I think we have a clear winner in Castaspella.