Mega Miniatures Civilians for Modern Games

Random modern civilians from Mega Miniatures -- whose products you don't see much anymore   

Last week, after I'd finished the "Rebel Scum," I had a moment of indecision. Usually, the queue for what miniatures I want to paint is fairly well established -- at least for the next several batches. However, with being away on vacation and it taking very little time to complete the Rebels, I honestly didn't know what I wanted to do next. So, I dug through the various drawers of my unpainted lead and looked things over.

I was stumped. In my mind at the time, the Rebel Scum completed the Star Wars project. Since then, I've decided to do a separate batch for the "Rebel Alliance," as opposed to the local rebels (I would use the "Rebel Scum" for those). However, at that time, I believed I was done. The zombie project was done. I may add more survivors here and there as potential replacements when my players' current characters die. There was nothing I felt I needed to paint up for Xenos Rampant. It was too soon to start painting things for next year's big project ("Shhh - don't tell them, yet!"). I wasn't motivated to paint anything up for Saga. So, yeah, what to do??

    A 28mm (25mm?) Mega Miniatures skateboarder and a little girl -- both turned out fairly good, I feel

In the end, a batch of modern civilians from the defunct Mega Miniaturess caught my eye. I think I bought them in a flea market, as there were only seven -- not the entire set of 20 it originally included. I had the female jogger, male and female businessmen, skate boarder, lady with stroller, and other cool stuff. You can always use more civilians as eye candy on the tabletop, right? Sure! So, I cleaned this batch up and got them ready to be painted. Mega Miniatures are not the highest quality figures. Their niche was weird stuff that you might not find otherwise (like the modern firemen a friend gave me to paint up as a gang for Mean Streets). The miniatures were relatively simple with a minimum of equipment, so they should paint up quickly.

    The jogger was probably my favorite pose and the man in the suit was probably my least

And that they did! After priming with Gesso and painting the flesh on all of them, I did the first color on the whole batch. After that, I kind of went off script from how I usually paint and focused on them one at a time. The little kid with the box of cookies (?) -- I think it is supposed to be a girl scout, but I wanted the fig to be more generic -- was the first to get done. Next, I did the jogger, and quickly worked my way through them all. Even inside this batch, the quality of the scuplts was uneven. I think the kid and the jogger are nice, simple sculpts. The male businessman is awful, though, and looks like he's from a different manufacturer and figure line altogether!

    The stroller was a bit of a pain to paint up with its somewhat 'mushy' sculpting, but I like it now

The woman with the baby stroller ("pram" for my European friends) was probably the most difficult. It wasn't easy to tell what all the various parts of the stroller were in a couple cases, and the baby itself is so tiny and undetailed that it was a bit of a challenge. What's more, the stroller's wheels hang off the edge of the metal base like the back wheels are on the curb and the front is hovering over the street. I had to fix that in the flocking stage, and am fairly happy with how I built up the ground. I based all of the figures on the same 1" round plastic bases I've been basing my Sci-Fi stuff on. I guess I wanted to be able to toss them onto a Sci-Fi table as civilians, too!

    You can always use civilians in modern games, right? If nothing for eye candy on the table...

All in all, they turned out fairly well. By no means are they my favorite figs I painted this year. Hey, that reminds me, I am only a few weeks away from another "Year in Review" post! Not sure when these less than magnificent seven will see the tabletop. Still, they were a good time filler while I got my bearings on what I want to be working on. Much as I do with my day-to-day activities, I've now created a "To Do" list for both Minis To Be Painted and Terrain to Complete. It's sitting on my painting desk right now so I don't have that momentary indecision anytime soon!

With these seven miniatures painted, I am not on the positive side in my Acquired vs. Purchased. Those two Stargave boxes I picked up at ATC 2024 (40 figures, when I had no intention of painting them all) really set me back. Otherwise, what's next? I have begun painting the 28mm Water Tower from Bad Goblin Games. I've also assembled and primed five figures for my Rebel Alliance faction for Star Wars skirmishes. It's good to be back on track with a plan...ha, ha!

Miniature Painting & Purchasing Tally for 2024

• Miniatures acquired in 2024: 226
  
• Miniatures painted in 2024: 230