Ice Ice Baby

Stop, collaborate and listen. Ice is back!

Specifically, I've finally got round to doing a henchman (or henchwoman) for the Freedom Force main villain, Nuclear Winter. Enter the Ice Queen!

The Ice Queen turns up early in the proceedings of the first Freedom Force game, and is actually the first super-powered villain the heroes encounter (several scenes before her boss). Prior to this they have mainly been tangling with thugs armed with baseball bats and guns, but the freezing over of the park marks a change in the level of nefarious bad guy that the burgeoning heroes have to contend with.

In game, there are actually several Ice Queens that appear over several episodes. They are fiendishly difficult to contend with due to their super strength (they chuck massive snowballs), deadly icicles and all round toughness, especially given that the fact that the heroes are relatively under-developed at this point in the game.

My version of an Ice Queen has been put together using the Frostgrave female warriors sprue, and so differs a fair bit from the original. The primary difference is her wearing a coat not a cape, but I've also had to forego the tinted glasses (although I might see what I can do about that). However, I feel that the fur-lined hood gets her into the ball park of accurate, and that's all I'm after.

When it came to painting, I kept things simple (as is my way), mixing a sort of lavender colour from Xereus Purple and White Scar, and then dry brushing white over it. Given the simple nature of the original design, I didn't need to do much else, although I did add some silver details to break up the purple and there's an icicle done with Nihilakh Oxide and dry brushed.

The base is simply a piece of broken cork tile painted dark grey and dry brushed light grey before being heavily dolloped with Valhallan Blizzard technical paint. This ties her in with not only the model I've painted up as Nuclear Winter, but also with the rest of my Red Republik Pulp City team (I'll have to look into whether there's a minion I can use her as). The cork also helps address the fact that she's tiny in comparison.

Here she is with her boss.

I now need to source some Frost Troopers and Ice Troopers to serve as proper minions. I'm contemplating using either the Wargames Atlantic Grognards, or some Bolt Action Winter Russians. Neither are quite right, so any other suggestions would be gratefully received.

Not a massive movement in terms of painting progress, but it's helped by the fact that I've managed to sell a couple of models for Empire of the Dead that I was never going to get round to, and so the Lead Mountain continues to shrink slowly.

However, this weekend marks my first wargames show of the year. I'm going to Vapnartak in York, so there's a very good chance I'll make a bit of a dent in my progress so far.

Acquired: -24
Painted: 40
Lead Mountain: 519