While I was really excited to get my new Infinity figures prepped, I still had one thing to complete before I could officially complete my Operation: Red Veil. The last mission, and likely the most interesting, has a “Yuan Yuan” character as a neutral AI figure causing trouble for everyone. If I had pre-ordered the starter when it first came out, I would have been able to receive a special promo Yuan Yuan figure. Since I didn’t, I only had a little token to represent the figure and that just wouldn’t do. So I went looking for a replacement and stumbled on this:

Enter Fat Yuan Yuan! This was another promotional figure that came out with some special packaging. As soon as I heard about this guy, I had to pick him up, not only because he does a great job replacing the original promo figure:

But Fat Yuan Yuan has some web-based missions to go with him as well and the absurdity of the figure is just too great to not have in the collection. There are two versions and I’ll use the “combat” version for the missions while the noodle-shoveling “eating” version will be my “HVT.”

I just learned about HVTs or High Value Targets and found out I’ll need one for certain mission objectives. A fat noodle-eater sounds like a great option for my HVT so I’m all set.

As excited as I was for the model though, I ran into a big roadblock. When I primed him up, it was right before I prepped all the other models and I really wanted to get going on those new figures much more than Fat Yuan Yuan. Of course, painting those other figures meant that we wouldn’t get through that last Red Veil mission and part of me just couldn’t let that go even if the Red Veil missions have been less than engaging.

This conflict had caused a lot of inner turmoil and ultimately killed my enthusiasm to paint anything so things just sat there for a bit, all on hold. Part of the issue with Fat Yuan Yuan is the model is so detailed and interesting, I had a big “blank canvas” issue going on. Part of me couldn’t see past the details of the model and another part of me was still trying to work out how to paint up my new models.

Eventually, I had to let it all go and I put the new prepped models away and out of sight and let primed Fat Yuan Yuan sit on my desk, staring back at me, until I got the courage to start up. The going is slow and sloppy but paint is getting to the model and slowly but surely I’m working through this mental block.

He’s got a long way to go but at least he’s not a black primed chunk of metal anymore.