Another Horror From The Stars

 

This mystery figure has been hiding for years.

Arachnophilia

 

Another strange large miniature from the collection to oppose the human forces in Majestic 13 - an RAFM Call of Cthulhu Spider of Leng. It even comes with it's own baby spider (I'll hold off calling to cute!).

Near Future Troopers (part 2)

 

5 more troopers to join the initial dirty dozen. Still all from the Copplestone Castings range of Future Wars Assault Troopers, these are a selection from the two character packs. I'd have painted up the remaining 5 as well if I could find where I'd squirreled them away to, but these guys give me an easily identifiable leader.

All the dice rolls have been made for my first game, although there is a slight delay as I paint up the first alien assailant. I know you can use any figure, but when you roll a result and know you have a perfect miniature in you collection that just needs some attention with a paint brush you just have to postpone, don't you??

Prime Winged Xenos

 

A quick new Xenos Terror paint up for Majestic 13 - one of the new Games Workshop Winged Prime Tyranids. I knew I wanted this fiend to be dark, and once constructed there was something about his wings that reminded me of Jeepers Creepers (although the wings are different) - so brown it had to be. Mainly a combination of Contrast paints over Zenithal/Dry brushed highlights. It's pretty effective for a single nightmare. The carapace and claws have a coat (of variating) Balthasar Gold to give a sharp metallic feel without loosing the brown-ness.

Could easily fit into a fantasy, sci-fi, or horror game - perfect really!

Call of Cthulhu Flying Polyp

 

Well that was a fun evening slapping some paint on an old metal OOP version of RAFM's Flying Polyp from their Call of Cthulhu range. 

Call of Cthulhu Yig

 

It's been slumbering for an eon, but the Yig is finally awakened.

Near Future Troopers (part 1)

 

The first set of Troopers for Majestic 13 have been completed. 

Building WIP

 A quick WIP post.

After being away on Holiday to the lovely North Wales coast, this last week hasn't seen me n the mood for painting, but I have been doing some easier focus work in the hobby shed in the form of putting together some mdf buildings that have been sitting around for a while.

Biker Gang

As a bit of a change from sci-fi I thought I'd do some figures that I've no real agenda for. These Copplestone Bikers have been sitting primed for a long time so it's nice to be able to have them ready for any Zombie games (like County Road Z which I keep looking at!)

New Rules - County Road Z

 

My print copy of County Road Z popped through the door the other day. It is a solo\coop game, a genre which seems to have really picked up since the Global Covid Hooha.. The game is focused on building a community of survivors. Half the game is on the tabletop, with scenarios scavenging for resources or a particular narrative, and half is "off table" building, organising and fortifying your community base. 

Still in the reading stages but it's have me looking at my Zombie game supplies (again) in the Hobby Shed.

available in pdf and Print on Demand from Wargame Vault.

A Tale of Two Cities (Overrun by Undead)

This week saw me trying out not one but TWO new games, both along a similar theme.

ATZ - Ground Zero

Ok, so I've spent the last two months making terrain and painting figures for Zombie gaming, so what reason do I have for turning down MacSver's suggestion of trying "All Things Zombie"? No good reason at all (ignoring the fact I hadn't managed to fully digest the latest version (ATZ - Final Fade Out). Queue the familiar learning Two Hour Wargames ruleset learning process of frantic page flicking!

For the table I decided to put most the terrain I have on, just to see how it would look and set up. It was decided that the scenario would be in the first 10 weeks of the outbreak during daylight hours. Our two characters had been in touch with each other and the aim of the game was to meet up and get off table, with each character entering the table at opposite corners.

Zomtober - Week 5

Final Week in Zomtober and probably my favourite mini of the month. This punk is from Hasslefree and goes under the rather unassuming name of Joe. The scuplting is so tipically smooth that I was encouraged to a bit more detailing than I normally do. I had a bash at a Union Flag on his t-shirt and an anarchy symbol on this back. The t-shirt doesn't bear up to too close scrutiny, but from the tabletop distance looks like its meant to, so result. Also the way his left eye had come out (from my variable painting) made me think it looked a bit swollen, so I've tried to give him a black eye showing he's been in a rumble and come out the other side!

The second of this week's figures is Cleaver Vine from West Winds sidelined Road Kill range. He is slightly on the heroic side of scaling, but the pose brings his height down. I always have trouble with faces and eyes and this figure was a bit awkward as his eyeballs have been sculpted almost popping out his head. But the cigar, haircut and dynamic pose are are winners.

All that remains is to thank and congratulate all the other participants in this years event. There have been some great and interesting models across the board. And also to finish with the customary group shot:

Zomtober - Week 4

With the October break this week time was short for painting (was away with the family on a short break to South Ayrshire, Scotland), but a couple of simple paint jobs have seen me through!

Two survivors possibly from different ends of the social scale this week. First up is a business woman from Foundry's Street Violence range.

The other survivor is by ZonbieSmith. His rifle seems to have been damaged at some point, which obviously hasn't done him any favours as I painted his Zed version for Zomtober a couple of years ago.

Zomtober - Week 3

The original (not) Rick and Carl from Studio Miniatures. These two are earlier releases which are more comic book based. S.M. have since released a couple of excellent sculpts of a more serious vein as per their later zombie survivor releases. I won them on ebay without the Lori figure. Also, strangely, the Rick figure has two pistols, whereas the website has him holding a rifle in his right hand. I don't know if they come with weapon options.

The Rick figure is really nice to paint. The Carl one is a bit cartoony, or at least small for his age. Having said that the wide brim of hat hides the face. He'll also probably mix well with some of my other kid figures, once they get painted..

EDIT: After writing this post I got round to pulling out some of my Walking Dead graphic novels. In these early volumes Carl is indeed very young and the sculpt above is quite accurate.

Zomtober - Week 2

If you are wondering what happened to Week 1 so am I. It seems that week 1 of Zomtober was condensed into Saturday 1st Oct so I missed it!

Anyway we'll move on. Bigger woes to tell. I had planned to "catch up" with a raft of HeroClix touch-ups\repaints this week that I'd quickly based years ago to get gaming. But the first batch out on the table demonstrated the variety of detail quality of these sculpts. To cut to the chase I became too frustrated with them and the majority went in the bin! (I was a bit tired and cranky) HeroClix scale is slightly oversized, so in the long run I'll have a better sculpted and scaled collection.

 One of the two that made the cut were this young lady with her Uzis and face paint, who got a bit of a touch up and highlight. Not much but enough to improve her no end.

Second Survivor the this gent, a Detective I think originally. He's got a wonderful dynamic pose and, thankfully, defined facial features. The figure got a complete repaint in pretty much the same colours. Don't ask me what the point of that was, but he's better for it (and definitely counts towards the painting total as a result!).

And finally this grizzled Survivor from RAFM's USX line (Karl H. Unger to be precise) He's been sitting primed in a tin for more years than I care to remember so I knew he had to be done this month. I've painted his attire to match the red beret wearing militia I already have painted (as seen in the Filling Station post previously).

No time to rest though. There's a Police Officer and his young son calling for attenion.

Zomtember?

Yes I know that Zomtember isn't a thing (it's actually Zomtober) but one of my main aims this year was to give Zombie gaming the attention I'd been so longing to give it for a few years now, so I've cleared my table (mostly) and decided to go early and for longer!

With around 50 or 60 zombies already painted, this period will have both Survivors and scenery in it, although I plan to still join the Zomtober crew when it starts and keep to the rules.

The streets are [too] empty

Scooby Gang vs The Zombie Lord

After the fun of our previous game of Faith and Fear, the Scooby gang were sent out on another mission.

The Zombie Lord was infecting the local water supply by pouring his zombie poison down an old natural well. The Scooby Gang had to destroy the barrel.

Zomtober 2014 - Weekend 5 & Final Call

Zomtober for me is now over with the final rising of 5, the end of my ZombieSmith Horde. Again fun to paint these guys, as some of there detail only became apparent on applying the brush. I especially like the green shirted zombie, who is missing the right side of his head, gruesomely displaying the side of his brain and other inners. To those not familiar with UK road signs, the exclamation mark basically just means "Warning, Danger". Quite an understatement I think, although I would be lying if I didn't say that the ease of application may have made the sign message an easy choice!

And so to the final photo of all 25 zombies painted this October (ish).

Thanks to all concerned for getting the event going, and to all those bloggers who's work I have enjoyed all month as well. Great stuff all round. I was having real problems getting to the paint table before this and it's been so much fun that I've the gusto to continue. I'm looking forward to next year's painting already.

Zomtober 2014 - Weekend 4

Crawling and shuffling towards the end game, here are another 5 from my ZombiSmith Horde. One of them is duplicate of a figure painted for weekend 1, I'm not trying to bolster numbers by hoping you wouldn't notice, honest.

This bunch have some hidden detail. The bent over chap on the far left has a broken back (with spinal injury protruding). His neighbour in green is missing the top of his head (with exposed brain). The middle mechanic is suffering from having his head twisted round 180 degrees, and you can see that the Zed in the hat has a hole completely blown through him.

Now technically (I think) Week 4 is the last Zomtober entry, but I have 5 left over in my pile. This next week is very limited in painting time, but I'm not calling it over 'til I've finished...