Staff Hobby Challenge – Web Warriors and Dark Dimension Themed Terrain

Welcome to another Staff Hobby Challenge! Staff Hobby Challenges are opportunities for members of our team to volunteer to share their journey in the hobby through the lens of a particular challenge in which everyone creates based on a theme set by Dallas.Today, our volunteers cooked up some pretty cool terrain for Marvel: Crisis Protocol.

Affiliations play a significant role in helping players put together a team that sings mechanically while leaning into iconic team-ups from the source material. In this Staff Hobby Challenge transmission, Dallas Kemp and Kevin Kircus were tasked with customizing terrain pieces with inspiration from their squad’s affiliations.

Dallas Kemp, Creative Director
Dark Dimension

Why did you choose your team and how have they inspired this terrain project?
I have been playing with this squad for a few games and have enjoyed getting them on the table. So, I thought they needed a piece to really bring the Dark Dimension further into the story.

Can you describe how you organized the process and tackled it step by step?
Honestly, I sort of just went at it. I knew the goal was to have the rocks and “Kirby Effects” breaking through the kiosk, so I just started hacking away and puzzled all the aspects together until it felt right.

Were there any ideas you had at the start that you had to trouble-shoot along the way or new ideas you added in as you went? 
Not really. I started with a way larger foundation that I ended up cutting away and added the orange goop effect last minute to help hide the joins between elements.

What are you most proud of? 
I think the rocks. I really liked how the transition between the putty work and plastic worked out.

Kevin Kircus – Senior Digital Engineer
Web Warriors

Why did you choose your team and how have they inspired this terrain project?
This is pretty easy, I’ve always been a Spider-Man fan. It wasn’t a far trip from there to imagine replacing the Ultron bots from the Earth’s Mightiest Core Set terrain with hapless webbed goons!

Can you describe how you organized the process and tacked it step by step?
First thing I did was make a materials list that included the miniatures and hobby supplies I thought I would need. After that, I roughly conceptualized the composition for both pieces of terrain and then went to work on assembly. The major work here was in converting the hydra goons to be stuck in the webbing, and also in drilling anchor points into the terrain for the longer webs. Once the goons were converted, I actually used a needle and thread to get some preliminary webbing around their bodies. This also helped me lock in the composition. I then painted both terrain pieces and added all of the extraneous webbing to the building, as well as wrapping up the goons. This time I used thread covered in a fabric glue that maintains some flexibility after curing. Hopefully that’ll make it more robust if used in a game.

Were there any ideas you had at the start that you had to trouble shoot along the way or new ideas you added in as you went?
The webbing was obviously a big one, and frankly, I think you can see in the work that I really started to understand the materials I was using better as I went. The goons have a lot of fly away strands of thread wrapped around them that I’d rather not have had, but I was nervous about applying the fabric glue before painting. As a result all the naked thread that got hit with a lot of paint and water started to fray. The major lesson here was to trust that the glue keeps some flex and just trust the process. I could’ve actually run glue over the thread and wrapped it around the goons after it cured.

What are you most proud of? 
Definitely the webbing that’s actually stuck to the side and roof of the Roxxon station. This was a section where I could probably keep going for days, and not only is it fun to keep adding extra strands, but I think it looks pretty good.

There you have it! Thanks for joining us for another Staff Hobby Challenge. We’ve already set our sights on the next one and we look forward to share it with you.