PB and MT visited a few weeks back for a gaming weekend. In addition to the boardgames that we had planned we also wanted to get a game or two of the Judge Dredd Miniatures Game and In the Emperors Name played.
We set up the post apocalyptic shanty town of Standard Falls as shown above. Continue reading
Filed under: Games in Progress | Tagged: 2000AD, 2011, Judge Dredd, Judge Dredd Miniatures Game, Post Apocalyptic, Sci-fi, Standard Falls, Zombie | 6 Comments »
The final batch of patient zeds, this time painted in that familiar greenish scrubs colour.
There were quite a few of these guys in this batch and I was getting sick of painting zombies (it does happen to me from time to time). But I persevered. I also left this gown colour to last as I thought that it would be the most evocative and therefore satisfying to finish. That in turn would help to spur me on through the last few figures.
It has been a while since I painted a batch of figures as large as the patient zeds. I am not in a hurry to do it again. While the end product is very pleasing to me as I like how they came out quite a bit, some of it was a slog. So much so in places that it almost burned me out a bit. So its smaller batches from here on.
The green came out quite well in my opinion: it looks pretty much exactly as I think it should. The green guys and the blue guys worked the best I think, but the others look fine too.
Here is a shot of the whole lot of them, with Patient Zero from early 2010 plonked in too. His gown doesnt look as nice as the gowns on these guys (in some ways his colours were a test run for these figures). They look good as a group I think.
The end of a trying but ultimately satisfying sub project. Comments and criticisms all invited 🙂
Filed under: Miniatures | Tagged: 2011, Video Game, Zombie | 8 Comments »
A post regarding the authors penultimate batch of patient zombies, where a twentieth century attitude to the wearing of pink garments by men is revealed.
Although I am sure that many real life male patients are forced to wear pink/peach arse-exposing gowns whilst in hospital, I wasnt going to subject any of my male hospital zombies to that. They have been through enough already.
So as the Mantic zombie and ghoul sprues dont feature any double X chromosome corpses, I mainly used Studio ladies in this lot. I also added a disproportionate number of gender-neutral-from-the-waist-down (?) Mantic legs with bloody spinal cords, just to increase the amount of figures in this pink batch.
After painting these figures I played the Left 4 Dead “No Mercy” hospital based campaign on Xbox 360. Then I played the House of the Dead: Overkill “Ballistic Trauma” hospital level on Wii before I went on to the final batch of patients. Im all about the research.
Filed under: Miniatures | Tagged: 2011, Horror, L4D, Modern, Video Game, Zombie | 6 Comments »
Back in mid December I put up a post showing my first batch of Studio zombies and Mantic ghouls and zombies painted to look like modern hospital patients. They went down well and encouraged me to finish the remaining twenty or so over the following period. I finished the lot at some point in February.
The first of the remaining three batches is zombies in white. As the zombie flesh that I have been painting is pretty monochrome, I felt that the gowns were blending into the flesh a little. To remedy this I added a thin wash of old GW Purple Glaze over the flesh tones on this batch.
Its pretty subtle, at least as far my painting goes anyway. I like strong contrasts that are visible at the distance from the viewer to the game table, rather than beautifully executed blending that is invisible at a distance. Still, the batch didnt turn out looking like Barney or anything, so it worked out fine.
I find painting white to be a chore and these guys were no exception. I think that it came together in the end though. There is a GW component used in the group shot above, which makes it the only non-Studio or Mantic component used in the entire “patient” project.
Filed under: Miniatures | Tagged: 2011, Horror, Modern, Zombie, Zombie of the Week | 4 Comments »
Randolph
Randolph the zombie reindeer,
Caught the virus from his clothes,
And if you ever saw him,
He would try and bite your throat,
He hated the other reindeer,
And so he ate all of their brains,
They never bet poor Randolph,
Would enter a state of prion induced cannibalistic living death that would result in their souls being drained.
100% Polyester
Randolf is my favourite figure from the Studio Miniatures “A Christmas Nightmare” pack. Like the majority of Studio Miniatures stuff, the figure is very nicely sculpted.
My painting worked out well here I think, as I was concerned that Randolphs costume would look like the appropriate horrible, cheap and sweaty material rather than actual fur. Having spent a couple of hours in a Sylvester the Cat outfit many years ago, getting that part of the painting right was a priority. I can still remember the smell, and I wasnt even dead.
Happy Secular-mas.
Filed under: Miniatures | Tagged: 2010, Zombie, Zombie of the Week | 2 Comments »
Out Patients
I had two zombie miniature related problems. One issue was that the Mantic zombies and ghouls that I owned were going to be hard to make look like modern figures. The second problem was that I didnt have any figures that I had specifically designated for use as fast/rage zombies in games.
I decided to kill two birds with one stone by theming my fast zombies as hospital patients. That way the slightly odd toga like clothing could be painted to feasibly look like hospital gowns. Thematically, the idea that some sort of “cure” administered in a hospital could have backfired and had a negative effect that created a more hyperactive version of the infected works for me. You could call it the “running” out of patients maybe, but Id rather you didnt.
Having recently picked up the Studio Miniatures Big Zombie Deal I also decided to add the patients from Zombie Mob 5 who also fit nicely with my Patient Zero figure from last year. Hopefully the “proper” dead patients lend some authenticity to the Mantic stuff.
In keeping with how I am basing my zombies for gaming, fast zombies have a hex-base, while regular zombies have standard round bases and so on. Just in case anyone is wondering about why the bases vary.
As ever the figures are painted to a decent enough tabletop standard and definitely not as display pieces. This is the first batch. I have a few more batches coming up with similar skin tones but wearing different gowns and the like. There will be twenty eight or so when the sub-project is finished.
Filed under: Miniatures | Tagged: 2010, Horror, Modern, Zombie, Zombie of the Week | 12 Comments »
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 🙂
Filed under: Miniatures, Terrain | Tagged: 2010, AR:SE, Umbrella Corporation, Video Game, Zombie | 2 Comments »
Dr Javad
Dr Javads plan has succeeded, although he had not planned to martyr himself just yet. That part was an accident.
The weaponised zombified test subjects contained in units Z7 and Z8 are already entering the first stages of reanimation and will soon strike against the infidels like the holy weapon of God.
Biological Weapons Containment (compromised)
Dr Javad is one eighth of my recent project to make zombie spawn points for my games. As zombies show up during games they will be placed in contact with one or more of these spawn markers.
Each marker is a very small diorama or collection of bits and pieces stuck to a 60mm base. Most of them are pretty similar in theme but I had a little more fun with a couple more. I think that this marker with Dr Javad is probably my favourite.
The concept is that the two blue boxes are some form of high-tech containment unit for the transport of zombies. These units are carried to their strategic destination by evil terrorist/corporate types. Subsequently the containment units are opened by some prearranged signal which can then release these disease vectors right in the heart of the infidels/testing areas.
The idea is mainly ripped off from Patient Zero, a cheesy book that I read recently (reviewed here on Dawn of the Lead). That book was in my opinion pretty trashy, although I enjoyed the non-fiction Zombie CSU (written by the same author and again reviewed here) significantly more. All the same, like a lot of hard-boiled pulp fiction, Patient Zero contained a lot of inspiration for gaming.
The story in Patient Zero is that nasty terrorist types have created the Sief al Din (Sword of the Faithful) virus and are planning to release it throughout the US. They used “big blue phone-booth-sized containers” to transport the zeds and that is what I tried to represent with the resin sci-fi crates from Fenris games.
Rather than just have a couple of the crates plonked on a base I decided to add a scientist to the base too. As everyone knows that when scientists try to play God that everything inevitably goes South, I used a Wargames Factory zombie that I got in a trade to represent the scientist in a zombified state.
I replaced the scientists hands with hands from a Mantic ghoul for a few reasons: the WF zeds hands are tiny and shit and the ghoul hands are gangly enough to be crudely bent into a position that they could hold the laptop that I made from plasticard scraps.
The laptop was added for fun and to show that the scientist is likely to have had something to do with the containment units, rather than simply shambling past them. The “hazardous” transfers plus the numbering and lettering Letraset help with the industrial scientific look I think.
Finally I painted a few of the recesses in the unit sides to look like status lights (Han Solo in carbonite anyone?). Again, as with all dealings with zombies where anyone thinks that they can control them, one of the status lights is in the red. Its only a matter of time…
Filed under: Miniatures, Terrain | Tagged: 2010, AR:SE, Zombie, Zombie of the Week | 8 Comments »
A few weeks ago a MT (a long time gaming buddy) and I decided to try out frequent LAF contributor AKULAs zombie apocalypse rules, AR:SE (available for free HERE).
The rules are simple and provide for automated movement for the zombies, like computer game “bots”. This appealed to the two of us because it meant that we could play semi-co-operatively if we wanted, which sums up the whole zombie apocalypse genre really.
Preamble
We decided that we would place as much non-ruined urban terrain as we could muster on a 6’ x 4’ table. We then added 80 or so zombies (ten of which were based in two “hordes”), which covered the table sufficiently to give us a run for our money. The amount of zombies placed was guesswork, as although we had previously read the rules (satisfyingly short at 2 xA4 pages), we didn’t really have a feel for how effective our heroes would be. I would rather play a game of a heroic defeat than an easy victory so we erred on the side of more zombies rather than less.
To this we added two Witches and a possibility of spawned zombies spawning as Tanks. The likely hood of Tanks showing up increased as the game went on. Although I have a number of zombie “characters” available, we didn’t want to bog down our first game with too many specials, so we left it at Witches and Tanks.
We also specified that Spawned zombies emerged from the zombie horde closest to any survivors (I have dedicated zombie spawn point markers in the pipeline, but they were not available for this game).
A couple of quick notes about the terrain: my modern stuff is pretty crude but functional. It was originally made under time constraints for use in Heroclix games, which is why the roofs are marked out with a grid. That’s what the ugly looking white tile spacers are (I really should get around to painting them black). Eventually I will get around to making some “proper” modern terrain, but as is often the way with these things, the stuff that I have is functional and so “proper” modern terrain never tends to get to the top of the to-do list. Still, although lacking aesthetically, they buildings are durable and functional, so I wont make any more excuses for them.
Deployment and Table Set-Up
We set up our forces on the South East corner of the table and placed the car park, replete with potential getaway vehicles at the North West corner. The Survivors were tasked with getting to a specific crashed vehicle in the middle of the battlefield to pick up the vital briefcase of scientists notes. From there they have to get to the car park where they can hotwire some of the functional vehicles there to make their escape.
L to R: "Silent" Yoshi, Botan, Suzi
MT chose to chart the exploits of some Yakuza survivors. L to R “Silent” Yoshi, Botan and Suzi.
L to R: Chris Redfield, Leon S. Kennedy, Ada Wong
In an unlikely alliance that could only brought on by impending, walking corpse filled Armageddon I chose to ally the Yakuza with the forces of the Racoon City Special Tactics and Rescue Service (STARS). L to R: Chris Redfield, Leon S Kennedy and industrial espionage agent Ada Wong.
The view from the South
A shot of the battlefield from the South. Note the car park in the top left. That’s where our heroes are headed for.
The view from the North
A shot of the battlefield from the North. Note the zombie horde in the centre, just below the overturned yellow car. Those guys occasionally move around and are lethal if they come into contact with survivors. Primarily in our game, they were a mobile spawn point.
If you squint, you might be able to see one of the Witches. It’s the figure with the square base at 9 o’clock to the overturned yellow car. Witches react to disturbances nearby by shrieking. This in turn causes shamblers within range of the sound to head toward the Witch. This is a bad thing.
Northerly view including the Car Park
Another shot from the North, this time showing a little of the car park objective.
Aerial view from the ZTV news chopper
An aerial shot, taken by the ZTV news chopper.
Gameplay
Heading East
The Survivors start by heading north via the Eastern table edge. The theory was that they should avoid the large concentration of slackjaws in the middle for as long as possible. The more noise that the Survivors make, the more active the living dead become.
Businesslike and professional rolling up of a flank
Leon brings up the rear while Botan beheads a walking corpse with his katana. Chris gives covering fire as they head to the junction where they will proceed West towards the car which contains the briefcase. So far so good. “This is a snap for a international woman of mystery such as myself” thinks Ada as the survivors make short work of any zombies in their path.
The first casualty
As she rounds the corner Ada is attacked by a corpse that has been drawn by the gunfire. In a surprising display of incompetence, Ada is caught flat footed, while the zed seems to be at the top of its game. Ada has her throat ripped out in a gurgling spray of blood. “NOOOO!” cries Leon. “I never expected our flirtatious will-they, wont-they relationship from opposite sides of the track to end like this!”.
“At least she is properly dead. She isn’t coming back from that”. Chris advises Leon using stilted, computer game-y dialogue. Chris then riddles the offending zed with lead.
Objective acquired
Botan is “in the zone” at this stage and advises a stealthy approach as he has heard the crying of a Witch up ahead. “What are supposed to use now? Harsh language?” says Leon in a predictably action movie quote style as he holsters his pistol. Silent Yoshi does not speak.
Botan ignores them both and chops up two more undead with ninja like stealth before he pins a crawler to the ground as he retrieves the crucial briefcase from the crashed car.
The Plan
At this point viewers at home were treated to some expert commentary about the situation from back at the ZTV station, complete with a play analysis. The circled vehicle is where the briefcase has been retrieved from and the green path is the direction that the survivors have chosen to take to get to the car park and getaway vehicle.
Turning Eastward again
Chris runs forward and clinically dispatches the Witch in their path before it can react. He then provides cover as the remaining survivors head past the limo and towards the cinema.
The "Horde" in the foreground starts moving...
A large zombie mob starts to stumble toward our heroes, forcing them to hurry away from it, perhaps a little rashly…
Zombies approach from all sides
Despite gunning down a number of zeds as they closed, Suzi and Yoshi are forced into hand to hand. Leon and Chris are unable to help as they keep the other closing ghouls at bay.
The death of Botan...
Botan bites off more than he can chew. While he makes good account of himself in terms of eviscerated corpses, he is eventually dragged down to his doom…
...and the birth of a Tank!
With a series of bloody, squelchy sounds the thing that was Botan convulses. With a roar, all of its hair falls out and tentacles sprout from its rapidly growing body. Witness the birth of a Tank.
(In game terms we had been using the AR:SE rules to determine if downed heroes would come back as zombies. Ada hadn’t but Botan had. We had also been incorporating a simple incrementing roll to determine when the next zombie to spawn would be a Tank. As luck would have it, this happened when Botan shuffled off, so he was the one that came back as a Tank. And all in front of a poster of the Governator. “I’ll be back” indeed. Hooray for narrative!”)
Decisive action required
The Survivors have a small chance to re-kill the Botan Tank if they can get to it while it is transforming. With that in mind the four remaining survivors attempt to circle the Tank and neutralise with extreme prejudice. Suzi has to riskily dodge away from her close combat aggressors to help out with the tank, but a well timed cartwheel reminiscent of Xiaoyu in Tekken 3 gets her where she is needed most.
Our heroes repeatedly plug the Tank and barely manage to re-dead it before it gets a chance to get up. “If its dead, we can kill it!” cheers Chris, confusingly.
Car park bound
Almost as if our heroes have overcome the main aggressor in the third act, the sun breaks through the clouds (or the camera flash was too close) giving the survivors the strength to run around the side of the cinema toward the car park and salvation. Chris cheerfully riddles a few zeds that get too close en route.
Bus stop
The survivors jump over the car park wall and line up beside a bus. Suzi, familiar with hotwiring her own school bus during the many Battle Royale school trips that she has been on suggests that she get the bus up and running. Leon whimpers self pityingly about Ada. Yoshi remains quiet. “Holy $h1t! Its Michael Jackson!” says Chris and heads for the roof of the bus.
Chamone in peace... again
“THAT’S for “Earth Song!” hollers Chris as he empties a clip into the former Prince of Pop turned cannibalistic reanimated corpse.
“Its too late to look at he man in the mirror now sucker!” says Chris in a failed attempt to deliver a pithy closing one liner. Zombie MJ’s head explodes in a shower of gore.
Clang!
The bus shudders to life and Suzi floors the pedal, heading straight through the gates with a clang.
Vehicular extermination
Suzi expertly guides the bus over four zombies as the survivors drive off into to sunset. Billie Jean plays to fade.
Conclusions
We had good fun with the scenario and rules. We had a couple of minor rules decisions to make a call on during the game, but as we are both grown ups with a lot of hours gaming time clocked over the years, they were decided upon quickly.
I plan to make cards for each of the survivor miniatures that I use as quick reference for the weapons and abilities that they have. Having played the game, I have more of a handle on how it works now and I will base the stats accordingly. I plan to bring a very, very simple points system (as in each character is rated as 1, 2, 3, 4) so that James Bond type characters are distinguishable from some survivor with a two by four.
Next time I will incorporate some Hunters and Jockeys into the mix, along with a different scenario.
Filed under: Games in Progress | Tagged: 2010, AR:SE, Horror, MT, Resident Evil, Sci-fi, Umbrella Corporation, Zombie | 4 Comments »
A few figures that I am quite fond of to start 2010.
Squad Nemesis was assembled and painted up for use as a Possessed unit in my Sin Eater Chaos Space Marine force back in 2000.
Squad Nemesis Possessed Marines
GW didn’t make possessed Chaos Space Marine figures at the time (although a lot of their original Chaos Renegade marines from the 80s were very suitable. I also painted up a unit of those guys for the Sin Eaters, of which there will be photos at a later date) although the Chaos Mutation sprue came out around then. Subsequently GW made specific metal possessed marines who looked a little like the Mordheim possessed if I remember correctly.
Anyway, I wasn’t that keen on the possessed figures that I had seen up to that point: they were usually predictably heavy on the tentacles and bat wings etc and low on interest factor (to me at least). With that in mind when I got around to making my own I tried to steer a little to the left of the usual fare. Unsurprisingly I used Resident Evil as an inspiration and starting point.
Bloated with Dark Energies. WooOOOoo.
I prefer “science” zombies to “magic” zombies and I have liked the Tyrant style super-zombies from Resident Evil since I first saw them. Therefore they were a big influence on what I wanted my Possessed to look like.
Although trying to avoid the idea of magic-y things in the context of an army that supposedly represents worshippers of Dark Gods who receive direct aid from their patrons might sound perverse, I did have a few reasons to do so. Mainly, the urge to have something slightly different from what I had seen already was one. This was also influenced by the background of the Chaos Space marines from that era.
Corrupted Beyond Recognition
Before then the Chaos Space Marines were regularly portrayed as mindless devotees to their own cults. A couple of things about this make them less interesting to me: firstly that I don’t like religion and in particular mindless people with a lot of “faith” and secondly the idea of Chaos Marines who are already completely under the thumb of their patron suggests weakness.
Part of the suggested background for the Chaos Marines at this time was that the different Legions were actually more in a marriage of convenience with their patrons and that the Marines therefore had their own agenda and goals. This interested me a lot more that another bunch of frothing jihad types.
Raaargh!
So Squad Nemesis was intended to be a group of (relatively) sane Chaos Marines who use pseudo-scientific means to either augment themselves with physical mutations on a temporary basis or use the pseudo-science to temporarily become a host for whatever daemonic energies were doing the rounds. So I went with a look that involved a lot of cables coming out of the marines backpacks into their bloated and deformed bodies: a little more science than magic. I think it worked and of the units in my Sin Eater force Squad Nemesis is one of my favourites.
The parts used were Ork arms, zombie heads and guitar strings. The guitar strings didn’t keep their shape as well as I hoped which meant that they had to be kinked into shape rather than curved. I would have rather that they were curved but I got over it.
Happy New Year and all that jazz!
Filed under: Miniatures | Tagged: 2000, 40K, Chaos, Nurgle, Sci-fi, Sin Eaters, Space Marines, Zombie | Leave a comment »
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