Saturday, August 18, 2007

The Notorious General Zero




This summer, our local gaming store had their yearly role playing mega event. The game of choice was Mutants and Masterminds; a super hero game based on the d20 system. My preferred hero games are Villains and Vigilantes, Living Legends or Champions but: when in Rome do as the romans....just don't forget to complain a bit. I think there were 12+ gamesmasters for the event, and each group numbered from 4-9 players. They had one or two groups playing any given day!

I am normally a bit resistant to these sort of big events, but as a friend of mine was reffing, and he had an interesting idea for the scenarios. Instead of the typical group of do good heroes, our characters were to be a band of desperate of super villains. That was enough to sell me on the idea of the game.

The character I made was the military conquorer, "the Notorious General Zero!" He is an old character from the 1950s comics era (or earlier?) and nemesis of Captain Wonder. My modern version captures the essence of General Zero and gives him an updated look. The original 50s character had a Snideley Whiplash style moustache that I wasn't sure if I should add it with green epoxy. I do like those classic, cheesey, old school villains, but decided to leave him modern looking!

For General Zero I used a Reaper Miniatures -General Drake #1403- from their CAV line of figures. It's a great sculpt. The character is in combat cut battle fatigues and is wearing an open trench-coat style field jacket. It sort of has the feel of a cape and gives the sense of movement. The defining element of General Zero is that he wears a red garrison hat with gold trim and the Drake miniature's hat fit the bill.

In the fifties, General Zero's troops alternated looking like WWII Germans or Russians with that sort of goofy pot helm that they used. I thought about picking up some Black Tree Designs Russians, but settled on an updated look for the "Zero Army" troopers. From Copplestone Castings, I chose the -Hostage Rescue Squad #FW1. They have a really good masked commando operative look to them. This is exactly the kind of trooper a new millenia General Zero would have.

The character in the
red beret is the General's cheif henchman Sgt. Huiderman. This figure is from Copplestone Castings Future Wars line also -FW35 Trooper Officers. I chose that model because it had a nice flat area on his chest to paint General Zero's signature skull and crossbones.

Finally, the figure on the far right is one I painted for Todd's character: Mathias Morgue. The concept behind him is a freebooting mercenary for hire. The figure is from Copplestone's -FW7 Mercenaries- pack. Todd had a very specific pattern for how he wanted the camo paint on Morgue's face and it turned out ok! Oddly enough, even though this was the quickest figure to do, it also is the most pictuesque of the entire gang.

It took 4 days to paint them up! I am pretty happy with how they went. They look better at arms length. Seeing them magnified has given me the incentive to do some retouches...

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