Renaissance of the Dead

 Still in time for Zomtober!

I hadn't really noticed that this time of the year was coming, but a gentle post by mighty Dave Stone from Wargames Terrain Workshop served as a heads up. In fact it was a happy coincidence, as just a few days ago I had found some zombies in a box at the bottom of the shelf. The timing couldn't be better, so I knew I had to paint them!

They belong to the Undead ranges by The Assault Group, a company I had heard a lot about, but had never got the chance to try by myself. I can only say that the design and sculpts are amazing. They have that Oldschool quality that makes them so enjoyable to paint, they are a real pleasure to the brush.

Here you have the Landsknecht Zombies:

Or are they Zombie Landsknechts?

No peacock feathers this time

It's a quite straightforward paintjob, I think it's the kind of stuff that suits these minis. Their colours are still visible, I didn't want to desaturate them too much, as I believe that colour is a relevant part of the oldschool approach.

Yeah, I think they are in need of some directions

 I chose yellow and green for a couple of reasons. First of all is because I think the combo looks cool, not that I need anything else to base my decisions.

But there's another reason. In the WHFB world, those are the colours of the province of Stirland, a place bordering with Sylvania (well, formally comprising Sylvania), home to the Von Carstein and thus a likely place to find some decent zombies!

In support of this rationale, Stirland also shares borders with The Moot, home of the most thriving community of Halflings in the Empire.

Oh, anyone said Halflings?

Zombie Halflings!

I wouldn't dare to say Halfling Zombies

These minis are a pure joy to paint, totally different from my usual stuff, and it's the first time I see zombified Halflings, so extra points for that.

Clearly zombies come in all sizes and shapes

Once I was in the green and yellow mood I simply couldn't stop. It strangley suits them too. Stirland auxiliary militia? Mercenaries? You name it, I'm happy with the pattern.

Two and a half zombies

I don't really have any serious plans for these fellas, but I'm happy I've finally painted them. They can play as nice rivals in any skirmish game I can think of, I may even use them in a HeroQuest game or something of the like. For now this is it:

Halloween local parade 2023

These may have served as a palette cleanser, but I'm still open to new projects and different stuff, so now I have to decide what comes next. To be determined!

In the meantime, have a spooky Halloween and enjoy!

Space zombies

 I wasn't really aware that I was making myself a way into Zomtober until right now, when I said, "hey, right, I'm officially painting zombies in October". So this isn't actually a planned post, it simply happened this way!

When I saw the Plague Zombies North Star had released for Stargrave, I immediately fell in love, I knew I needed them. What for? Who cares! I needed them.

Once I made that obvious point clear, I got another pal involved and we got a few blisters. Oh, a few duplicated blisters, I mean.

The minis themselves are gorgeous. Appealing design and fantastic casting. Once I got them in hand it was pretty evident that they are wearing some kind of uniform. Some of them wear what looks like a flight jumpsuit, others vests and helmets, a wrist intercomm device...

Shooting zombies. That's a first time for me

Should I paint them as Nurgle Guard? Or any kind of Imperial Guard unit fallen to a plague? Hmmm. Then the shape of the helmets and the jumpsuits gave me this another idea...

What if...?

 Would I dare painting them orange and white? Well of course! Who do you take me for?

The process took me longer than expected. Essentially real life issues, but also a few unexpected setbacks, such as spilling (again) my [redacted] Agrax:

Tragedy in one shot

I'm so tired of GW pots. I'm afraid I'll have to get one of those holders I've seen on the internet. Or even better, find out the equivalent for Agrax in Vallejo and get rid of the problem for good.

Anyway, after the... issue, ahem, I was able to move forward. Using essentially just two colours made my life enormously easy:

Orange is the new black, you know

Rehearsal for Thriller

There's little thing to say about them in fact, you can see it's quite a basic paintjob. I didn't want to overdo them or add too much blood and stuff, so I went for a straightforward brushwork. I tried some different skin tones (which of course are indistinguishable in my awful pics) and made some Rebel-like patterns on the helmets. Biggs Darklighter's helmet was my main inspiration, as yellow/black checkers also fit into my general Rogue Trader style.

 

 

 

 The bases are from an old KS, I never got to use them and had been rolling on the shelves for never ending years, so I'm happy I finally found a way to put them into an use!

It is a dark time for the Rebellion...

 I will for sure find a way to give them a role into any scenario in a spaceport, something like that. I hope you can indulge my extravaganza, but the idea was too silly to just let it go :D

Some more zeds incoming!

Ouch. Barely in time, but I've managed to finish these. Coming once again from Clearco Miniatures, this new kit gives you some freedom, as it comes with several spare heads you can combine as you wish. Once again, they are nice sculpts and will definitely add some more variety to my board :)

 

Most likely my favourite from the whole bunch

I may be a zombie, but my watch still rocks

Man, that tee is never out of fashion

Little bit embarassing, zombie apocalypse got him in his pajamas...

Right! Survivors left just that way!

 

They have been definitely fun to paint. Didn't take much time, but once again, I've been painting all the final touches at quite separate moments, so it's a little bit difficult to calculate. Here you have all of them:

 

Man, that stag party went out of control quite quickly...

 

OK, this is it for today. I'm trying to finish more stuff, let's see if I can bring it on next week, it will be a change, that I can say! ;)

Zombie Dogs

Yup, I know, my originality with titles has slipped all the way down during summer. But no one can tell me I'm not being honest with what I offer :D

Just the zombie dogs for Zombicide. No additions nor conversions. I just cut out the central support from the bases and let the puppies to stand on their own:

 

Woof arf woof

Grrrr arf woof woof

Woof woof Meleé Islandtm woof

Arf woof LeChuck arooo

If you are wondering about the scale, let me bring this pic, alongside Games Workshop and Hasslefree:

A dog's gotta do what a dog's gotta do

 

Finally, here they are, the twenty of them:

 

Now I need some zombie cats!!

 

These puppies can be a nightmmare in the game, they add lots of fun. You can see I've been slowing down my blog rate during August. I'm not having that much time so I'm facing easy projects not too much time consuming while I run my other side projects. I hope to come back to regularity soon!

Fat bottomed zeds

Hiya! Turning back on the zombie side again!

If you are old enough you may be singing Queen after reading the title for today's entry. You can expect to get not Zombicide fatties(tm), but 'big boned' zombie girls, brought to you by awesome Clearco Miniatures.

Here you have a couple of scale comparison shots. First one next to a Hasslefree model:

 

A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do

And two Empress models:

 

Hmm, both of them hardened warriors seem to be getting apart from her

 

For now I will be using them for my Zombicide games, the same as the sick guys I brought over here a couple of weeks ago. More variety for the apocalypse, you know. I know, I may have to test new rulesets...

Anyway, let's go see the girls!

 

Girl, if you dye your hair, you should take care of your eyebrows

Hey, world championship is long time over by now!

The girl on the right could be considered skinny among all the others

 

 When you get all of them together...

 

They all are dancing Shania Twain... 'man, I feel like a woman'

 
As I'm writing this I realize that I have missed one girl! Oh my! She was under the lead mountain and I didnt' see her! Shame on me!
Well, don't worry, I can tell you I still have a good bunch of Z's awaiting to be painted, so she will make it into another round, sooner or later... ;)

They are not dead, they are infected

Well, I wouldn't dare to say that much anyway...

These are the zombies I got from Hasslefree, patients from a hospital. Really quick to paint as of course I used quite a limited palette.

 

You know, budget cuts on health expenses... Things happen

This one got me into this pack, I saw it and simply new that I needed it :D

 

Dude, what happened to the lights?

The whole pack is really nice, adds some variation to what I am used to see

 

Got last in the sack race

I believe that arm is not going to get any better

Unsatisfied with hospital food

I also have a bonus zombie! Another mini that was simply irresistible:

 

No caption. You know, he's a mime

 

My intention is using them for my Zombicide games. I usually run out of zombies when playing Zombicide, so I wanted some more variety.

As a matter of fact I have been purchasing some more Z's frome here and there, I hope I'll be showing them over here anytime soon!

I got a Christmas present.- Guest blog

Happy new year!! :)

I had some things ready for today, but something important happened this week and I have gladly redone my schedule -you will see at once why.

If you have a look at my blogroll, one of the wonderful links you will find is La Rana Bucanera ('Buccaneer Frog'!), run by Eliezer Mayor, a truly mighty painter from the Canary Islands, a complete artist in the whole extension of the word.

Last weekend I got a surprise gift; I went to my Post Office and found that Eliezer had sent me a Christmas present: this mini, totally sculpted and painted by him:

 

It isss mine, my preciousssss

 

You can see the whole process on his blog:

Part I 

Part II

Part III 

I cannot recommend it enough; seriously, he is such a talented artist -not that I'm telling it as he has bribed me with a mini :D. His work speaks out for itself, just go check. You will not be dissapointed.

Of course I had to try the mini on a game! So this very weekend we had a Zombicide session.

I've come across the sea to kill zombies!!

I think I can also find him a place for some other ambientations, so I believe you will see this mini on some other games ;)

So, thank you very much, Eliezer! Now everybody go follow his blog!!

Well, it has been my pleasure that this has been my first post of the year. Later this week I'll come back to regular activity, starting a new project. You'll see what I'm talking about... ;)

Cheers!

Playing Zombicide

About time! You've been watching my zombie hordes for weeks, but no action at all! This has come to an end, as I finally had a game (I had played the game with unpainted minis pieces of plastic, but this has been the first one with painted minis!).

As it is a widely known game by now, I'll skip the most tedious parts of the rules and focus on the action.

We chose a scenario from the rulebook. This was the setting:

 

Modular board, multiple configurations. Triceratops not included

 

We chose the survivors (well, we did it sorta randomly):

 

The heroes

 

Despite what weapon the mini is carrying, that's just for the show. Any equipment the character is actually carrying is depicted through cards in a character sheet.

 

Let's just pretend she's carrying a chainsaw

 

Each character has action points. Special skills depend on the character (or the weapons everyone is using at the moment). Generally speaking, you can use each action point to move one section (delimited by crosswalks or rooms inside buildings), search for items or use a weapon. Each time you kill (re-kill?) a zombie, you get one experience point. This way you can upgrade your survivor. But beware, the higher experience level you get, the harder it may become! You may get new skills, but when any character goes to the next experience level (the chart above in your character sheet, marked with different colours), more and more zombies will get in at the end of each turn!

 

Though it is in Spanish, I hope you don't need further translation

 

So you draw a card from the deck at the end of each turn and, depending on the most skilled character's level, you will have to put the corresponding number of zombies on  the board. As you can see, at some time, they begin to appear and wander around:

 

A Fattie is always accompanied by two Walkers

Trying to escape from the giant Triceratops behind her

 

The objective in this game was getting into determined rooms and search for items in them. We split our group (maybe not a wise decision, but we are acting a zombie movie so who cares), Phil, Doug and Josh went searching one objective and Amy went opening doors in order to allow free movements to the rest (only determined weapons can... 'open' doors).

 

Exploring the city

This trio gets into the scene

 

Some actions (shooting, opening doors with an axe...) make noise. Z's will automatically walk straight towards the closest survivor they see and will also be attracted by noise, so you have to be careful with what you do!

 

Amy is making some noise!

Zombies incoming!!

Don't worry, Amy is a tough girl!

Josh scatters three Z's with his shotgun

 

But they keep coming!

 

The Triceratops is still kinda disturbing

Ehm, you think anyone heard us?

 

Guys, I could use some help here...

Guys? Hey, guuuuys!

No, not you!

Nothing to do here

 In the meantime, the guys were holding the position with the most effective lead curtain:

Blamm blamm dakka dakka

 

But as soon as the zombies are slain, new ones keep appearing!

That football game was boring to death

 

Amy got another objective marker:

 

5 extra experience points for her

But Doug finally got caught. Oh, no!

 

Yummm... grrrr... argm... nom nom nom

 

Phil avenged Doug's death and got into a building:

Makin' a lot of noise here...

 

But, with no one in sight, that drew a lot of attention...

This is getting crowded...

So that's the plan, making the Z's go to the corner and, by that sacrifice, allowing Josh and Amy to reach the last objective marker.

 

No easy decisions in this game. All for the survival of the group

 

So Phil kept on shooting and killing zombies...

 

You want my brains? Come get'em!

...and more zombies:

 

This is getting ugly...

 
Josh and Amy run towards the objective:

 

C'mon, we still can get it!

 
But it looks like Phil had a situation where he was:

 

Uh-oh

 

He tried his best, but he finally succumbed :(

 

This is an epic movie scene. Add epic music to taste

 

When it looked like Josh and Amy were going to do it, we drew a card from the deck and... oh no!

Extra turn for all Walkers! Oh no!

Josh was unexpectedly dismembered, eaten and digested, but again his sacrifice allowed Amy to achieve the goal and reach the last objective marker.

 

Phew!

So we barely won the game! Pyrrhic victory! This is it, just a quick example of how it works and what you can expect if you buy it. Just a final pic to get the overall sight:

 

Zombie rush hour

 

This took us about... 45 min? An hour? But it delivered us tremendous amounts of fun. The game is terribly simple to learn and totally recommendable for anyone, even if you haven't ever played this kind of games. Wives and non-gamers usually approve, so now you don't have any excuse for your Christmas gift! Go get it!