The Zompocalypse Will Be Televised.

Posted on 03/11/2010 by sho3box

ZTV News Team

These two figures come from the limited edition Frothers sculpting competition winners from last year.  As far as I know they havent been made available anywhere else since, but I could be wrong.  Its a pity if they havent as they are really very nice sculpts.

I have seen pairs of reporters in 28mm a couple of times before, once from EM4 and once from Copplestone Castings.  While those figures are also great its the body armour on this pair that makes them stand out a little.  Despite the inherent daftness of body armour that fashionably exposes the wearers midriff, the body armour and reporting-from-a-warzone look is very appropriate for a zompocalypse game.

Some real life press in body armour have “PRESS” written across their gear.  I didnt have the patience to paint that on to the figures so I settled for five white lines on each of their backs.  From the distance that the figures are viewed from on the table it really is much of a muchness anyway.

Reporting live from the hot zone.

The paint job on these turned out ok (apart from the fact that I forgot to finish the face of the female figures watch before I took the photos).

To be honest painting the pair was a chore for a few reasons unconnected to the figures themselves.  Between daylight bulbs on my painting lamp blowing at inconvenient times, spilling the entire pot of one of the paints that I was using all over my painting area and finally dropping and breaking the cameraman on the floor when the painting was nearly finished, for a few weeks it looked like these figures were destined to remain unfinished forever.  As such I am happy that they got to this stage at all really.

I plan to use the News Team as special objective pieces in games of (Sho.R.T.) AR:SE.  They could also feature in other games in a variety of usually scenario specific roles.

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Penultimate Vanity Project #1: Modern Zompocalyptic Me

Posted on 27/10/2010 by sho3box

The inaugural Penultimate Vanity Project offering is modern era, zompocalypse survivor Paul.

Modern Survivor Me

I decided to start this series with the model that most closely represents what I actually look like.  All further PVP entries (no matter how esoteric) can therefore be measured against this one.

The figure is Baker from Hasslefrees Adventurers range.

I bought the figure specifically to paint up as a modern version of myself for gaming with.  Despite all of my recent talk about using certain heads, cats, glasses and the like to create a recognisable “branding” of my self-portrait figures, I didn’t do anything like that this time.  I considered adding glasses to the model but didn’t for two reasons: the hood made it awkward and the miniature is so beautifully sculpted (as one would expect from Hasslefree) that I didn’t want to cover up the detail with some crude conversion work.

What I did do was paint the clothes to match some things that I wear in real life.  The Sho3box Zompocalyptic Fall Collection consists of:

  • Black hoodie with white piping  – Dunnes Stores – €9
  • Brown/Olive Drab jacket – Dunnes Stores – €38
  • Green Incredible Hulk t-shirt with Lou Ferrigno detail – Unknown Online Retailer $25USD inc shipping
  • Blue jeans – Penneys – €15
  • Black and Yellow Gola Trainers – Schuh.ie – €25 (sale price)

The miniature is sculpted wearing boots rather than trainers.  I don’t tend to wear boots very often so I decided to paint them up like a pair of my trainers anyway.  For the delectation of all of you fashionistas out there the trainers and the t-shirt are shown below.

Trainers

28mm Trainers

Hulk T-Shirt

 

I got a bit lazier than usual when highlighting the jacket, as is quite visible in the shot below.  As the viewers eye tends to be drawn to the face and bright green shirt I don’t think that it matters that much really.

Why am I only wearing one glove?

Although the real me is unlikely to behave in a terribly pro-active fashion in the event of the cannibalistic dead walking the Earth, I figured that some artistic licence was required to make a gaming piece that would be fun to use.  Although obtaining a muzzle suppressed machine pistol in rural Ireland is difficult at the best of times, I nonetheless decided to unrealistically arm the miniature with the supplied ranged weapon rather than the crowbar (also supplied) as it would be more fun to game with.  Miniature realism is a consideration, but I am not going to let it get in the way of my fun.  For the record, I don’t own a set of knuckledusters either.

I like the way that the face came out.  It looks close enough to my face to be acceptable, although as discussed in my project introduction post, getting a 28mm replica of any specific persons face is a tall order.  The painting on the face came out quite crisp and the eyes didn’t end up too crossed, which is always a bonus.

Painting this miniature brought a few things to my attention:

  • When fully dressed I look like a hundred dollars.  Not quite “Derelicte“, but far from haute couture.  A dedicated follower of fashion?  Not so much.
  • The photo is grainy.  I really must up my miniature photo taking game one of these days.
  • Putting photos of my clothes up on my gaming miniatures blog is absurd, but strangely amusing to me.  I may do it with some other PVP entries as appropriate.  Depending on feedback of course.
  • By painting a somewhat recognisable wardrobe on a 28mm figure it is possible to get recognition factor.  When I showed this figure to gaming colleagues they “got” it. I don’t think that if they had seen the figure on the table that they would have immediately known that it was supposed to be me, but when given the figure and asked “This is supposed to be a model of me.  What do you think?” they reacted positively.  This is encouraging for future, more ludicrous Penultimate Vanity Projects in waiting.  As some of the themes used for these figures are repeated I hope that a visual shorthand will develop that will make the PVP miniatures more recognisable to the observer.

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Penultimate Vanity Project Starts

Posted on 20/10/2010 by sho3box

I have started another ongoing miniatures project that spans most of my other miniatures projects.

More info here.

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Deadlines: Hostile Corporate Takeover of the Living Dead Pt 2

Posted on 22/09/2010 by sho3box

This report follows on from last Wednesdays post, visible here.

———————————————-

In advance of the Regenerator the zombies lurched forward, wounding Anderson and Symes with their filthy clawing hands.  With the hissing Regenerator twitching forward on its palsied limbs things are looking bleak for Sigma Squad.

The Regenerator moved suddenly and with a spasm spikes erupted from its body, eviscerating Jerabeck.  With cold efficiency Anderson riddled the body of the Regenerator with rounds from her MP5 killing one of the Regenerators parasites, while weaving between the zombies all around her.

With skills honed by years of training Symes broke right, in the opposite direction to Anderson while putting three rounds into the nearby butane cylinder.  The cylinder burst sending zombie and Regenerator offal flying in all directions.  “Hasta la muerte” she uttered pithily as chunks of bloody, rotten flesh rain down around her.

(When setting up the table for the game some cinematically minded player decided that the best place for a butane cylinder was next to a Spawn Point, and he was probably right.  On this occasion it likely kept the wounded remnants of Sigma Squad in the game).

On the street between the Cinema and the rear of the Police station, USS Squad Gamma crossed paths with USFU Squad Sigma, the first living things that they had encountered since deployment.  Under strict orders to keep their noses out of each others highly sensitive business, a curt nod between fully masked sergeants was the sum of their exchange.  Gamma proceeded North while Sgt White went South.  Squad Epsilons  Ingram climbed the extendable ladder to the roof of the Police station to give covering fire over the vehicle holding the vault keycard.

Squad Gamma proceeded towards the milling throng of confused corpses that was trying to locate its last target, Squad Epsilon.

As Epsilon Sgt White rounds the South side of the police station, Ingram gives cover from the rooftop by detonating a fuel barrel, turning a handful of zeds into sub-human torches.  This cleared the way for Sgt White to get the vault keycard in the blue Porche.

Kaplan pauses from the rhythmic headshots and dismemberments to reload, and is caught unexpectedly.  Although he dies quickly from arterial blood loss, Gamma has no time to grieve as the Squad struggles to keep the mounting horde at bay.

Eerie wailing is heard as a Witch shows up near squad Epsilons keycard objective location.  Luckily, the Witch is inclined to keep itself to itself.  As it spawns a distance away from the main routes travelled by the forces, it remains undisturbed for now.

Squad Gamma, rattled by the loss of Kaplan get some payback on the large mob that has congealed near their objective, the Umbrella Corp local HQ.  After some unnecessary risks, some touch and go hand to hand where they were kept alive only by their kevlar, they get their heads back in the game…

…and tactically withdraw around the rear of their target building.

Meanwhile the wounded Sgt Anderson has procured the incriminating documents.  Now Symes (at the front of the fire truck) has the unenviable task of drawing the zombies away from the Sarge.

At this point the unmistakable howl of a Hunter is heard not far from the Police Station and the Umbrella building…

… and the pressure builds as a Licker shows up even closer to both buildings than the Hunter, next to the still crying Witch.

That doesnt bother Anderson and Symes of Sigma Squad. After reaching the chopper Anderson covers Symes sprint from where she had been heroically drawing the cannibal corpses away from the access point.

With a whine the helicopter begins to lift off, which is enough to agitate the Witch into action.  It also satisfies Sigma Squads mission objective.

Meanwhile Squad Gamma has procured Dr Braga and the vital information that he has.  The hordes are getting nearer however and the extraction chopper has to execute some fancy manoeuvring to get close enough for them to board (the Hunter can be seen approaching on the right, next to the game card).

At this point disaster struck.  Pvt Ocampo had been delayed while punching a couple of zeds tickets at ground level, where she has already seen the approach of the Hunter and Licker plus the large encroaching horde. “Get out of here!” she cried, “Don’t wait for me!”

As the chopper delayed the vital extra seconds for Pvt Rain Ocampo to get up the ladder, the brain dead hordes struggled out of the stairwell onto the roof, dragging the pilot and Pvt Symes of Squad Sigma from the vehicle.

The helicopter tilts, rotors spinning in slow motion, Michael Bay sty-lee.  Across the slow motion image of the chopper crashing into the roof the Hunter leaps screaming onto Pvt Symes, who is subsequently torn apart  while his limbs are used to beat the pilot to a mushy pulp.

The only survivor of Squads Sigma and Gamma is Rain Ocampo, and she is surrounded by zombies on a rooftop with her back to a flaming helicopter wreck.

Sgt White, the lone survivor of squad Epsilon has fought his way through the hordes to his objective, despite losing two good men en route, the last of them only moments ago.  Shoving the final zombies in his path aside he uses the key card to enter the bank and to lock himself into the vault.  There he must locate “the package” in the pitch dark before being extracted.  The vault lights dim and the power cut out.  An inhuman voice screams in the room that Sgt White is locked into behind inches of steel.

Credits roll.

———————————————-

I was very pleased with how the game worked out.  The revised elements of the system functioned better than I could have hoped.  While a handful of minor issues were quickly recorded during the game for inclusion in future drafts the game trundled along quickly and cinematically.  Importantly the other players were able to work out the rules and mechanics of the game from the cards and rules document without the author (me) having to translate.  I have hopes that this system will regularly get played at Sho3box Castle.  Which will help me to justify my compulsion to paint even more zombies.

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Sin Eaters Raptors: Squad Boyle

Posted on 18/08/2010 by sho3box

Sergeant Boyle and Melta Gunner

Squad Boyle was a pretty late addition to my Sin Eaters army.  They nonetheless got used in a tournament or two as well as in a number of casual games.

Jump Packs

My income levels at the time were pretty low (a perennial condition at sho3box towers Im afraid) and so I used a few components that up until that point I had been avoiding, in the interests of keeping things cheap.

Sergeant Boyles Head

Most notably in that regard was the use of the quite goofy zombie head with the beard and the tongue hanging out from the GW zombie sprue.  For the earlier squads I had avoided that head as I regarded it as a bit too wacky for my purposes.  Finances were low and I had a number of those heads sitting around so I decided to use one along with the new-at-the-time Space Wolf heads (and a Khorne head).

Bolt Pistol & Chain Axe, Plasma Pistol & Bolt Pistol

At that late stage of painting an army (roughly about 80 models or so into the project I would say) painting techniques tend to have evolved, usually in the interests of expediency.  In addition to that slighly more oddball units and concepts start to crop up, usually in my case in an effort to keep interest up.  Hence the heavily armed unit of jet pack-ing zombie space soldiers.

Plasma Pistol & Chainsword, Bolt Pistol & Chainsword

There has been some crazy talk about playing some small games of 3rd ed 40K amongst SOS and MT recently.  If my resolve breaks and I engage in some of those shenanigans it will likely involve games that include the more elite and oddball units like Squad Boyle.

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Sin Eater Plague Marines: Squad Klaus

Posted on 11/08/2010 by sho3box

Sgt Klaus (left) and Plague Marine

Squad Klaus was the first unit that I painted for my Sin Eaters, waaay back in 1999.  As the Sin Eaters was going to be an exclusively Nurgle Chaos Marine force I decided to start with two ten man Plague Marine units, the first of which was Squad Klaus.

Plague Marines

Squad Klaus is made up of plague marines with bolters.  Half of the miniatures are the old plastic plague marine three piece plastics and the other five are old metal plague marines, including the original, very first ever plague marine model, Klaus himself.

Corrupted Defenders of Humanity

The all plastic plague marines are a lot cruder that the stuff that GW has made since.  In the interests of keeping costs down I squeezed them in alongside the nicer metal figures.

Zombie Soldiers

Like Squad Damien, I painted these guys a certain way.  As time went on and I painted more and more Sin Eaters the techniques evolved a bit.  The figures still look like they are part of the same uniformed force, but the paint application techniques changed.  Compare the white armoured areas on the marines in Squad Nemesis with these guys and you should be able to see the difference.

Plague Marine and Plague Marine Plasma Gunner

Squad Klaus hasnt had as much time on the tabletop as I would like, mostly because while carrying a bolter may be iconic in terms of the 40k-verse, in terms of gameplay it doesnt cut it (or it didnt when I used to play.  I dont know what its like now really).

I hope to remedy this with some skirmish games that feature Klaus and co at some point over the next year or two.

Squad Klaus Combat Squad 1...

...and the plastic Combat Squad 2.

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Iacon Eldar: Striking Scorpion Squad Seth

Posted on 21/07/2010 by sho3box

Striking Scorpion Exarch Seth

Squad Seth was painted up in 2002 along with most of the rest of my Iacon Eldar.  The concept was vaguely Egyptian themed, for a few different reasons.  I am not a Stargate fan but I do like the look of some of the elements.  Nonetheless, Stargate wasnt really an influence.

Mostly the colours chosen have Egyptian relevance.  Gold is the colour of the flesh of the Egyptian gods.  Lapis lazuli/faience (the turquoise/blue) is a common feature of Egyptian decoration, as is red.

Each squad is marked with a unique glyph.  While I used hieroglyphs as reference when coming up with these, they are not really very Egyptian in look.  Thats fine really though as while I like using that imagery as a reference, that is all it is supposed to be: a reference.  These guys are supposed to be spacemen after all.

Some of the glyphs worked out better than others.  Painting bright red detail on black like that was time consuming.

Biting Blade and Shuriken Pistol

Another element of the Iacon force was that I used a lot of Dark Eldar parts in with the regular Craftworld bits.  While this was justified conceptually it was mainly just because I wanted to put together some stuff that wasnt directly off-the-peg.  Additionally the variety helped to keep me interested while painting.

Striking Scorpions

Part of the concept was to make the Aspect Warriors bare headed.  As the helmets are an intrinsic part of the Aspect Warrior concept, using different heads was going to make the Iacon Aspect Warriors unique immediately.  It was a lot of work chopping off all of those heads and replacing them with others, something that I am not going to be in a hurry to do again.

Rear shot showing armour banding.

The concept of these Eldar walking the line between light and dark which is pursued a little via the bare headed Aspects, was pushed a little further with the Exarch.  The Dark Eldar Incubi are essentially a “dark aspect”.  This origins of the dark aspect come from the only Eldar Phoenix Lord to turn to the dark side: Ahra, Father of Scorpions, the Fallen Phoenix.  Incubi have tall helms with a blaster mounted on the top that functions similarly to the Striking Scorpion Mandiblasters, so I went with a similar look on the Exarchs helmet.

Dark Aspect Warriors

Looking back at these guys I quite like how they turned out.  Painting the gold areas was a huge chore however.  Even if I had the patience to go to all of that trouble converting those figures again I would approach the painting of the gold areas very, very differently and probably more effectively now.  I still think that the gold areas mostly look good, but they dont really reflect the large amount of grief that they caused me.

Chainsword and Shuriken Pistol

Despite all of the hassle that I had with these guys I do get a kick out of taking a look at them again some years later.  I think that they are a cool looking unit and there is something about the slightly unusual colour scheme that I like.

Squad Seth gets ready for ritualised bloodshed.

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Sin Eaters Chaos Marines: Squad Damien

Posted on 07/07/2010 by sho3box

Sgt Damien (right) and two Chaos Marines

Squad Damien is the third squad that I painted for my WH40k Chaos Space Marine force back in 1999.  The figures used are vintage Chaos Renegades made by GW in the 1980s.

Chaos Renegades

I needed a unit to represent possessed space marines.  I had some ideas about converting up my own figures (which came to fruition a year or two later with Squad Nemesis) but in the interim I thought that I would get some fun out of painting up these classic figures.

Nurgle Twins

Squad Damien took the field as possessed marines more often than not.  The heavily mutated style was satisfyingly more extreme than most of the other marines that I used for my force, so they fit the role of possessed admirably.

Degenerate Chaos Space Marines

Like anything that I painted a long time ago (over a decade in this case) there are lots of things that I would do differently if I painted these figures again now.  I still like these guys though: they were fun figures to paint, they are very characterful and amusing looking and I also played a lot of games with them over the years.  Satisfying.

Squad Damien takes to the field.

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Alien Queen Basing

Posted on 23/06/2010 by sho3box

Uncharacteristically good weather plus an even more uncharacteristic busy social life has meant that my hobby time has been curtailed of late.  As a result todays post is a bit half-assed.  It does show that at least I am making some progress with my Aliens re-theme of Space Hulk.

Alien Queen Basing

Mikko at Dawn of the Lead has been making a lot more progress on his identical project here.  His latest addition of a very nice looking Alien Queen that came from a gashapon toy is in need of a base.  As I recently made a basic but functional base for getting my large Horrorclix Queen on the Space Hulk board, I decided to put up a quick photo.

Grid Markings

After removing the model from its clix base I stuck some styrene with a treadplate pattern on it to a 60mm plywood base.  I then added some styrene strips in a sort of tic-tac-toe pattern that matches the size of the squares in a game of Space Hulk.

While obviously using such a large figure will make some parts of the game feel a little cramped, the grid marked on the base should make it apparent where the Queen is standing in rules terms.  Adjacent figures will have to stand on small parts of the queens base but I dont foresee that being a big problem.

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Zombie Spawn Points

Posted on 16/06/2010 by sho3box

These two are numbers seven and eight of the eight strong zombie spawn points project.  The rest of the zombie spawn points were posted as Zombies of the Week if you fancy a more in-depth look at any of them.

The remaining two dont really qualify under that tag so I have put them here instead.

A Cerberus marks its territory against barrels of unholy chemical concoctions using cold, dead, bloody dog piss.

This one is similar to many that have gone before, except that this one has a zombie dog instead of a zombie human.  Allowing animals to become zombies opens up a whole can-o-worms, but I am ok with it being cross contagious with a limited number of species.  Kinda like swine or bird flu I suppose. Dog-flu that re-animates corpses I suppose.

Predatory Sewer Dwelling Mutant

Tentacles dont tend to suggest zombies to most people.  The figure is designed more as a Cthulhu thing really I suspect.  Nonetheless I was happy to use a manhole with tentacles coming out of it as a zombie spawn point.  I suppose that it goes back to my zombie grounding in the Resident Evil franchise, where mutant animals…

[comic store guy mode ]

…and not necessarily zombie animals.  There is a difference of sorts…

[ /comic store guy mode… well… reduced to normal levels at least ]

…are reasonably common due to reasons related to the zombie outbreak.

Yesterdays News

The newspaper is an image that I found online a few years ago and held on to.  I printed out a sheet of tiny papers back then but always found them just a little too big to fit on most 28mm figure bases.  I am pleased with how they look on the spawn base above though.

Lastly, here is a silly, tiny shot of all of the spawn points together, along with some of the other zed related stuff that I have painted up recently, just for fun.

Its curtains for Jill Valentine.

The spawn points were a satisfying project: the sort of thing that I regularly talk about, but dont always get around to completing.

Not this time 🙂


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