Barricades and Loot - The Walking Dead Miniatures Game, Mantic

I was recently having a think about what I’d need to start playing a couple of games and it struck me that it would only take a little bit of work to be able to play both Dracula’s America and something like Last Days Zombie Apocalypse - there’s some crossover for me with these skirmish games, I’ll likely be setting both campaigns around the Louisiana area and the recently completed farmhouse, barn and church would work for rural America - with the right set dressing I’d be more than happy to use them for both 1870s and modern times!

This bunch of barricades and objective markers come from Mantic Games and were originally an upgrade for their The Walking Dead base game to take you from cardboard terrain to 3D detailed pieces. A while ago (5 years maybes?) Mantic had a special festive offer, giving you double the set for the same price - so around £18 for 8 wrecked vehicles, 12 barricades and 20 loot/objective markers. It seemed perfect for my zomb-apoc and post-apoc collections and my sister bought me them as a Christmas gift.

Upon receiving them I was impressed - they’re generally high detail and cleaning up the few moldlines here and there wasn’t too arduous. I believe this set is now available through their Terrain Crate line which has subsequently been released.  As usual, I got these cleaned up, undercoated and promptly got distracted by something shiny and new!

As part of the aforementioned “get a game started” target, I thought these were a perfect addition to my modern zomb-apoc plans! Some of the barricades (the ones that are all wooden) could easily work for Dracula’s America as well as the planned Lovecraftian gaming too!

The crates of cans are my favourite part of the set and I took some time to paint some teeny tiny Heinz Baked Beans and Campbells soup labels. I also attempted to add some newspaper-ish squiggles on some of the papers lying against the boxes or on some of the other markers - I also included a TIME magazine somewhere in there, some American dollars and even a tiny drivers license (I googled US driving license and used McLovin’s as inspiration!).

Finally, the backpacks - the bunny was my favourite!

This is 32 components in total and they’ll count as 3 x 10 Figures. I need to get these posts updated with my Bingo card - hopefully I can get that done soon! Thanks for reading and I’d LOVE to read your thoughts! 

Next up are the 8 vehicles from the set - 4 sedans and 4 pickup trucks. I sprayed them with a bunch of rattle-can dregs a while back to mix things up. I should have them finished in the next week or so. After those I think it’ll be some fences - I have some from Renedra that will work for both of the aforementioned settings!

Nodding Donkey Oil Derricks - TTCombat

These two are a terrain feature that’s been hanging around my desk for a few months now, always with the worry that one of the cats might scatter some of the sub-assemblies into the netherworld of the office floor...

This is an old kit from TTCombat and it shows - newer kits of theirs tend to fit together a lot smoother and get the details better (for example, anywhere you see connecting rods originally had square pegs to go in round holes...).

Even still, I’m really happy with the end result - two decent sized pieces of terrain that will fit in a few different theatres of battle!

Now this kit comes from the “Wild West” section of TTCombat’s brilliant MDF terrain, but that’s not quite right - I wondered when they were actually first used and apparently that’d be around 1925 and onwards. As such, they’ll likely not appear in any “normal” Wild West games I set up, but they might still sneak in to Dracula’s America games - I’d just headcanon it as some mad scientist having come up with them sooner in order to extract the sorcerous elements coveted by the factions in that game! 

They’ll also see use in the 1950s Man in the High Castle-themed American Resistance games I have planned as well as Gaslands, the post-apocalypse, the zombie-apocalypse and even Necromunda!

That’s 240 points!

Dark and Dirty Dracula’s America Terrain

I loved the miniatures, art and setting of Dracula's America when it was first announced (back in August 2017) and hopped on the pre-order campaign, securing almost all of the starting warbands ("Posses" in in-game parlance) and the wonderful creatures! I've got a nice little chunk of it painted up and I had plans for a Louisiana-themed setting - swampy New Orleans gothic horror? Yes please! 

I started off by purchasing the Ghost Town Derelict Church from Sarissa Precision - a lovely American-themed church that had seen better days. I imagined this working either as part of an abandoned town or even surrounded by swampy terrain...

I also added to this a Perry Miniatures/Renedra Ramshackle Barn around the same time, with plans to scratchbuild some other similar farm buildings to complete the set - I got both of these buildings built, cut them MDF bases and added gravel and sand, undercoated them, basecoated them...then moved house several times. As you know, fellow hobbyist, life, uh, gets in the way...

After a few years I finally came back to this fledgling terrain collection early this year and around that time I discovered the Perry Miniatures/Renedra Ramshackle House which compliments the barn perfectly! One quick eBay purchase and a couple of days of building and painting and you have the set you see before you! I intend to write a separate blog post for each of the buildings as I'm really happy with how they've turned out!

How does that leave my HOBBY BINGO! board looking? After some discussion with Lewis we agreed that given that I mainly play skirmish games I could count the odd big monster I paint or a collection of terrain as a the Lord of War or Behemoth square - I think these fit that description nicely!

Feral Ghoul Reavers and Glowing Ones

I finished these rad-ghouls (radiation zombies from the Fallout post-apocalyptic universe) some time last year - I built them during October but didn't finish painting them until December. The armoured ones are "Reavers", a tougher and higher damage-dealing type of ghoul. They're basically rage zombies whose brains have been affected by the nuclear radiation, to the point where they're animalistic and lose all personality.

These are meant to be feral ghoul "Glowing Ones" - another type of ghoul that has soaked up a massive amount of radiation and can expel it in bursts of rads. These damage the non-ghoul and actually somehow help heal someone who is already ghoulified. I tried to paint them in the same luminous yellow/green that they're shown in Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, with black veins threading through their translucent flesh.

The figures are Mantic plastic zombies with extra bits on the Reavers from various plastic kits.

Comments and suggestions are more than welcome.

The Wasteland Doc

"Need stimpaks? Radaway? Uppers, downers, blues, reds? 'Slaught? Frenzon? Jet, Hydra, Fixer? I've got what you need..."

- The Doc

The final figure from the Copplestone Castings Wasteland Characters set. Painted a long time ago, just recently found in the box of Dark Eldar and other figures that had remained in hypersleep since moving to my current house. 

Comments? Feel free to leave one below!

Wasteland Survivor

Another figure found completed amongst the box of lost figures that I recently re-discovered.

This figure is from Copplestone Castings - one of the gentlemen in the Wasteland Characters set - I've shown two of the others a few years ago on the blog - he needed a couple of bits and pieces finishing but otherwise he was almost complete - I'm glad that I decided to paint him up in the colours of a Vault Suit!

Any suggestions on a name for him? Leave it in the comment section below!

Mr Stunbrella and Giant Centipedes

Another spruce-up job!

Giant Centipedes from the Horrorclix range - more figures that I picked up cheap from the Post Apoc Wargames Forum! I painted them a while ago but just recently spruced up their bases to bring it up to my modern post-apoc style!

And on that note, he's Mr Stunbrella (that's how he's referred to by em4 if I recall rightly). Rebased and certain bits and pieces tarted up!

Comments, suggestions, praise? Add it down below!

Review: Brother Vinni's Ragnar and Eyebot

I had to put in an order with Brother Vinni when I first saw this wonderful figure!

The figure is called Ragnar and is obviously based on Ragnar Lothbrok as played by Travis Fimmel in the brilliant History Channel drama Vikings. I picked him up in order to add another interesting leader to my various Viking forces for SAGA, Dux Brit and others. The head sculpt in particular is fantastic and is a great representation of the actor. Also of note is the raven on the chest of his horn armour - this is the clothing he wears in the TV series and the Raven sigil was connected to the sons of the historical Ragnar Lothbrok.

 The kit came in several pieces - the body, head and legs as one piece as shown here, then each arm with axe and shield attached, plus a sheathed sword. Everything was very nicely cast with barely any moldlines to clean up. I did end up replacing the axe, shield and sheathed sword for ones from the Gripping Beast kits as I tend to worry about resin weapons snapping - I could quite easily have just used the original ones as the cast was crisp. 

Here he is based up - I used a 30mm round base and added some cork sheet on top as rocks. Size-wise, he fits very nicely alongside the rest of my Gripping Beast plastics and metals. 

I would very much suggest that you buy this figure if you're a fan of the series or if you're in the market for an interesting new Viking warlord!

I also picked up a figure from the Nuclear Sandbox line to add to my Post-Apocalyptic figures - the Eyebot. These were the pieces that arrived - again, another lovely and crisp cast.

One thing that I would say about the miniature is that it was larger than I was expecting - I suppose that's just the way some things need to be when it comes to transporting something from a computer game into 28mm - at scale I would guess that it would be around a quarter of the size or less, so it may be a positive that it's larger. 

I ended up using a round Warhammer 40000 base with a coin glued to the bottom for weight, then once again a piece of cork on top. I then used some straight wire to use as a flying stand - I drilled into the bottom of the eyebot and into the cork to pin it into position. I also added a canine skull to the base as it seemed to fit the theme.  

Regarding the multitude of aerials shown here, I was very glad that I'd recently invested in a set of multiple sizes of micro drill bits. I have everything from 0.1mm to 2mm for projects like this. I used some pictures of ED-E from Fallout: New Vegas and found the various spots on the model that needed an aerial. One of these in the centre at the back is a paperclip, whilst the others are actually bristles from a nylon-bristled sweeping brush. The final stage with the figure was to take some tomato puree tube metal and make a couple of metal plates for the figure to give it a "lived in" feel like ED-E.

As with the Ragnar miniature, I would very much recommend that you check out the Eyebot from Brother Vinni. I'm based in the UK, whilst Brother Vinni is located in Russia, yet the figures arrived within a week of ordering - that's pretty top-notch service! Give them a look - their Fallout range is fantastic and I'll be most certainly picking up more stuff from them in the future (after the 6MMRPC!)

The Anti-Pope, Advocate of Lucifer

I'm always painting, but I tend to get backlogged when it comes to updating this blog - I'm going to start and go through the multitude of projects I've finished since the start of the year and show the finished figures to my lovely readers! Here's the first - the Anti-Pope:

This is a figure that I painted around 5 years ago - the original figure was purchased from a gentleman on the Post Apoc Wargames forum and is a Spinespur Anti-Pope, which was then stripped and repainted - I've yet to actually use him in a game but it's a pretty interesting figure - my plan is for him to be leading a cult in the post-apocalyptic wasteland, although he could quite easily fit in with a bunch of different genres. Note that all of the crosses are upside down - he's basically a Satanic version of the Pope. I recently rebased him and took the opportunity to do a few fixes on the paintjob - especially my number one overused paint effect - verdigris!

I hope you enjoy the figure - comments and advice are most welcome!

Giant Landcrabs - Fantasy Fauna

Following on from yesterday's post on the Giant Angler Crabs, here are some normal Giant Landcrabs.

Made in the same way as the Anglers - plastic toys, moldlines removed with a fresh scalpel blade and mounted on lipped 50mm bases, sand was then superglued to the shell, claws and legs to add more texture to aid in painting. 

Another scale shot alongside the Viking Champion!

And one alongside some post-apocalyptic scum!

Feel free to leave a comment! Glad to have these finished, they've been half-painted for a while now!

Giant Angler Crabs - Fantasy Fauna

I visited Whitby earlier in the year - I always love to look in the souvenir shops to find useful items for gaming. On this excursion I discovered these crabs, which were sold 3 for £1 in a shop that sells shells, fossils and crystals, as well as more touristy stuff. I thought these would be big alongside 28mm miniatures, but would work well in my Fantasy Skirmish setting, or even in Rogue Trader-ish 40k games and the post-apocalypse. 

The crabs were made from a vinyl plastic, similar to the Reaper Bones figures. I trimmed off the moldlines with a sharp scalpel blade and mounted them on 50mm lipped bases, as these were primarily for my Fantasy project. With these particular crabs I decided to add a bit of a fantasy twist, inspired by the fearsome angler fish - I used a bit of wire and some greenstuff to create a lure. I also superglued sand to their shell and legs to add a bit more texture for painting. These angler crabs bury themselves in the mud and silt at the bottom of a rivermouth or in a lake and leave their lure visible for their intended prey. In nature, snapping turtles also use a similar method... 

Here's a shot for scale, alongside the Viking Champion from the other day - quite a fearsome challenge for the average fighter! 

Finally, this is what they looked like to begin with - I've also finished the "normal" giant crabs (another three), so check back tomorrow for more!

2013 Round-Up (just 19 days late...)

Hi guys - I've been meaning to write this post for a couple of weeks now but I have only just gotten around to it! A quick recap of what I got upto in 2013 and my next post will cover my current projects and my plans going forward...

The most important part of 2013 (with regards to my blog) is that GAMES ARE BEING PLAYED! It's difficult to underestimate how good this is - I've been "back in the hobby" for 5 or so years now, but even before my break in wargaming, I rarely played (once or less a year, despite having multiple armies!). In the latter half of 2013 I played multiple games of Flying Lead and Songs of Blades and Heroes - I've been planning out games and settings for years and it was a great feeling to see my painted miniatures and terrain on the table! I even got a couple of my non-wargaming friends to start playing (my housemate and another of my best friends) and, most importantly, they kept asking for more battles!

I've actually gotten a really decent amount of figures completed this year for various different projects and I got stuck into my zomb-apoc stuff during October with Zomtober 2013 - here are a few examples of things completed this year:

Michonne and her two "camoflage" zombies - I'm very fond of her paintjob - she was a gift to myself when I'd finished half of my Studio Miniatures plastic zombie horde! Painted as part of Zomtober 2013

Chosen Space Marines of The Desolation - In The Emperor's Name

Goblins from The Hobbit - this was a lovely plastic kit! Lots of variety too. They're to be used as devolved humans in Necromunda/Space Hulk/post-apoc

Some Private Military Contractors from Empress Miniatures (sold as SAS, mine have a couple of headswaps) - these are for zomb-apoc

Wasteland Sniper - this guy is intended as a scout/herald for a new (Caesar's Legion-inspired) faction in my post-apoc. Warmachine/Hordes

Misc Studio Miniatures plastic zombies - I did enjoy painting the ones in the prison jumpsuits and the Drive-inspired one in the front! Painted as part of Zomtober 2013

A biker survivor (em4 Miniatures) and misc feral ghouls (Mantic Games plastic zombies). Painted as part of Zomtober 2013

Missing from the round-up are various different figures, an orc and goblin warband (Celtos miniatures, for my fantasy skirmish setting), 19 pirate scum (40k Chaos Cultists), 30 or so plaguebearers (plastics and kitbashes!), more zombies... A good painting year in general!

Zomtober - Week 2 - Feral Ghouls

These Fallout 3-inspired feral ghouls were painted over a couple days earlier in the week - they're the Mantic Games plastic zombies based up on GW round bases (always my favourite, as I can weight the bottom of them with pennies, essential with plastic miniatures in my opinion!). I managed to buy around 30 of these off one of my mates (30 Mantic, plus 20 or so Westwind Soviet zombies for £10 posted - bargain!). The ones left over will become rage zombies for my normal zombie apocalypse, whilst these are painted up for my post-apocalypse setting.

In the Fallout universe, ghouls are for the most part zombies. They're caused by nuclear radiation burning out the higher brain functions, sort of preserving the human body as a walking (and in some cases talking) undead creature. These miniatures have always reminded me of them - to be honest, they've always struck me as being a bit too animated to be your traditional shambler zombie - they look like they're running forward to take a bite out of your brain!

Whilst painting these I was trying to stick as close as possible to the look of the ghouls from the game - their skin is almost a leather/completely sunburn effect - in the joints and creases of their leathery skin they're very red. I spray-basecoated these light brown, then gave them a light coat of red. I then drybrushed them in various flesh tones, followed by a dark tone wash. I did one final highlight and then created a Tamiya Clear Red wash for the creases in their skin, in the joins and the like, followed by the various details (bones, teeth, eyes). The details then got another wash and after basing them a few got some blood. Whilst painting them I selected a few for darker skin tones to mix it up a bit. Hope you guys like them!

Zomtober 2013 - Week 2

Feeling pretty happy with myself again - here's my Zomtober 2013 Week 2 completed miniatures! The biker is an em4 Future Skirmish miniature and the feral ghouls are Mantic Games plastic zombies. Posting these a couple of nights before the deadline as I'm in work all weekend! I'll be posting about these individually throughout the week.

Gladiatrix with Bullwhip

I wonder how many dodgy Google hits that blogpost title will get then? Hah! I was having some real issues finding an arm to complete this female gladiator - I'd decided on the whip due to the size of the Dark Eldar arm, but unfortunately I was at a loss as to what I could use to replace the other missing arm. I've also trimmed the crest off the helmet on this one, just for a little variety, as the poses between two of the female gladiators were very similar and they had the same basic helmet.

After digging through the various Eldar and Elf parts (not many...) I have, I remembered that I had a bag of Heroclix from my fledgling (even after 3 years) Superhero project that could provide a suitable donor - in this case, Livewire from the Legion of Superheroes. The arm was a suitable size, fit nicely with the pose and the figure was a duplicate (although, I'm not a fan of the Legion of Superheroes, I'd have happily chopped his head/arm/legs off, even if I only had the one...). 

The arm was amputated with clippers, the moldlines were cleaned up with a scalpel and finally the arm was drilled and pinned into place! I'm going to do the green stuff filling on the whole bunch of gladiators at once, so that will be coming up shortly! Just a few more of these to go and then I'll have to find a few more miniatures to add to them - luckily the Junker Gladiators range has a few more candidates!

Comments most welcome - I'll be starting to paint some miniatures for Zomtober shortly!