Fallout Wasteland Warfare – Super Mutant Skirmisher Done

There’s a lot of hobby related things to discuss this week so this week’s article might be a bit longer than usual but hopefully it covers at least a thing or two that you find appealing or interesting. We’ll start in the usual place which is what I’ve been working on. I managed to finish up the Super Mutant Skirmisher this week as I hoped and I am indeed happy with the final results. In my mind, I could envision an Instagram post where I show off the difference of this miniature and a Super Mutant I painted a couple of years ago. Those sort of images tend to get plenty of attention, especially if you can see some strong improvement over time. And well, I don’t know that the growth is quite as evident as I thought it would be. I’ll let you judge for yourself.

So there you have it. After three years of working hard and trying to get better and I paint more or less the same! I’m kidding a little bit there of course, and while the skin looks similar, I think the cloth textures do look better and the texture on the tire iron is really nice on the skirmisher. That’s something I wouldn’t have done a few years ago to be sure. Of course, the latest Super Mutant Skirmisher matches the game art/designs better as well. Here’s a look at the reference photo and a better look at just the skirmisher too.

As I mentioned last week, this newer take on Super Mutants doesn’t quite match what I did in the past but I think I can still probably mix and match them since the armor is pretty ragtag looking anyway. Its nice to have another Super Mutant in my arsenal and I’ll look forward to painting the other two that come in the box down the road. They might be my favorite thing in Fallout to paint as they’re rewarding and generally come out looking pretty nicely.

I had every intention of getting a good start on a bust this week but on Thursday, I had the fun task of getting ear wax removed because I could tell it was impacted in one ear. Not only was getting it removed painful and caused some dizziness but after an hour or so of being home, my one ear and head were really hurting. I tried taking Tylenol and even that didn’t dampen the pain so I had to skip painting that night. Based on my experiences, it seems I have about a 50% chance of either having some pain when ear wax is removed or it being completely pain-free and I have no idea why. Fortunately, I woke up the next day and felt much better so I don’t know what happened but it certainly made for a not fun evening. I will see what I can do on the bust this week and will certainly have some progress to show off next weekend I would think.

I did want to briefly mention that I had been planning on buying an expansion for Sentinels of the Multiverse: Definitive Edition from Noble Knight Games and this week I went to do that and found out that all the copies have been snatched up. The same is on eBay and Amazon. With tariffs causing big layoffs at Greater Than Games, the Sentinels publisher, if they were to stop making new games or even just restocking the existing ones, I will have reached an impasse with the game potentially. All this is to say, its extremely unlikely now that I’ll write more articles about the game since I can’t easily buy anything new for the game for the foreseeable future. Hopefully in a year or two, we’ll look back and laugh at tariffs and see some of this damage undone.

In happier news, I have been brainstorming things that I could use to add more life to my Fallout games and I’ve come up with a few “breakthrough” ideas. I think the boards I put together are a bit bare and I have some ideas for adding small pieces of scatter terrain that will help populate that space a bit better going forward. As always with terrain, it will take me a while to bring it to life. I need to buy a few things before I can get started but fortunately, I’ve got everything I need sourced and can start working towards that goal in the coming months. For me, getting ideas and inspiration is harder than executing them, for the most part, so just getting to this point is indeed a real step in the right direction.

Speaking of buying things, friend of the site, Azazel over at Azazel’s Bit Box, unintentionally inspired an idea with some of his latest work. He’s been making 3D prints of small scale buildings which got me thinking of Godzilla naturally. Am I a Godzilla or Kaiju fan? Not really, truthfully. What about Power Rangers (which took a lot of inspiration from Godzilla, just with colorful heroes saving the day) and not really that either. I’m the perfect age to be a fan but I wasn’t allowed to watch it because I grew up in a wholesome household! Power Rangers also does something that a lot of Japanese media does where it is essentially an infinite, episodic story. That drives me crazy as I love a good ending in any medium really.

So what does this all have to do with me? Well, I am a fan of Kong: Skull Island and various other King Kong-inspired movies I’ve seen over the years. I can’t really tell you why, its just an enjoyable action movie and I like how Kong was not a mindless/savage beast too. With modern special effects and digital art, its amazing how much movies like this have benefitted as well. They’re no longer schlocky, low budget movies.

So I kept seeing Azazel cranking out these cool looking buildings and I kept thinking, you could do something cool with Kaiju and small-scale buildings I bet. Sure enough, I did some digging around and found out about the game Monsterpocalypse by Privateer Press which features giant Kaiju inspired by Godzilla, King Kong, etc. as well as some mech/Gundam inspired minis too. Best of all, they make some buildings to use as terrain in the game so you’ve got all the makings of a diorama there. I mean look at how fun some of these sculpts are.

They’re thick, chunky miniatures with an almost cartoonish look and with plenty of opportunities to go wild painting them. In other words, they should be lots of fun and I think I can do some cool stuff with the basing to bring the world of giant monsters to life as well.

There are a few challenges to figure out along the way, partially because Monsterpocalypse as a game is in a weird place. There was a Kickstarter to create a board game version that hasn’t delivered several years on and most people expect it will never result in a tangible product due to a company collaborating with Privateer Press. Privateer Press has gotten rid of Warmachine and sold it to another company as well so they’re in a strange place as well. It seems like Monsterpocalypse might be going 3D printing only instead of trying to keep it stocked at retail which is not super convenient for me but I’m going to try and pick up what I want on the secondary market before its all gone in the near term. Later on down the road, if I pick up a 3D printer, there should be tons of options for me at that point. Right now, only a handful of miniatures are available as STLs but hopefully that number grows over time.

With the Sentinels of the Multiverse expansion sold out, I decided to grab a couple of things from Noble Knight with some leftover store credit I acquired months ago. It isn’t enough for a full project but its a good start anyway. So hopefully down the road, you’ll see me working in this space and trying to unleash my creativity. I’ve had dioramas on the brain lately and while ideas are easy to come by, I tend to jettison ideas if I realize there are challenges that I might not be able to solve. I’m excited to give this one a shot when I have the time because I think I have a pretty good idea of what I need to buy and what I can accomplish. So watch this space for more in the coming weeks.