Big box games, particularly those from Fantasy Flight, come with fantastic components that often weigh in at several pounds. While tokens, counters, and corridors come complete with great art you also get a pile of grey plastic – excellent sculpts of the heroes and villains from that particular gaming universe – but bland in grey. The Lovecraft based Fantasy Flight games, in particular, come complete with these basic building blocks of nightmares. Here’s a look at what the grey lumps of plastic look like when they’re painted up by your humble scribe.

I wanted the figures to be vibrant and colourful. To this end I primed everything with Tamiya white primer and went with a bright colour scheme. Using multiple washes made from the Vallejo paint range allows the white underneath to make the translucent colour on top ‘pop’. I also raided the bits box and used modelling putty to add some character to the bases.

The Games Workshop paint range includes four glazes – red, yellow, green, and blue. I usually stay away from GW paints as I’ve got a pretty extensive range of Vallejo colours already but I have to say, when you use the GW glazes as a final highlight or two it really brings out a vibrant colour. Perfect for the end result I was looking for.

In keeping with my quest to use my minis for more than just one game or system I magnetized the figures that could make guest appearances in other games. The six cultists are next on the list for magnetizing. I wanted to use the supplied bases as they give a lot of room to be creative but didn’t feel like committing to super glueing the figures on, never to be removed again.

Have Game, Will Travel is My Motto

How do we get a game the size of MoM and all the figures from place to place? A couple of box inserts does the trick. The pictures below are in order as each layer is removed to show the one beneath. Everything – iPad, rules, counters, cards, BlueTooth speaker, and tiles – stays put, organized, and fits inside the original game box. When set up, I find putting the speaker in the empty box lid improves the app sound so you can really hear all the scary music and sound effects.

I made a couple of card racks with some pasted on art to keep the cards organized. Not space efficient but they look cool and keep things where you can get at them without using too much table space.

As for the figures, I repurposed the Suppressed Memories expansion box to make a figure case. I’ve got plans in the works for a larger case to hold all present and future figures in one box. Check out a review of the Streets of Arkham expansion here.

Have you had a good experience painting up figures from your board games so they look the part? Any tips or tricks for working with the soft plastic of these types of figures?