Tuesday 10 March 2020

Strontium Dogs - Billy the Goat & Middenface McNulty

I was recently sent a package containing some 2000AD board game figures, including a rather excellent Middenface McNulty. As it had been a while since I last painted any Strontium Dogs, I decided to add another couple of Stronts to the collection.

Billy 'Goat' Cruyff and Middenface McNulty.



Middenface McNulty is a regular Strontium Dog character - a hard-drinking Scot with a lumpy mutated head. This particular figure is a hard plastic board game figure from Osprey's Judge Dredd: Helter Skelter miniatures board game. It very nicely detailed and posed, and much better scaled against the Citadel Strontium Dogs than either the Warlord or Foundry figures.


After lots of research, I decided to go with a terracotta brown suit and yellow armour details on McNulty. His tartan shoulder pad lost a little bit of definition when I made the ill-judged decision to put a wash over the top to tone it down - all that happened was that the bright red got lost. Oh well, it's sufficient to give the feel of tartan!



Alongside McNulty I painted up a non-comic Stront, one I'm calling Billy 'Goat' Cruyff. Billy's mutations are some little horn nubbins on his head and a luxuriant goatee beard. That's enough to make him a mutant, right?!


Billy is a Warlord Freeborn trooper from their Gates of Antares range. I only added the badge - the beard and horn nubbins are already on the figure (I suspect the nubbins are supposed to be cranial implants or something like that).

The figure is supposed to be bare-chested, but I painted him as if he's wearing a skin-tight top. I think he might have looked better if he was bare-chested, but never mind! I was pretty happy with his skin however - I tried a different technique, by painting a pale flesh colour then washing a couple of times with a black/brown/flesh wash mix


The scale of the new Stronts is pretty good compared against Citadel's Johnny Alpha - well worth bearing in mind if you'd prefer not to have towering 32mm figures looming over classic Citadel figures!

L-R: 1980s Citadel, Osprey, Warlord.

This collection of Stronts is coming along nicely now - certainly enough to band together for a bigger payday!

Johnny teams up with McNulty and some other Stronts to tackle a criminal gang terrorising a remote settlement.

16 comments:

  1. I've just realised that I still have your Jenny Greenteeth waylaid and half-finished; I'll get right on finishing her for you....

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    1. There's always room for one more Stront! That would be amazing :)

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  2. Unexpected and awesome, the Tartan is immediately recognisable (as far as a french guy can tell) and I love the tight shirt effect on the other one.

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    1. Thanks JB! It's nice to do something different for a change with the brighter 2000AD vibe.

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  3. Middenface was always my fav of Alpha's sidekicks.

    These two look excellent mate.

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  4. absolutely perfect...your painting of these has a real comic book quality to it. Perfect.

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    1. Thanks Blue! I guess it's a case of keeping it relatively bright and clean.

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  5. Classy! How did the boargame hard plastic compare to painting a regular figure? Was it soft frustrating detail, or fine?

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    1. The figure here was really nice to paint - chunky prominent detail and no soft edges...no more so than a late 1980s Citadel sculpt anyway.

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  6. Lovely work on the facial skin tones, on top of everything else of course :)

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    1. Thanks! I was particularly pleased with McNulty's knobbly head :)

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