Four Color Studios

 No, not the B&W Conan magazine from the 1970s and 1980s. I do love that series, but that's a topic for another day. Today I want to talk about my buddy Stu's character that he just made for my Villain Mission Force campaign I will be starting on March 15.  Yes, VMF isn't just a skirmish game. You can run it as an RPG as well. It does require a bit of tweaking from the GM to do this, but not much, really. Anyway, Stu and his sister, Mel, both made their PCs via a Zoom meeting with me over the weekend. One of the things I love about VMF is that you can make your villain PC using random dice rolls applied to tables throughout Chapter 2.  Stu rolled up a Brawler, and when it came time to generate his name, he went random as well. Here's a shot of the page from VMF:  So Stu rolled a pair of 3s, generating the name "Savage Sword"--you have to love that alliteration!  For an Origin Stu rolled "Disgraced Industrialist," and Stu came up with the idea tha...

 As I continue to prep for my upcoming Villain Mission Force RPG / Skirmish campaign, I am working through my presentation methods.  Miniatures? Check. I will be using rebased and repainted Heroclix, SuperFigs (old and new), Crossover Miniatures , Supers Unlimited (from Kitbash Games ), and whatever else I can get my hands on.  I will also employ a combo of 3D terrain and 2D maps, and again Wizkids will be leaned on heavily with their 20 years worth of awesome modern and sci-fi maps. And now they do them in 2' x 2', which I find ideal for my 3.5' x 3.5' dining room table.  But what about the other stuff? Especially vehicles. I decided I would go with counters, or figure flats if you will, for vehicles. I began searching around for modern vehicle counters, and some awesome folks on Rpg.net pointed me to the Villains & Vigilantes line of superhero RPG supplements. They often contain amazing vehicle figure flats. Check out the thread here . It has great links to so...

Today I want to share a few more phenomenal SuperFigs STLs from ace sculptor, Eric.  I want to stress again that we're not ready to release anything yet. These are just previews, and subject to change, but I do love them and I think they're both winners for sure.  Invasion  was the first supplement for SuperSystem 1E, and it featured lots of aliens. Designed by the great Thomas Scioli, they had a Jack Kirby vibe that sculptors Andy Cooper and Bob Naismith really captured using the traditional production methods of the time.  Now some 23 years later, Eric has begun to reimagine these amazing characters. Today I am showing off Phaedra and a Warsloth warrior, both members of the Alien Host.   My bad folks! Eric reminded me that our Chunky Monkey depicted below is actually NOT a new SuperFig design, and you buy him here ! In my defense, Eric has been sending me lots of cool test prints, some SuperFigs and some just other cool stuff he is doing, so who can blame me f...

 As I ramp up my preparation for my upcoming Villain Mission Force  skirmish RPG campaign, I have made a few concrete decisions about how I want to set things up. Here are some musing in no particular order:  Emergent Campaign Design. I've decided to do a series of micro session zeroes with my players. These will be conducted over the next three weeks either in person or via email / text. Each player will decide on their character origin, powers, name, etc. through a combination of selection and the D66 tables included in the upcoming VMF rules.  Read and React. Once I have my PC group, I will build up the elements of the campaign around them. I am not going in with any hard and fast details. I have ideas. Inspirations. But I want to see what my players, and the generative tables in VMF provide us.  Structure. Each session will be a mix of miniature skirmish and RPG play, and each session will effectively feature two set-piece battles, each one representing an I...

My wife, Emma, is great, and I love her! We're doing the dinner thing tonight, and I got her some flowers, but I also wanted to make her something.  Luckily, she has become one of my regular players in my monthly RPG games. Since we just finished a two year long fantasy campaign, I wanted to do a series of one and two session Villain Mission Force games. Now Emma is also an avid gardener. She's done wonders with our yard, and I thought a plant-themed villain would be great for her character for the VMF.  Since my games will take place in a universe that blends elements of characters and locales from both DC and Marvel, Poison Ivy was the ideal base for her character.  Luckily, I had a Heroclix Ivy waiting in the wings, and bonus, I also had a Horrorclix Man-Eating Plant figure that will make a perfect Henchman for her!  I decided to also make a custom base / display stand for them. This was a blast, and I can't wait to maker her character using the new VMF rules!...

 Well, maybe. The last year or so I have been quietly working with a talented digital sculptor who approached me about redesigning the SuperFigs line as STL files. It's been 24 years since the release of the first SuperFigs, and I just can't believe it.  So he has been slowly beavering away at figures who strike his fancy. And I am content to let the process play out and see where it goes. There's no deadline. No release date. No pressure.  But Eric did send me some test prints last month, and I finally got around to painting them up. Last year I had also gotten a batch and painted them, and I might have shared them on my FB group, but I don't remember. Anyway, these two are very nice and I am happy to show them off here now.  We have Zoya and Tenpin, along with some rebased Heroclix for scale.  Painted with a combo of Speed Paint and Fanatic paints. I really love the detail Eric achieves, and the posing is lovely.  Zoya is meant to be about 7' tall, so yo...

     Artwork by Jan Annarella.  I make a lot of super games because I love the genre and I love tinkering with different mechanics and dice systems.  I figure that if you also like super games, one of my rule sets might be for you! That's why a couple of years ago I published the FCS Guide to Super Gaming . It's a list of all of the currently available supers games I make, along with brief write-ups and complexity ratings about them.  I've just updated it to include the imminently available VMF game, but I also wanted to share the text here because I think these sorts of "insider" tidbits might prove interesting to folks who like my games.  I'll also include the entry for SSG that comes right before it in the document for context and comparison:  Super Skirmish Gaming Core System: 3D6 (roll-over) Complexity: 6 of 10 Published in 2022, Super Skirmish Gaming (SSG) synthesizes years of superhero gaming experience into one slick book that offers easy ...

 I don't often do full repaints of my re-based Heroclix figures, but I wanted these two characters to be new, unique ones designed using the random tables in the new VMF book.  And so I present Aegis Knight and The Agent. They're pictured here with a rebased, but not repainted, Helspont, because he is so darn cool.  I painted these using a "double slap chop" method and I am pretty happy with them. I intend to experiment more with this variation on a now tried and true method of getting figures painted fast and well.  Thanks for reading!  --Scott

Last post I promised I would share the original cover of my private-use only Villain Mission Force RPG.  Well, now is as good a time as any!  Artist Rich Yanizeski worked for Marvel in the early 1990s, and he shows those artist chops here on this cover inspired by John Byrne's cover for X-Men 140.  Feast your eyes and see if you can name all of the obscure villains menaced by the weird and wild Wendigo! I have included both the "finished" version with the logo and corner box, and the raw image without the extra stuff. 

 I thought it might be fun to share my Afterword for the upcoming VMF book, and also share a back cover image from the original VMF Marvel version I did for personal use only. It was a full-on TTRPG that I still run to this day.  First, the Afterword:  Every three years or so, I get the itch to make a superhero game. If you've followed my work, you know I've already made a lot of them. But was there any untrod ground left for me, you ask? Yes! Villain Mission Force is a title that's been part of my personal mythos for a long time. The very first VMF game took place at Phantom of the Attic Games in Pittsburgh, PA in April of 2014. I ran it using a version of SuperSystem 4th Ed., and it featured a blend of RPG and skirmish action using rebased Heroclix from the Marvel Comics line. It was awesome and I was in love. The VMF were usually lesser villains, the kind of foes that a comic company's headline heroes would mulch before breakfast. Borrowing from DC Comics' Suici...

This is the first post of the Four Color Studios blog. Check our web site for a complete list of products and where you can acquire them is here .   My goal with this site is to create a one-stop shop for announcements around projects I am working on, or sessions of my games I am running. I am also intending to cover hobby projects related to my games, including painting, terrain building, and products (minis, terrain, paints, etc.) I have bought or intend to buy for the hobby.  I may occasionally also cover comic books on this site as well. We'll see!  I will start things off with the covers to my next game, Villain Mission Force , due out in late February or early March 2025!