Humankind's Last Stand

'V', the original miniseries and 'V': The Final Battle were a defining part of my youth. I remember seeing them for the first time and my family delaying setting off on holiday to finish watching the final episode.

I painted up a bunch of Visitors a couple of years ago, but didn't pick up the Resistance from Crooked Dice until fairly recently. I'm not sure why I didn't paint them sooner, but I have now.

Given how vividly I remember the show, I really wanted to get the models looking right. This is really helped by the extremely characterful sculpts. 

However, given that these are essentially models of 'people in clothes' I needed to get the painting right to make sure that when I look at the table, I see the TV show.

That meant research.

The images on the Crooked Dice website suggest that the clothing choices of the four characters: Mike Donovan, Julie Parish, Ham Tyler and Elias Taylor, were taken from this promo image.

Therefore I decided to try to stick with them as much as possible, which included Donovan's godawful two-tone eighties jacket.

However, I did make one change.

I opted to put Julie, the medical student who becomes leader of the Resistance, in the red roll neck sweater she wears in the finale of the original two-part miniseries.

Partly, this was due to the fact that the scene was much more significant to her development as a character and a leader than the general 'stealth' outfit she wears on a couple of missions in the second three-part miniseries.

Mainly, however, it was due to the fact that with Ham and Elias also wearing black, I wanted a bit more variety in the group.

Despite Julie being the actual leader of the Los Angeles Resistance, cameraman Mike Donovan is the star of the show with Marc Singer (of Beastmaster fame) at his pompously wooden eighties leading man finest in the role.

I like the fact that the sculpt has him holding his MASSIVE camera, making useable as a civilian in other games. Also, if I want a more action pose, one of the Visitor models I've painted is clearly Donovan in disguise as he puts on a Visitor uniform with alarming regularity.

I'm pleased I managed to get the two-tone jacket sort of right, but my attempt to give him properly faded jeans didn't really deliver.

Elias is one of my favourite characters in the show and Michael Wright, the actor who played him, gets some of the best speeches in the show. This includes the still tear-jerking moment where Julie brings Elias' much more successful brother Ben to him as Ben is dying and we see Elias' caught up in a mixture of grief and his own inferiority complex.

Not much to say about the painting of this one.

Michael Ironside plays Ham Tyler and is probably the most famous face in the show, although Robert England (Freddie Krueger) is also in the show.

If you've seen Michael Ironside in any film (Total Recall, Starship Troopers, Top Gun, etc.) then you know all you need to about the sort of character Ham Tyler is. He's nothing if not consistent as an actor.

I'm perhaps most pleased with the job I've done on this model of the four as I think I've managed to get the leather jacket looking suitably worn.

All in all I'm really happy with how these have come out and painting them has made me want to watch the series again. I have a few more bits and pieces for the Visitors to do but I probably need to look at putting together some more generic Resistance members, as they get killed in drives whenever there's a fight.

Acquired: -58
Painted: 394
Lead Mountain: 622