Saturday 1 October 2016

It Begins...Zomtober 2016

It's that time of year again, and following my frankly abject performance in last year's Zomtober, I've decided to actually try and do it properly this year.

The idea is that during the month of October you paint something relating to zombie wargaming - zombie, survivor, terrain, etc. - each week and post it on your blog. Feel free to join in, proceedings are organised on Brummie's Wargaming Blog.

So to get things off to a quick start, I've done these chaps...


A zombie and a survivor seemed like an appropriate way to start the month, and they make for reasonable additions to the collection, and in fact make for a decent 'diorama'.


The zombie is a Studio Miniatures plastic zombie, and unlike the previous ones I've done, I went to the effort of chopping him off his chunky base, which now makes me want to do the same with the others I've done. The Studio zombies are, in my opinion, the best of the (male) plastic zombies currently available, although they are somewhat samey, and a whole box would get dull without starting to convert them. It was nice to remind myself of my zombie 'method' and I've added the detail of using a 'wet' paint (GW - Blood for the Blood God) for the blood, which although biologically inaccurate (the blood would surely have dried on a corpse that colour), looks good, and frankly realism isn't really on the agenda when painting zombies.


The mechanic (let's call him 'Mike') is from the Wargames Factory (now Warlord Games) Male Survivors sprue. Despite the options apparently available in this set, there is distinctly less flexibilit than you'd hope for in a plastic set. The heads are also a bit of a disappointment and lack detail, this is one of the better ones. Looking at the picture, I need to go back and re-highlight the flame on the Molotov cocktail. I'm not sure why he has that, as setting fire to a zombie simply means that you then have to kill a burning zombie, and when your armed with a crowbar, that makes the zombie more dangerous.

Mind you, I think the zombie is the least of his problems...


I'm hoping that Zomtober can get my painting mojo going again. These two are okay, but were really just a case of me scrabbling through my bits box to find something and doing a quick and dirty paint job in order to meet the first deadline. I've really gone off painting plastic models as I find the detail really lacking and I'm hoping to pick up a few interesting metal survivor models at the Derby wargames show tomorrow.

Tune in next week to see how I got one.

14 comments:

  1. Awesome work and great start to Zomtober!

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    1. Thank you sir. And they were painted in October too... :P

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  2. That's a great start!
    The giant in the background also looks very fearsome ;-).

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    1. To 28mm miniatures...she's terrifying! :)

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  3. Although I like the boxed sets you're right they aren't that flexible, that said for the price they were when I got them, it was worth it!

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    1. They are great value, I just feel that Warlord have it right just putting a single sprue in as there's not much versatility. Their prices are eye opening though.

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  4. nice start. They look the business.

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  5. Excellent start doing both Zombie and Survivor. :)

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    1. Thank you. Not sure I'll be able to match that every week.

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  6. Great start there! I completely agree with your comment about the plastics - in an industry where the plastic moulding technology is getting so very good it seems a shame that modern zombies have fallen so very far behind.

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    1. I quite like the Mantic Zombies and Ghouls, which can be used well with other plastic sets to create modern zombies, but that can end up getting pricey, which defeats the point of using plastic.

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