When I started Marvel Crisis Protocol, Emma Frost was the one character I wanted to add to my roster even if there was no official release – it’s why I went with the Jean Grey and Cassandra Nova expansion over other prospective X-Men choices. About a year later, we got an official Emma Frost and Psylocke expansion, and I got my hands on it hot off the presses, and then let it sit on my pile of shame for an embarrassing number of months. I made a few versions of the character including a scaled down 3D print statue, but wanted to do a different take on the character than I had in the last couple of versions I’d done up.

One of my favorite runs of X-Men was a short 24-ish issue story arc where Cyclops, Emma Frost, Magneto, and Magik basically had to run their own X-Men team and training facility out of the old Weapon X facility in Canada, more or less cut off from the rest of the de facto X-Men and from the regular school. I’m a sucker for a good (terrible) Cyclops story, and always glad to see Emma step in and steal the show. I went with a color scheme that was one part that, and one part her appearance in the “Dark X-Men” series, in part because I thought the black would contrast better with natural skin tones and with the diamond form, too. I tried to make diamond form just a little bluer than my last attempt, though with some of the same greens, but I think the scale of the figure worked against me a little on this one. Not quite as happy as I was with the last diamond form Emma I painted, but still pretty happy.

But with Psylocke in the box, of course, I couldn’t let her go unpainted, not when I’m putting so much effort into clearing out my shame pile once and for all. And she is a fantastic, dynamic miniature. I can see it being a problem to get her into base contact with others, but for such an awesome sculpt that’s a bridge I’m willing to cross. I like the Sentinel-esque debris on the ground and tried to play with fluorescents to make it look freshly de-limbed, but seeing all of the Sentinel bits being used as base terrain across the X-Men line is making me seriously consider getting my hands on one of the Sentinel kits, since I already have Cassandra Nova as a Leader. If wishes were horses…

Very happy with this set – with Marvel Crisis Protocol I’m used to getting a couple of good miniatures and a useful card or two for play in the set. Here, I got three for basically the price of two, and the cards that they come with for play are definitely going to see tabletop use, especially since I can basically make Emma the boss of her own sub-faction now. The possibilities are endless.