Starting Black Mask

What I like about Gotham is that potential for some crazy costumes and then you've still got the traditional appearance of gangsters. If I pick up Penguin, I already know what theme I wanted but I went with Black Mask because I wanted the opposite of my Watchmen: thugs instead of superheroes. My initial purchase into the faction was the Black Mask box, Boris and Tom, Arkham Loonies, Deadshot and Copperhead. The Loonies, Deadshot and Copperhead were chosen to be filler or awesome agents, but their colour scheme is already chosen. The question is what to do with Black Mask's goons. The first gangsters I could think of that involve masks and look nifty are the Crazy-88.

With that in mind, I knew which direction to take Black Mask. He would also wear white, to match the Crazy-88 colour scheme, but I'd like to add a bit of red to his scheme. Red and Black, Red and White, Black and White. The three colours go so well together. I would not be surprised if that's why the fight scene in Kill Bill was made in such a vibrant bar. It also gives me the ability to not have too similar miniatures. After all, just black and white would make for identical looking miniatures.

Red eyes allow allow for a red tie and/or pocket square. But with the leader's theme down, I can get to work on his men.

Black Mask comes with three gentleman that got me thinking of their back stories: Goon, Anatoly and Mesh. I have a controversial confession, I dislike the idea of "Starred Henchmen" because it removes character from the game. We've given nicknames to the Blackgates because "Prisoner" isn't very flavourful. The pipe wielder is "Piperson" and the stick wielder is "Stickka". I can easily see that they grabbed those weapons and got branded with those nicknames. With this latest prison riot, which is how they're out on the game board, they made sure to have their signature weapon.

In my mind, the name of each character is their street name. If you take a random gang, such as the Sons of Anarchy, they all dress alike to show affiliation but even the random guys in the background have names even if their purpose is to get killed off within a few episodes. They all have colourful names, even if they're chumps in the pecking Order with superhero and villains running around Gotham.

Left to Right - 'Chibs', 'Juice', 'Tig', 'Jax', 'Clay' and 'Opie'

So, with my gang I have Anatoly, Mesh, Goon, Boris and Dirty Tom. I know Goon is supposed to be a generic name, but I am not going to buy a second model, so that's going to be his criminal alias. Why would he be named Goon? Well, maybe growing up he played Hockey and was the team's Goon, the name stuck. Mesh and Goon have the same stats, so despite Mesh being a far less fancier dresser, they probably grew up together.

Mesh, in my mind, doesn't understand the style of the life, which is why he's got to go to further extremes to get respect. That's why his reputation is higher, he's willing to carry firearms and take a longer stay in prison, despite having identical stats to Mesh. He probably earned the nickname Mesh because he wore a meshed pantyhose to hide his identity on the first job.

With that in mind, Anatoly was probably a scary guy they knew when asked to bring someone else in on a job. Since Goon is sports minded, that was probably his connection to Anatoly and why he brought Football Gear. Despite the named Football, I see Hockey goalie leg protection which made me look up hockey pads for inspiration. And what do you know? They make them with red, black and white.

When this trio got absorbed into Black Mask's gang, nobody was going to tell Anatoly that you needed to wear a mask, so he went with a hood. That's also what made me realize I did have wiggle room for Boris and Dirty Tom. We've got a Russian Anatoly, Bulgarian Boris, a generic Tom and Black Mask is Italian.  It sounds like Black Mask is a gangster who chops off the head and absorbs any remnants, ignoring homeland loyalty when he knows everybody speaks money.

This gives me some diversity with how to make Boris and Dirty Tom look. But I'm not quite sold yet. What do you guys think?