Wizkids Reservoir Kraken - WZK90563

 

Okay - soapbox moment/rant... I don't know if WizKids thinks they're selling gold, but the latest pricing for this UNPAINTED miniature is $44.99 at Miniature Market with a retail price of $49.99. Since when did unpainted miniatures climb that much in price. Freaking ridiculous! I'm sure I picked this up a few years ago for like $15 and probably thought that was outrageous because large minis from the WizKids line were like $8.

Maybe because it's "Magic the Gathering" and Wizards/WizKids love screwing the Magic players - stamp Magic the Gathering on it and jack up the price 5x what it's worth. Any Magic players reading this, I'll sell it to you in-box for $200, rofl!

=== rant over ===

This post isn't really about the miniature, although it's a fun miniature, instead I'm back on the bandwagon about AK Interactive PlayMarkers. After I picked up the Tools & Weapons pack, I was back at my local friendly hobby store Emerald Tavern in Austin, TX running some ShadowDark RPG and this time picked up the Viscera pack. This one had Purple, Pink, and Red.

Looking around my shelf, bags, and boxes of unpainted miniatures; the Reservoir Kraken box art was the perfect model for purple, red, and pink. Again, I had an absolute blast painting with the PlayMarkers. The best part is the ability to stop and start. Give it a go for an hour in the evening then cap the marker - come back to it two days later and "paint" some more for an hour or so. There's no prep or trying to preserve a wet palette - no getting the paints out, getting the water, trying to find the correct color consistency, cleaning brushes, etc. - this is as simple as grabbing your pen and writing - instead it's a paint marker on a 3d object. These markers completely lower the barrier to "hobby time". Have ten minutes before dinnertime, pop the cap and start painting.

I'm going to continue putting together some thoughts...

• It's contagious fun! 
• Still really easy to use - they have a brush-like tip - it comes down to a point of about a 1 brush, maybe a 2.
• After 2 models, I'd say this is a great way to introduce newbies to the painting hobby - I'll qualify that with having the "right" model - something that's smooth, easy access, with broad swath of space to color - monsters, a wizard with a robe, a woman in a dress, a knight in armor - a model with lots of tiny details would most likely be frustration.
• Using a marker to color in a model is much easier than using a brush - mostly true, with this model there were some areas that the thickness of the model made it difficult to attack because of the tentacles in crazy directions.
• They're very opaque - there's no bleed through so you can't really blend or build up layers - this remains true - so I've used this to my advantage - don't worry about "coloring in the lines" as it's very easy to "clean-up" once the original color is dry - just paint over the mistake with the appropriate color - the opaqueness of the paint wipes away the mistake.
• That leads to a new point - the dry time on these is very fast - which for the style of painting I think is a good attribute - vs. say Reaper Pro paints which I believe has some dry retardant in it so it makes the paint easy to blend and layer.
• The paint dries to solid - I haven't noticed any paintbrush streaks once dry - the sheen on it is about at an eggshell - definitely more towards the flat/matte side of the spectrum than the satin bu there is a slight sheen - red more so than the purple.

More models coming using these PlayMarkers from AK Interactive.