When I decided a few months ago to revive my Vanguard Joeverse, I decided to make some changes as well. The first was to change the roles of at least two main characters; the other was to redo most, but not all of the figures, to match up to a better idea of how I saw them in my mind.
First up, Robert "Doc" Kramer:
Parts Used:Head: Spy Troops Agent Faces, modified
Remainder: Spy Troops Cross Hair
OICW: Bbi
Cap: Spy Troops Gung-Ho
Backpack: PTE
Bio:
Real Name: Kramer, Robert
Birthplace: Scranton, PA
Primary Military Specialty: Pathfinder
Secondary Military Specialty: Security Forces
Grade: O-3
Branch: USAF
Primary Role: Recon Specialist/XO, Vanguard A-squad
Preferred weapon: OICW, rechambered to 7.62mm, .50 Desert Eagle
Robert Kramer, aka Doc, is Vanguard’s A-squad recon specialist and also its Executive Officer. His rather inappropriate codename comes from a nickname he earned some years before for his tendency to be a good listener, as well as offering advice to people in need; hence teammates began to call him “The Doc”, a name which eventually stuck. Most people now simply call him Doc, though those very close to him typically call him by his real name.
Doc is a step above most recon specialists—or soldiers, for that matter—because he’s also a Lycanthrope: a shape-shifter, able to assume man-like, semi-lupine form that is incredibly fast, strong and hard to kill. Both in human and Lycanthropic form Doc has heightened senses of hearing, smell and sight, and his strength, speed and endurance are several times greater than those of normal humans. He uses all of these things in battle and sometimes out of it, and tends to share the Lycanthropic trait of being higly protective of those he cares about, particularly his wife, Kayla and “younger sister” Erin Fox.
For a Lycanthrope—which are normally energetic and a bit excitable—Doc is surprisingly laid back, but tends to have a short fuse and reacts very poorly to threats against those he cares about; in fact doing so will usually result in your very swift and painful death. His views on “justice” could be called ambiguous at best, as Doc firmly believes that people who prey on innocents should, quite simply, be run down and slaughtered. Typical of Lycanthropes, Doc enjoys anything that gets his adrenaline going, particularly battle, where he can let himself go, though rarely does he do so if it will put his teammates at risk.
Doc is a fully qualified Air Force Forward Air Combat Controller and Special Security Forces program officer. He has completed Sniper School (qualified expert), Jungle, Desert, and Arctic Survival Schools, SCUBA and Long Range Recon Patrol training; he is of course, Airborne and Air Assault qualified.
Doc speaks Russian, Italian, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese as well as a smattering of Commanche and Navajo, the latter taught to him by his wife.
Design Notes: My original Doc had a goatee, which I never imagined him having; since he is VERY loosely based on me, I opted for the Agent Faces head, which looks a lot like my own goofy mug (more when you get rid of the goatee). The use of the Spy Troops Cross Hair body was an effort to get close to the sort of uniform I'd imagine a Recon specialist wearing, and to add some height; the Cross Hair body is just a bit taller than most other newsculpt figures, and I wanted to give Doc some height.
Now my second offering, Kayla Ironhorse, well...this one has always meant something to me, and two previous attempts at doing here just didn't measure up to what I wanted her to look like. I feel with this version I have finally captured the look I've been after for almost three years:
Parts Used:Head: Bombstrike, hair heavily modified using Green Stuff
Torso, arms: Bombstrike, both heavily modified using Green Stuff
Waist: Bombstrike
Legs: 25A General Hawk (comic pack version), modified knife sheath w/random Joe knife
Belt: VvV Baroness, modified to carry VvV Stalker belt pouch
P-90: Marauder, Inc.
Bio:
Real Name: Ironhorse, Kayla
Birthplace: Flagstaff, AZ
Primary Military Specialty: Physician's Assistant
Secondary Military Specialty: Corpsman
Grade: O-3 (Lt., USN)
Branch: USN
Primary Role: Medic, Chief Medical Officer Vanguard A-squad
Preferred Weapon: P-90 PDW, Beretta M9 (modified)
Kayla Ironhorse (Kramer), aka Mother, serves as Vanguard’s A-squad medic and Chief Medical Officer; she is a qualified Physician’s Assistant with an intensive background in combat medicine and emergency trauma treatment, much of it gained hands-on during her early career, when she spent four years as a corpsman in a field hospital during the Third World War. In this respect she often goes above and beyond the sorts of duties one normally thinks of involving her profession.
Calm and cautious, with a powerful maternal instinct Kayla also tends to serve as a mediator and peacemaker among her teammates, a voice of reason when things get tense; her maternal instinct leads to her looking after the others like a mother hen, and that same sense extends to anyone supporting them on their missions. She also considers herself a healer first, combatant second, and tends to keep down in firefights until needed. Unlike the other members of Vanguards A-squad, Kayla lacks any heavy Special Ops training; she is, however Airborne and Air Assault qualified, SCUBA qualified and has completed the Desert, Arctic and Jungle Survival Schools, nearly all during her time with Special Tactical Operations Command, prior to joining Vanguard.
Kayla is also Doc’s wife; they married six months prior to joining Vanguard, having worked tightly together for almost five years. As a couple they are close and loving; as a team in the field they are so used to one another they can literally anticipate what the other will do and work together almost flawlessly.
Kayla, who is one-half Commanche and one-half Navajo, speaks both tongues fluently and is also fluent in Spanish and Mandarin Chinese, the last learned during her service in the Third World War.
Design Notes: Given the importance I felt for this figure, I took my time putting her together. The Bombstrike head came closest to the idea face (a very close match to a painting I've based her off); molding the hair on to match proved a bit tricky, but with a little vegetable oil to keep the Green Stuff from sticking to the body, I got excellent results and a near perfect match. I used a custom blend to give her a Native skintone, one that worked nicely as well to contrast to the black of her hair and the dark blue of her uniform.
The Bombstrike body turned out to be ideal for her due to it's versatility; other than the pack straps on the shoulders it was a blank slate to work with. A little Green Stuff applied around the collar and down the front turned it from a t-shirt into a modified nano-weave protective vest; more Green Stuff on the sleeves allowed me to simulate a uniform blouse, in place of the usual T-shirt. I poked holes into the Baroness belt front and back and attached the VvV Stalker pouch to give her a readily-accessible medical bag.
The 25A Hawk legs were so skinny as to be girly, and were a perfect fit to the Bombstrike waist. However to work with the Baroness belt, I had to modify the sheath; I sliced it about 1/2 down and filled in the area behind it with Green Stuff, then took one of the Joe knives, cut all but a bit of the blade off, and glued it in. It worked like a charm!
I'm extremely proud of this figure; when I had her finally assembled I literally ran around the room whooping for joy over how well she came out, by far, one of my best figures to date!
Doc gave me a few fits with the face (that goatee was molded on, it turned out, though it was hard to see that) but it worked out; turns out his one is of those heads that takes paint really well. I really have to come up with a good color scheme for my Prince Caspian Werewolf to show him in Lycanthrope form.
Actually happened way back before I even thought of Vanguard, for the original Mother (all images of which have been destroyed as she was waaay bad), I needed a Native name quickly, and snatched that one out of the air. As things happen, it stuck.
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