Shape of Things to Come

Not a lot of painting got done this week. The fourth-quarter scramble at work has loaded me up with too much to do, and I'm close to finishing the first draft of book five in my viking series. There's just not enough time to paint.

However, I have set my eyes on making an old project new again. I'm going to assume the following pictures will give you an idea of what it is. This is the only model I painted this week.

 Yes, time to resurrect my Tau project from a few years ago. I bought a bunch of Tau around the time most of my game group was getting out of 40K. My interest in 40K also waned at the same time, and so I left a lot of these models unpainted. I came close to selling my Tau collection, but I hardly ever sell my games.  I'm glad I kept them.

So I've got one Crisis Battlesuit done. Of units that I've yet to paint, I have a unit of Fire Warriors, two Piranha skimmers, a Hammerhead rail gunship, and a bunch of drones. I probably need to add in a few more models to get enough points to play a game. I'd like to get around 1,000 points ready.

I chose a difficult paint scheme for these guys. It takes three coats to get solid coverage. To make it even more challenging, GW discontinued my base color (graveyard earth). Fortunately, I sagely saved a fresh pot of it when they announced this. So I can probably get most of my models done in the same color. At some point, things won't match any more. Well, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

This is a lot of words for a single model. Up next will be the Fire Warrior team.  

More Necropolis & Zombie Survivors

I finished up all but the skeletons for my Warlord Necropolis force. This week I painted the Bones versions of Necropolis gargoyles. Besides being inexpensive these models were completely assembled. The only issue was their wings had been compressed to fit into the blister. A quick dip in hot water reset them to original condition.

Though lightweight, the wings make their balance precarious. It's no big deal for a plastic model to topple, but still is aggravating. I ended up putting a small nail through the base bottoms to keep the gargoyles from falling off the base while the glue set. It ended up balancing them as well.

These were easy to paint. Basically prime black, then dry brush warm grays, wash with black, then highlights. I'd considered paint splattering them for extra texture but I don't think these are going to see a lot of play time. So the effort would be not worth the time and mess. I like how they turned out.

Last week I took some horrendous pictures of the other Necropolis models. One that I think people would have an interest in is the translucent plastic ghost model.  I took a better picture of it this week.

Lots of people don't know how to approach painting this model. I've seen people who just prime it and paint like any other model, and those who just fill the recesses with a dark wash.  I opted to paint directly on it without priming in order to preserve the translucent parts. Overall, I think it came out okay. The picture is still not as good as the model appears in person. The translucent effect is lost here, but I think you get the idea. It does look ghostly to me, and that's what makes this model unique.

I had a few models sitting on my desk as I pondered my next project. These are modern / zombie survivor type of models all from the Bones Kickstarter. I gave them all a quick paint job so they'd be ready when I might need them. My favorite is the zombie hunter with chainsaw. I liked the hand clinging her to pant leg!

Anyone who paints as many Reaper models as I do will eventually realize these models have their quirks. One that consistently aggravates me is clothing. Reaper models exist in a bizarre dimension where sleeves appear inexplicably from nowhere, or one side of a hand appears to wear a glove and the other side of the same hand does not. All sorts or extra-dimensional clothing exists in Reaper's world and can be a frustration when painting, particularly where layers of clothing appear and disappear on a whim.

However, no figure is more of a disaster than one I found in my Bones collection. I was looking forward to painting this guy, since he appeared like a thug with a sawed-off shotgun. What a unique model, I thought.

Well, unique is right. Check this out.

What the hell is going on with this guy's jacket? That's not a torn sleeve. One sleeve is full-length and the other is short. Model ruined. I couldn't believe what I was looking at. What is the logic here? The short sleeve is so defined that even a paint-over won't cure it. They modeled a flippin' wristwatch to drive the point home. Besides, I can't stop seeing this now that I know it's there. So I left the model mostly in primer black, quickly painted some large areas, and am now undecided if I toss it in the trash or keep it in case mix-n-match sleeve lengths ever becomes a fashion.

So that's this week's update. I've got a few new ideas brewing, including a few larger projects. Stay tuned!

Warlord: Necropolis

I've been on an undead kick these days, though this particular project had been planned far in advance of "zombie fever."  I'm just getting to it.

This is the start of my Necropolis army for Reaper's fantasy miniatures game, Warlord. Thanks to the collections of models I have from the Bones Kickstarter I have a solid base for most of the factions. Unfortunately I put most of these on round bases and Warlord is particular about its base sizes.  That may actually put me off the game, since most of the Bones models don't fit on the base sizes they're assigned.

Well, this force is all Vampires with supporting undead staples like zombies and skeletons. The undead must've possessed my camera as all the pictures came out like total crap. I'll have to retake them, but here are a few examples.

First the overall force and the only halfway decent picture.

I took detailed shots of each unit but most were out of focus.  Here are the few OK pictures to give you an idea of what some of these units look like.

Judas Bloodspire is the warlord leader and wearing the red cloak. The other is a hero, Malek the Hated.

More vampire heroes, Naomi Mistress of Wings (Bones variant), a Bones proxy for Sir Gauren the Wrathful, and Elsabeth Briarkiss. She is the only non-Bones character in the army.

Every other picture I took was way out of focus.  I have units of 8 zombies, 3 burrowing zombies, 3 chattel (humans that the vampires can eat to regain health), a bat swarm, a ghoul captain, and a ghost. I'll have to retake those pictures when I finish up this army.  I still have gargoyles and skeletons to assemble and paint.  I'm out of 25mm square bases, so I've got to order them before I can continue.

Not sure what I'll be working on next. I'm a little burnt-out on painting minis. Maybe time for a break!

Zombicide Season 1: Zombie Hordes!

I've completed my monochrome paint scheme for all the zombies in Zombicide's season one. I saw this paint scheme on this blog, and decided I'd try it for myself. I really like the results!

Witness the hordes of walking dead! (Click for a much larger picture)

These models appear to glow when grouped together, creating a wonderfully eerie feeling that I did not expect. I did these with a "damp brush" treatment and tried to vary tones for contrast. I picked out details but wasn't too careful with my paint job. Neatness was a "nice to have" rather than a requirement of this paint job.

Here are a few close ups of the horde. If you enlarge the pictures you'll see how rough the paint is.

 Totally all these models took about 8 hours to complete. Overall that's not bad when you consider there are 55 walkers, 24 runners, and 11 fatties. It's not often I can paint at speeds greater than 10 MPH (models per hour -- Doh!). I should also note that I added to the base set with the first "Walk of the Dead" addition. This basically gives you more of all the base set models.

Here's a line up of all the unique poses for all the figure types, in case you were wondering how much repetition is in this pile of models. (Again click for a larger picture)

 

I'm really pleased with the results. I think I'm burned out on painting zombies for now! I had hoped to get these Zombicide models to the gaming table but work interfered. When I do, I may take some pictures of them on the gaming table to post up here. I'm curious how these look against the full color games boards.

Zombicide Season One Survivors

I guess I could've left this post's subject heading as the entire post. It pretty much says it all.  I've recently got the Zombicide Season One base game and like it enough to paint the figures. These survivors can be used outside of the Zombicide game too, since they scale nicely with other models. So it gave me an extra incentive to paint.

Here they are. Click for a larger picture.

For those familiar with the game, I painted them exactly as they appeared on their stat cards. So no great innovation.  I did take some detail pictures but the focus was all off. I think I accidentally changed some settings. Well, this picture gives enough details.

I decided to paint the Abomination, since I consider him a zombie character. While painting him, I noticed he had a camera over his neck, like he's a tourist or something similar. Detail like that gets lost if you don't paint the models.

These figures are really nice with a good level of detail. As I said, they can be survivors for other games like All Things Zombie, which I plan to check out soon.

Next it's on to the actual zombies, starting with the walkers. I plan to do these in a gray scale. I saw this paint style on a blog, which you can see here.  I'm in no way as good a painter as this guy, but I like the idea and will give it a shot.  Besides, I have over 50 walkers alone, and I don't want to spend the rest of the year painting zombies! His way of painting seems very fast. I've already got ten completed, and they look nice.

Wargames Factory Zombie Vixens

Wow, that took a while.  Twenty days later, I'm finally able to post the finished results for my Wargames Factory Zombie Vixens. I didn't even build the whole box! Well, I've been busy with other things and my recent binge-watching of Sons of Anarchy on Netflix has contributed to dereliction at the painting table. There's only so much time each night for leisure activities.

While calling them vixens is a bit of a stretch, here's the mob of undead gals. Click for a larger picture.

 The box gives a lot of different options and is quite an improvement over the Zombie Horde box, which is male zombies only. Here you have head options, two arm options, and accessories. Why zombie women need so many handbags is beyond me. I added one, just for laughs. Maybe she died holding it and never let go.  Anyway, my only complaint is the models don't have any good join points, which means those spindly arms fall off and the necks don't align with the torsos.  I had to constantly repair while painting, since some arms have only the barest of contact surface with the torso.  Still, overall I'm satisfied with these additions.

Here's my zombie horde with both men and women, forty models strong right now.

You can see that the female boxed set provided bases, but the male set did not. That was unfortunate, as I had matching bases but didn't realize it until too late. So their bases and corresponding heights are mismatched. Not a big deal, since most of my collection don't match bases. My fantasy stuff has both square and round bases, so I shouldn't really care about this minor difference with my zombies.

This is a nice start to a zombie apocalypse theme. I will need more survivors, and I have the boxed sets of survivor men and women from Wargames Factory. However, for now I think I'll paint and use the survivors from the Zombicide game. They'll get double duty that way.  Also, they will be done faster and give me a chance to do something else!

In the meantime, let the zombie madness begin!

Zombie Chow!

What good is a zombie horde without a bunch of hapless victims? I asked the same question, and my answer was "not much good at all."  Therefore, I broke open the piggy bank and sent some cash to Reaper Miniatures. They sent back some blisters full of modern figures suitable for zombie gaming.

Here's the batch, representing "citizens", criminals, and police.  These are all Reaper Chronoscope line models. Click for a larger view.

I'll work down the rows to explain what I've got. First row is a single blister of Townsfolk: Ladies of the Night. Reaper has several of these townsfolk blisters, which are a good value for the price. These girls will fit with an urban area, and can be used in other modern scenarios other than zombies. I guess if I ever find a good prostitution game these figures will be handy.

Next row is Townsfolk: Jock, Chick, Nerd. I bet you can tell who's who. Again, this is a single blister and is a good value. They represent the classic triumvirate of teen slasher movies. I will have to buy Reaper's serial killer model just to go with these kids.

My favorite of the bunch are the bikers. These had to be purchased individually.  You have Noel the biker boss in his duster and shotgun, Peaches the old lady, and Stubs the Biker. I made sure Stubs was a full patched member of his club. From the rockers on his back, you can tell he's with the Cthulhu Riders of R'yleh.

Lastly we have some law enforcement. With all these prostitutes and bikers running around, you need some police. One officer is a Bones model, which you can tell from the non-matching base. The other is a Chronoscope sheriff. The girl is actually a "Sci-fi Heroine" but I figure she can be a professional zombie hunter. Seems to fit.

There you have it. I'll be adding way more to my modern zombie collection. I'm currently working on female zombies, then I've got hordes of modern "armed civilians" to complete. This has turned out to be a seriously involved project, but I'm enjoying it.