“You may stand against one of me! But how about four?”

Thought I’d return to my “superhero’s” this week so delved into my box of “Heroklickers” for some suitable “Meta’fodder”, first out were these Scrull Commando’s, and Warrior. My initial thought being that I could use these as “henchmen”, but then as often happens I then had a different idea. I would put the armed warrior back and use the other four figures as one character, my take on the Marvel villain “Maddox”….”Multiple Man”.

“Max Similly” was born a mutant in Missouri, constantly teased and beaten by the local bully and his lieutenants and shunned by the local god fearing townsfolk, he grew up a bitter loner. Then around his thirteenth birthday he discovered the power to split his body up to four times, making four perfect copies of himself, all sharing the same conciseness. Some say he sold his soul to the devil in return for his wish that “there were other people around who looked like me!” Others say he always had his powers but they didn’t manifest themselves till he hit puberty. Either way that’s when the trouble started. The three boys who had made his early life such a misery were found beaten and drowned in the local “fishin hole”, Max having the convenient alibi of being in police custody for breaking windows at the time of the murders. A local vagrant getting the blame as some of the boys possessions were found at the bridge he often slept under. He went to the chair still proclaiming his innocence! Many other strange crimes happened in the years after this with the finger of guilt often pointed Max’s way but nothing could ever be proven as he always had a perfect alibi, until aged twenty Max moved to the big city to pursue his life of crime as the “The mysterious Multiple Man!”

In game play my idea is that the character would have four “stat lines” each slightly lower on all counts than the one above, and each time he generates another copy of himself they would all drop to the line below, thus though there would be more “Multiple men” they would all be slightly weaker than before. I hope this will make it advantageous to use his power, yet make it a double edged sword. I might have to tweak is stats over time to get the balance right.

Anyway on to painting them, after a spray coat of matt black, the main body of his costume was painted orange. Now I know I’ve gone on about this before but I still don’t seem to have learned, orange is a terrible colour to try and paint over black! Three coats later and I finally had a decent coverage coat, and then after mixing some of my orange with a bit of coffee, I added the highlights over the muscles of Original “Max’s” costume. This same colour was them painted over the entirety of the other three figures, and then these were highlighted with a lighter shade (more coffee added). My thinking behind this is that the original would be brighter and more vivid colour wise, and the three facsimiles’ would be paler and more “washed out” looking, “pale imitations” as it were. This idea was continued on with rest of the costumes, the original having black “accessories” highlighted with dark grey, and the other three having a dark grey base highlighted with light grey. Even the flesh was completed with the original having a European flesh tone undercoat and highlights of the same mixed with pale flesh, this in turn formed the base for the other three, with just pale flesh used for the highlights on these. My customary coat of “Quickshade” strong tone came next, before the bases were painted in my usual fashion.

All in all a pretty simple weeks painting, but I’m hoping an interesting character to use in our games.

Till next week, Cheers Roger.