Zomtober: The Long Halloween

Following the success of my last zombie related posted, I'll continue the theme with some prisoners...you know, like in the Walking Dead Season 3...that's totally zombie related!

Okay, okay...I've been painting Batman stuff instead of zombies. These two are the creatively named Prisoners 3 and 4 from the second pack of Blackgate Prisoners. They are versatile fellows, able to work for everybody except Batman, Green Arrow, the Police and limited gangs like the Watchmen and Court of Owls. As they're fairly lost cost in terms of reputation, they are good for filling gaps or bringing a particular skill to the gang, for example, Prisoner 3's Axe brings low cost blood damage which is good for finishing off the injured, and Prisoner 4 has the Bodyguard trait enabling him to literally take a hit or two on behalf of more important models.

I've painted these two in order to be ready for my next Batman event, which it this weekend. It's themed around the seminal Long Halloween story and the focus is apparently more on narrative than tournament play. What's more, it's an escalation event, with the first game being at 200 rep, the second at 250 and the final two being at 300 rep. To help with gang construction, you're also not limited to keeping the same models in every crew.

I've decided to take Poison Ivy to this event for a number of reasons. Firstly, it's my most recently completed crew and I want to give it a run out, secondly I want to run an Ivy crew with Mr Freeze in tow as an homage to the critically acclaimed 'Batman & Robin' in a change to the usual Gotham Sirens theme that may Ivy players run with. Finally, given the event rules and the narrative focus, I felt that it was an interesting idea to switch Ivys during the event as she 'evolves'.

I'm really looking forward to this event as it is being hosted by the same people who ran the UK leg of he Worldwide tournament. Many of the spectacular tables that were on display there belong to them and given the organisation of the actual day, I'd imagine that the day will be really smooth. Most importantly though, is the narrative element. That's the area of the Batman game that I feel sometimes gets overlooked, and something I would like to see much more of.

Given that I've admitted that the Prisoners really aren't for zombie gaming, I felt it necessary to get at least one zombie done, and here he is...

Another Studio Z-Clips model. Not very exciting, but it adds to the horde.

In other zombie news, we're playing Last Night on Earth as part of our traditional Halloween Long Weekend gaming. As yet, the survivors have never survived in any game we've played of it, so we'll see how it goes.

Expect an event report next week.

Zomtober: Frozen to Death

My Zomtober updates are getting later due to life being a bit busy at the moment. Anyway, here I am with my next two hard-bitten survivors of a medieval/renaissance zombie apocalypse...

What?

Oh, all right...it's Elsa and Anna from Frozen that I've painted for my daughter's birthday. However, I have a range of reasons that legitimise their inclusion in Zomtober:

1. The original Anna model has flames issuing from its hand, and the hand I've replaced it with comes from the Wargames Factory Zombie Vixens sprues - she's part zombie!
2. In the film, she comes back from the dead, and is, therefore, a zombie!
3. Given that she's a zombie, Elsa, who survives an encounter with her is clearly a zombie survivor!
4. During the film, Elsa's magic snow and ice threatens to end life in Arendell...create an apocalypse , if you will. An icy apocalypse + Anna the zombie = Zombie Apocalypse!

As you can see, I've painted a zombie and a survivor from a zombie apocalypse movie using (partially) zombie miniatures. How appropriate for Zomtober is that?

The models are from North Star miniatures and are really nice, clean sculpts that paint up really quickly. Elsa, the Snow Queen was extremely straightforward to paint and, given the debacle of face painting I had on my last model, I'm really happy with how her face has come out. It's interesting that with North Star not basing these models on Disney characters in any way whatsoever, the Disney-like proportions of the eyes give her an almost Elven appearance. It's not the worst crime that Disney commit against the female form, but painting this has served to highlight the point.

Anna is a little more ropey around the face, but still an improvement on last week. She's been done with block colours and washes as I wanted to keep things simple due to the fact that my daughter is six and I suspect that I may be re-touching these miniatures at some point to deal with chipped paint.

I've really been struggling with Zomtober this year, but hopefully there'll be an equally appropriate entry before the end of the month.

Zomtober: Who's that girl?

And so I continue to flagrantly ignore the rules of Zomtober by posting midweek, I present my latest offering.

This model is from Heresy miniatures and is destined to be used as Stephanie, the main character in my solo 7ombieTV campaign. She's currently unarmed, but those nicely sculpted open hands will be easy to pop a range of temporary weapons into.

The picture has highlighted that her face is a bit off - she looks like she's been punched. At the moment I'm not getting a lot of time for painting and late nights combined with poor lighting have led to an odd looking face that I'll need to revisit.

As the model is one of Heresy's definitely-not-related-to-Doctor-Who-in-any-way range, I decided to paint her up fairly similar to Amy Pond (Karen Gillan). This gives me the option of branching into some Doctor Who gaming at a later date. I have some Daleks from the front of a magazine somewhere.

I think I'm going to be dividing on Stephanie's rag-tag band of survivors for the rest of the month so I can continue my solo campaign.

Happy Zomtober!

It's that time of year again when Wargames bloggers around the world push their painting queue to one side to make way for the shambling dead.

I won't go through the rules again, regular readers know the score and it roughly boils down to, "I'm painting zombies this month and so are lots of other people!"

Other Zomtober bloggers might also suggest that I'm a little late with my first shambles. However, I'd like to point out that:

a) this is still technically the first week of Zomtober,

b) I was busy this week and have only just found time to paint,

c) and d)

So, without further ado, here's my first batch shuffling off the production line:

These are some Studio Miniatures Z-Clips plastic zombies I won in a competition run by Lord Siwoc (that's his real name...I'm pretty sure...) of the excellent Brains and Guts blog (see the sidebar).

The Z-Clips zombies are significantly better that the plastic male zombies from Wargames Factory I've done before. However, despite being better sculpts they are somewhat 'samey', with only for not-so-different bodies with interchangeable heads and legs, and with the exception of the guy with his face ripped off, the models are notably lacking the injuries by which they were transformed into zombies.

It's for this reason, and the chunky bases they're moulded with, that I'm glad I don't have a full box of 60 to get through. With only a couple more to go they won't make my horde too repetitive.

In other news, I didn't make any headway on my Dropzone Commander stuff and so no joker for me, but I have managed to incinerate my last remaining joker by buying a few Bolt Action vehicles at the Derby Wargames show, along with a petrol station from Ainsty Castings, which might make it into this month's festivities.

Next up is likely to be a survivor for my solo campaign, which might also get added to during Zomtober.

TTFN