Saturday 6 October 2018

Zomtober: Six of the Nine

It’s that time of year again when I and several other inhabitants of the blogosphere partake in a bit of zombie themed painting and collective motivation to shift stuff out out of our painting queues.

So here’s my first offering for Zomtober:


What do you mean they’re not zombies?

Let me refer to Aragorn, son of Arathorn, a.k.a. Strider, King Elessar the Elfstone of The reunited kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor - who, I think we can agree, knows more about this than either of us - “They are neither living nor dead.”

Do you know what that means? They’re undead. What else is undead? Zombies! Exactly!

Okay, they’re not ‘exactly’ zombies, but they’re in the same ballpark, and frankly, I’m in the middle of a Lord of the Rings fixation at the moment, so it’s as zombie-like as you’re going to get from me this week.

They’ll do. Especially when you consider some of the crap I’ve tried to explain as zombie related over the past few years - Anna and Elsa from Frozen, I’m looking at you...

I’ve had these six Nazgûl for a long time. They were amongst the first Lord of the Rings miniatures I bought, and when I sold off most of my collection, they got drafted into my WFB Vampire Counts army as wraiths (or ‘Banshee delivery system’).

In more recent times they’ve taken the field as a remarkably bent unit in Kings of War, where their resistance to damage and ability to hop over units and charge their rear in the same turn (with the aid of a spell) felt a little cheaty...I still did it though!

Therefore, they are the LotR miniatures that have seen most action for me and as such had become a bit chipped and needed a repaint (and a rebase).

Fortunately, Nazgûl are probably the easiest models in the world to paint, and so the process took me no time at all.

The only one of them that needed any extra detail was the Witch King of Angmar (as he appears on Weathertop). However, this was only a bit of gold on his sword and Morgul Blade to pick him out.

This does technically mean that in addition to my Fellowship of the Ring, Rohan and Isengard armies, I’ve now started a fourth force. In fact it could technically be three more forces as the Nazgûl appear in this form in the Mordor, Barad-Dur and Angmar armies.

I think I might have an illness.

The eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that I have two of the same sculpt of Ringwraiths. I don’t know why.

If I get to use all of them together, I will need a way of distinguishing them as they will have separate profiles that need tracking. I’m going to see if I can find an armoured hand holding a knife to replace the left hand of one of them.

I also want to track down another three to complete the set, as it were. I’d also like to get mounted versions and a couple of Fell Beasts in time so I have options.

So that’s my Zomtober entry for this month. If you’d like to take part here are...

The Rules

The Zomtober rules are simple.

To take part you just need to paint or finish painting one Zombie or Survivor (or more!) each week, in any scale you like, posting it to your blog by that week's Sunday (we use Sunday's as the end of each Zomtober week). These can be minis you started and abandoned, or a brand new project - that is up to you!

What that means posting one or more newly painted/finally finished Zombie or Survivor minis each week on or before the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th of October 2018.

To sign up, head over to this post - https://eclecticgentlemantabletopgamer.blogspot.com/2018/10/zomtober-2018-zomtober-viii.html?m=1 - and post in the comments section.

More Lord of the Rings and proper zombie stuff to come...

17 comments:

  1. Great idea, Kieron, and wonderful paint-jobs. Marvellous post :-)

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    1. Cheers. They genuinely are the simplest things I’ve ever painted.

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  2. Very nice start, they're Zom's as far a I can see!

    Cheers Roger.

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  3. Great stuff Kieron! Are we going to see any Nazgul on horseback? *wink wink, nudge nudge*

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    1. Thanks. Unfortunately no Black Riders in the short term. I do want some, but I don’t have any at the moment, and they’re a bit pricey on eBay.

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  4. A bit cheeky to describe these as zombies, but then all zombie lore is recently made up anyway (did you know that last week was the 50th anniversary of the first screening of "Night of the Living Dead", which effectively started zombie culture?). Well done for getting something painted anyway :-) .

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    1. I know, I know. It was more about what I could get done, as I've had some other stuff to work on this week which will pop up later. :)

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  5. I am also a big fan of LOTR, & apart from priming some of the original Fellowship of the Ring core box miniatures, haven't painted a one....so sad! However Welcome to Zomtober Kieron!

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    1. The metal miniatures are actually really nice. The plastics...less so...

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  6. Nice work 'Mr Loophole'! They look excellent mate. :)

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    1. Proper zombies next week. Promise...

      *hopes Leon doesn’t notice crossed fingers@

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  7. Very gloomy looking, great work!

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    1. Thanks. The lighting on that day helped.

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  8. Excellent start to the month Kieron, and all the best in tracking down another three :-)

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