Die Nacht der Toten

The boy Slug has a slowly evolving nazi zombie project inspired, in part, by the Call of Duty game which features the opportunity to shoot Nazi zombies. These figures are part of West Wind Productions Secrets of the Third Reich which we picked up a couple of Salutes ago. Rather uphappily I didn’t enjoy painting these at all. The detail seems a little limited, even confused. I have a sneaking suspicion this might be why these were the ones I was asked to paints.

The bases are the 30mm DS Ruined Flagstone set from Fenris Games, and those I enjoyed working on more than the figures. Slug set the figures on the bases and rather well I think, I really liked the one with a stream trickling through it, and the boy set the figure firmly standing in it.

All-in-all an odd experience. usually I strive to paint up to the sculpt but on these the piece which demanded justice was the base…

Zombie Action

To do it justice this really should be a game report, but the last one was over 1,700 words and I’ve beer to drink. Instead I do hope you’ll be satisfied with a picture gallery and a bit of blah-blah. This game for four with me running it started as a bluff. Each player had four men from a faction involved in the fictional game nation of Jihadistan, so there was the IDF, Delta Force, PLO and the Taliban. The scenario involves collecting points in three ways; i) Get to the crashed plane in the centre of the table and discovver it’s secret (20 points), rescue folk hidden in various buildings (10 points each) and find the boxes of top-secret goodies (5 points a piece). However what the players didn’t know was how in turn three this relatively safe little scoot and shoot game turned into a zombie game.

The setting is the middle-east which was a good excuse to trot out my almost finished middle eastern bunch of buildings, not least my very nice mosque. The basis for this was the Miniature Building Authority minaret, a nice piece even if grossly painted, but MBA don’t make a mosque so it meant I had to. It’s the largest cork tile building I’ve made, well in as much as the tallest and longest single walls without supporting walls. I repainted the tower in this charming blue and applied gold leaf to the dome of the building and the minaret.  Now as gaming hobbyists we’ve all made or done things which are difficult or fiddly but believe me when I say gold leaf sets the, er, gold leaf standard of fiddly. You can’t even really breathe at some points, it’s a wafer thing nightmare. Don’t take my word for it, try it!

The game played well, helped a great deal by Akula’s Zombie Rules from Salute 2009. These are great, simple, and highly playable rules and full marks to the man himself for sharing them with us all. I’d be quite happy to play every game with these as they sit very firmly in the background of any game. I had tried the All Things Zombie rules from Two Hour Wargames but didn’t get very far with them. I know they’re popular and provide a two hour wargame but I prefer rules which take less than two hours to read and fully understand. I couldn’t manage this with ATZ but did within minutes of downloading Akula’s – but don’t let that influence you either way.

Fun was had by all, the highlight was probably when the IDF mounted up into a vehicle which actually started and then proceeded to run the PLO over, however they inflicted less damage than they received in turn when the PLO returned fire at the vehicle setting it alight. Thankfully the UN didn’t turn up to spoil anyone’s fun.

Zed-ray vision

Well almost a half-decent photo, this time of another variant on zombie paint jobs half guessed in the comments by Harry on the other post. This one is pure camp with his technicolor meets Frankenstein’s monster shade of green which will make him stick out from a hoard of zombies… a bit like Wheels from the Spaced series in the crowd scenes of Shaun of the Dead.

The base needs a bit of work, but once again it shows just what beauties these Studio Miniatures really are.

I Chain, I Saw, I Conquered

A fine example of co-operation between the generations with this deadly young lad from the delicately fragrant Hasslefree Miniatures. This is one of their Juvenile range and is called Palin, they’re not the cheapest miniatures you can get but they do rate highly for their quality.

Slugs painted the figure and I did the splatter and the basing, and it proved to be one of the best results we’ve managed with the Wargames Factory plastic zombies.

Wacko Zeddo

Well not so much a thriller as a saga my order from Zombiesmith in the States finally showed up, mysteriously repackaged with about three miles of Royal Mail tape and looking as if the original package had been repeatedly passed through a lawn mower. Originally ordered before the 1:1 scale Jackson popped his clogs I did think something supernatural was taking place preventing this figure and the others ever reaching me, although I’m sure the postal strike might have played a part.

All in all they’re a lovely bunch of figures, but this one jumped the paint queue just so I might show what I think is probably the most must-have zombie figure of them all.

Nice couple

Here’s the first pair of finished figures from Blue Moon Manufacturing’s second box of zombies. Due to aging eyes I’ve not painted a 6mm figure for absolutely ages, so it was interesting and fun to have a bash even if it was on massive 28mm ones. It was also my first chance to use TCR or Tamiya Clear Red, as recommended by Vampifan via his blog. It’s a translucent red which dries with a high gloss and so looks like wet blood when dried. Charming stuff and one of the oddest paints I’ve ever used. You might be able to spot where I’ve used it on the miniatures above.

The entrails being devoured by the zombie on the right are an addition, a quick mix of general purpose glue and pink paint, glued into place when dry, and then liberally highlighted with the TCR. A reasonable finished figure I think.

Blight New Project

After just over a year’s effort I’m happy to say my late WW2 project is nearing completion, and although there’s a good few bits and bobs still underway, along with a pile of forthcoming game reports to entertain you over the coming months I have been digging around for my next project for a month now. Now I know I bang on about how wonderful the web is for researching but for a middle-aged bloke who grew up gaming it really is an epihany, not least in how much window shopping you can enjoy.

Briefly I did consider 6mm moderns with an eye on Iraq and Afghanistan, but as I already have a pile of buildings suitable from my colonial collection and rate scratch building as my fave part of the hobby I thought better of it. My actual choice came about more coincidently…

I was wandering around looking for trailers for the recently released film “Zombieland” when I discovered the rather wonderful blog  Dawn of the Lead where Mikko Meriläinen rather handily collects film trailers together if they fit into the zombie or apocalyptic genre. I’ve been an avid viewer of zombie movies since I first saw “Dawn of the Dead” in ’78, which I found hilarious then as I still do – the mix of schlock horror and increasingly inventive ways of slaughtering zombies, or zeds as the kids call them now, tickles my funny bone.

Of course serving up trailers isn’t all Mikko offers, if it begins with a Z, ends with an E, and has ombi in the middle he’s mentioned it including an amusing range of miniatures and links to other zombie plague infected folk which I followed to discover the following two sites.

The all-singing, all-dancing Screaming Alpha is a well laid out and attractive site which although covering gaming as a whole is obsessed with Zombie miniatures. Even though they’re all 28mm, and therefore heathen, there’s a mouth watering array from a wealth of manufacturers all reviewed in no small detail by John Price as part of his Master Zombie Database. This form of obsession verging on lunacy is exactly what modern gamers enjoy, personally I admire the underlying tone of insanity it’s a true beacon of dedication which words alone can’t express.

Last but most definately by no means least, from Dawn of the Lead I clicked on a link to Vampifan’s World of the Undead, very much a gamer’s personal blog packed with great articles, photos, figure reviews and a handy pile of links collected together by Bryan Scott. There’s no shortage of wordage here, revealing not only enthusiasm but also a communicative and sharing nature. This along with photos aplenty is what makes an outstanding blog as I see it.

Now the astute amongst you may have spotted which direction my new project will be taking, I’m going to do a small Zombie project. This will be shared with the boy Slug, who has become rather sharp with his brush on his 1/76th scale figures. However we’re not overly impressed with the range available for 6mm, the best being Steel Crown Productions’ Edenite Zombie Hoarde above, with some folk also using civilians from Irregular Miniatures. Combined with a distinct lack of modern vehicles and props 6mm rather sadly doesn’t cut it for a zombie project, and I must admit a certain surprise at the lack of manufacturers having a bash at the genre, especially when it’s become quite massive in other gaming scales as well as in popular culture as a whole.

Instead we’ll be sneaking down the road to the stone ring of the 28mm heathens and using miniatures like those produced by the terminally brilliant Studio Miniatures above. I did consider starting an alternative blog to cover this project but there’s little point and it’d just be a distraction from the game in hand.