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Showing posts with label Zomtober. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Zomtober. Show all posts

Thursday, 10 September 2026

Playing The Walking Dead: All Out War

I found myself with an afternoon free a little while ago so I thought about what I could do. Accidently I had watched a video about the game on YouTube about its reissue, so it was sticking in my mind. Since I bought the game mainly for the figures, the game was more or less an afterthought. From the first time I saw it online, the game game seems to have some nice ideas and and playable mechanisms.

Until the point this game out I felt that a lot of games like this had produced fairly low par minis. Whilst not the best I have ever seen, these are still pretty good. There are plenty of them. Like a lot of games, I continually think I should rebase them so that they fit with everything else I have.

As a way to get the game going, Mantic created The Road To Woodbury as a solo experience of the game. It's a game for one character that helps teach the mechanisms. It is a little dumbed down but not too much. The idea is to see whether you can get past the three zombies (and any friends they might acquire along the way) to recover the three potential resources. 

On the face of it, this is a game of three against one. Not such great odds. The way the zombies operate (the A.I. if you like) means that although it is a challenge you can win as long as you don't do anything stupid or get really unlucky.

I went on to play a couple more games. The original plan was to use these for other games. I haven't found anyone who wants to play with little toy zombies recently. Big sigh....

If you want to have a look at the figures for the game I painted them previously as part of Zomtober.

Sunday, 29 October 2017

Zomtober Week 5

It's the end of Zomtober, I'm watching Stranger Things and it's almost Halloween as well. Spooky. Even with the extra hour of the clocks going back, today has been a struggle but I have managed to get a lot more stuff done than I was expecting. Despite the dog, and kids and dinner and a hung over other half. There are still some details to do and the bases need finishing but I am a lot closer than expected.
I have had these three under wraps since the beginning of the month. This is Lee, Clementine and the feature zombie (my favourite zombie in the range). Lee and Clementine feature in the Telltale games series games which is pretty much the closest the being in the show.
This is Carol and Sophia (in pre-zombified state). I like these figures because they have the vibe of scared people just after the apocalypse. The Carol figure confuses me. Maybe it's something to do with the TV show. I want to trim the knife off but I am worried about losing some value if I get rid of it.
Andrea and Amy are another couple of good figures. Andrea just looks like a plain clothes police officer whilst Amy does a good job as being a civilian or a victim. I have really rushed the faces on these two and I will come back and look at that again.
Neagan and Abraham shouldn't need too much of an introduction. I am not so sure Neagan's grenades came out okay. Abraham is a great figure and the fact that he is standing on half a zombie really makes it.

Lastly, this is Glenn, Michonne and Lori. Although there is some work on the bases still needed, I am reasonably happy with these three.

So The end of Zomtober 2017.  I have enjoyed the process. My painting plan, The New Cruelty, has had a good month. I am up about forty figures which is about a dozen more than I would have expected so that is a bonus. I have really rushed these through today. Not that I have ruined them but there is more work to do on these before they are finished.

It's been an entertaining month.Thanks to all the people who have been involved in Zomtober and to everyone who has stopped by. It has been a blast for me. For the first time in a while I have felt part of something on the web.

Saturday, 28 October 2017

Getting Close To The End Of Zomtober

I am still doubting that the figures I have planned will be completely finished by the close of play tomorrow. That said, practically everything now has a base layer of paint. Putting a wash on shouldn't take too long. It is not an exact process. If I can get this done early enough, I will probably find time to do the highlighting.
I can't see the basing getting done but that hasn't happened much this month anyway.

Not a bad day all round. One step closer to sorting things out with my sister. Fun at the FabLab. A bit of time with my uncle. Now sat in front of the TV whilst my other half is out mentally scarring bar staff because it's halloween in a few days.

Thursday, 26 October 2017

Some Progress On Zomtomber

I can't believe that I have got this far into the week and not picked up a paintbrush. Concussion and a birthday seem to have kept me away from the bench. Today I have managed to get back to it and things have gone pretty well. there has been a bit of quiet time away from the distractions which has allowed me to get on with things.
Figuring out where to start has been the hardest bit. The figures I showed the other day are not the only ones in the queue, when I went looking I found all these minis and the cars as well. It is still Zomtober but I am already thinking about what to do after the end of the month. There are plenty more to do but maybe some civilians are needed. One of the figures types I like a lot in the TWD: AOW range are the frightened unarmed civilians. I can see a few uses for these coming up.

Still a bit more work to do yet.

Tuesday, 24 October 2017

Happy Birthday To Me AND The Start of Zomtober Week 5

The day hasn't been too bad to me so far. The best gift was a copy of Terraforming Mars which is a game I have been dying to play for ages. A load of The Walking Dead: All Out War Stuff that I am going to have to send back. Amazingly a load of the minis were missing. I can't imagine what happened to them. Strangely I have a load of primed zombies and survivors on the workbench.
Anyway, this is the start of Week 5, the final week, of Zomtober. I haven't made up my mind about what I am going to do this week but I think pretty much everything is now primed and ready to go. There are a few specials, not on the picture, that I might end up painting. They have been on the bench for ages and are probably in the background of some of the earlier shots.


Sunday, 22 October 2017

Zomtober Week 4

Again, not quite finished. The weather here has been way too bad to spray varnish the figures. It has been one storm after another here. But once  they are varnished I can play about with the bases and all should be good.
 The end of Week 4 already. Where did the time go?



Friday, 20 October 2017

I Had Forgotten How Much Fun Concussion Was

Yesterday I managed to trip up and knock myself up. Somewhere between the dog jumping up and my other half leaving her crocs in an unusual place, I ended up in A+E. Blurred vision, memory loss and seeing stars. I guess I should have counted my blessing at the time but I am cursing my other half at the moment.
Concussed? How could you tell?
So I missed out on posting, or doing pretty much anything else (including FabLab which I am especially annoyed about) yesterday but I am getting into it a bit more today. Today I am bit more into the real world. A much more productive day all round. I've done loads around the house, did a load of writing for the Underground game and then I've moved on to figure painting.

The  six zombie figures I am doing for this weeks Zomtober are moving along at a pace. Most are now pretty much complete and even some of last weeks figures have had a touch up. Nearly all of them have now had the basing done. I've even wandered off to a few of the background projects. Things are looking good all round.

Tuesday, 17 October 2017

50 Shades Of Decay Or How I Paint Zombies

Have you ever seen a body that has been dead for a while? I have. More times than I care to think about. I'm thinking about it now, so that last sentence was probably counterproductive. It is the stuff of nightmares. One of the last ones I saw sticks in my memory very, very clearly. I didn't eat a baked potato for about two years afterwards. Now I still can't face a baked potato with cheese. I always expect the cheese to start wriggling. Maybe you catch my drift, maybe not. No more details on that score but you are bright people so I guess you can work it out.

My early zombie cinematic experiences are of Romero films. These low budget epics used simple ideas. Most zombies were usually had light green makeup unless they were African American, then you got a kind of pale blue makeover instead. Feature zombies had a bit more gore, but if you were in the long shot you were green or blue. For the most part I still stick with this colour scheme. I use a number of shades of green to give each model a bit of variation. There is always a bit of shading but it is mostly ink and blood that I use for zombie effects. There are usually several tones of ink in there to give the skin a bit of variety.

As time as gone on, brown, especially baked potato brown, has come in, for obvious reasons. When I use green paint, I vary it with a little light grey or brown paint and mix it poorly. Red and black ink usually still feature highly and whilst I use sepia-ish inks in the main, the green and often red creep in there too.

One of the things I keep meaning to do is some fresher zombies. Ones with either healthy or healthy ish skin tones. The thought had occured to have some unarmed civilian types that I can initially use as a crowd. Then, well the players have got used to the idea of having them around, use them as zombies.

Zombies should look pretty badly hammered for the most part. I like Tamiya Clear Red for this. When it isn't varnished it looks like fairly fresh blood. Older blood should be much darker. Too much really doesn't work. When choosing where to put the blood I think in terms of where it would probably end up. Anything on the hands would probably wear off quite quickly but there would always be some there. Around the face is another good place. It follows that most of the blood is going to be on the front with probably more on the chest than on the legs. Rather than paint the whole front side red, I think it would be more splatter and drips. Little bits here and there across the front on the body, none or almost none on the back and some on the floor.

To give them a really shabby appearance, I use a lot of inks. Mostly I do a base wash in the right colour for the paint colour below. Browns help to make them look dirty, especially brown over black ink. Green give a real sense of decay but maybe not use too much of it or the skin will look wrong. High traffic areas are probably a good bet, ower arms, knees and backside are good place for green. A mix of reds, ruddy skin tone, purples but mainly green make a good range for skin tones but experiment a little. Red ink is good on facial features and around wounds done with Tamiya Clear Red. I am not a fan of the GW paint, Blood For The Blood God, for this kind of work.

The best advice is go and watch your inspiration, later Romero and The Walking Dead for me. Look at what they do for their make-up. Emulate that in a more simple form as you will have a lot of zombies to do. Get on with it and don't be afraid to experiment, because with zombies you can usually cover up anything you hate quite easily.

Zomtober must bring out the worst in me.

Monday, 16 October 2017

The Start Of Zomtober Week 4

The good work continues but this is going to be another hard week.


More Mantic The Walking Dead: All Out War stuff. Zombies from a variety of sets.

Sunday, 15 October 2017

Zomtober Week 3

Really the title of this post should be Zomtober Week 3 - as far as I got.
There is still a few bits to do on the paint work. Across all the figures, there is plenty I am not happy with. There are also a few bits that are just not done. The basing still needs to be dealt with to. This is probably going to be put off for a bit.
The New Cruelty is not happy. I am not happy.

Well except I am. I have had a bloody good day, a nice evening meal in a restaurant and I have managed to put as smile on one of the lads faces on his birthday.

Next week...Zombies.

Wednesday, 11 October 2017

Progress, In A Lot Of Different Directions

Well I have had a blip for a few days but I seem to be over it now. Somewhere along the line I have managed to get a solid three hours of painting in today. Whilst I am not speeding through the work, I am at least making progress.
A little bit of everything here
What I am lacking is a bit of focus. For a while now I have been wandering off part way through projects. Tonight for instance, I have worked on all of these miniatures. I think I've worked it out. Maybe. The carrion crawlers (without the beards) have been on the bench the longest. Well they were cheap. The troll and the female mage have been around for about a year. I'm not sure where the mage came from, might be Northstar and the troll is from Midlam. The Blood Bowl figures of the last of the human team I started earlier in the year and The Walking Dead stuff I've had for a couple of weeks now.

A while back I made a decision to improve my painting skills. Feel free to comment here. Part of this involved using thinned down paints and a wet palette. It seemed logical at the time to switch to dropper bottles. This seems to have saved a lot of paint, whilst there is more waste on the day it means that the paint doesn't end up drying up which usually happens to most GW paints because of their either stupidly designed or cleverly designed (depending on your point of view) bottles.

In practice, occasionally, if not frequently, I put more paint on the wet palette that I need. Having been brought up to waste not want not, I figure that I should be using the extra paint. If there isn't something I can use it for, then I find something I can use it for. Or something on the back of the bench that gets one step closer to being finished. I have always had what I call Background Projects. These are something that doesn't take over (that's why they are background) but I can work on them when glue or wash is drying.

The background is becoming a lot more foreground. During Zomtober I have had more zombie figures on the bench. This has helped me keep on track. This week however I have run out of stuff  that is prepped and primed.

So now I am thinking I need to do some more prepping and priming. I was reading a blog post somewhere that somebody was doing just that in readiness for winter. They live in Canada where there is a chance that there might be one foot of snow. Here in the UK we might get one inch of rain but the problem remains the same.


Monday, 9 October 2017

Sunday, 8 October 2017

Zomtober Week 2

This week of Zomtober has been focus on the The Walking Dead's All Out War expansion, Days Gone Bye. It's another six figures, four survivors and two zombies. The zombies were getting tinkered about with last week and it is the survivors that I have been "concentrating" on. It has to be said that my focus has kind of gone towards the end of the week and there are probably a few details that still need addressing.

These are two of the most characterful zombies in the game. I love these figures and they are ones that are likely to feature a lot.
The four survivors, all from the Atlanta Camp have turned out okay. Some of the hands look a bit out but I think this is down to the moulding rather than the paint job. I am always a bit disappointed when I look at the pictures on Mantic's website and compare them to my paint job but I guess that the pro painted one are early run and have better hands and have fewer mould lines.
The shading on the collar on the figure in the red shirt has turned out really badly in the picture. It is better in real life but I will give this a bit more attention in time.

Anyway, the week ahead is probably going to be some form of the Miles Behind Us expansion. It's aither going to be the full box set or I might just try and concentrate on the Green household (with a couple of extra figures) and if I am feeling do the two zombie figures for the set as well.

Tuesday, 3 October 2017

The Walking Alive

There is not so many zombies of the bench this week, mostly survivors. Whilst one of the zombies is waiting for just a few more details the other needed a bit more work. The real work is on the four survivors. There is a good coat of paint for them ready to be highlighted. I did play about with the shirt of one of them. It's a bit more effort than I would normally put in but it is kind of what it looks like on the in house model. My reason for not doing more is that if it goes badly, it goes very badly and means a restart and repaint, which never ends well.
The colours seem quite bright at the minute. Part of that is down to me trying to emulate what's already on the web and part is I know they are going to get darker pretty quickly. Yellow is definitely not a colour I normally use for hair, but the one on the mantic site seemed to work out okay.

Sunday, 1 October 2017

Zomtober - Week 1

The plan for the week was to finish off all the minis from The Prelude To Woodbury set.
The Governor, Brian Blake, was a fairly easy paint job. Whilst the mini is crisp enough for a good amount of detail, there is actually a limited amount of actual details. This is down to the simplicity of the images from the comics being easy to draw rather than a flaw in the figures.
It's difficult to put extra detail into some of the figures. When all you have to work with is a shirt and pants it is difficult to make the figure really shine. These are actually pretty nice figures and they have painted up pretty well.  The zombie having a snack was a bit more fun. When I first looked at the figure I thought the"snack" was actually handcuffs.
The three female figures look like they have come straight out of an office. Although this is quite normal clothing, it's difficult to make normal shine. A grey business suit is not going to stand out from the crowd. I always think the female miniatures need to be better colour coordinated than male ones.

Anyway, this is week one done. The New Cruelty is more than satisfied. Next week is going to see me paint the Days Gone Bye. More survivors and fewer zombies.

Thursday, 28 September 2017

Woefully Busy Day & Some Fun & Zombies

Whilst I still have a bad back that is causing me a lot of pain and a cold that just won't go away, the world isn't going away either. My other half is ill with the same thing I had although this seems to be the second time she has had it. She was that bad last night that she asked me where her glasses were and she was wearing them, on her face, at the time.
This picture demonstrates why most good painters (or do I mean sensible ones) don't show their work until it's finished.
Zomtober continues. I took this picture yesterday to remind me to keep on track or else The New Cruelty will catch up with me. When I look at it I feel a slightly unpleasant feeling in my stomach. Still, very early days. They are very blocky and pretty hideous. It was for this reason that I wasn't going to post the picture. That said, I have worked on them a bit this evening after going out for a birthday meal, and I am happy to say that they now look a lot better. I realise that the blood looks pretty bright at the moment but when I get down to washing them and painting the clothing, the blood splatter will narrow down a bit and darken down a lot.
So getting a bit better but still don't look bad enough to be zombies
Still pretty far from perfect but they are getting there. There is a fair bit of detailing to do on them and lots and lots of highlighting and what I call "grebbing them up" to make them a little more zombie. This will include a significant amount of Tamiya Clear Red, which is the best blood substitute I have found so far (although I wouldn't recommend it for a transfusion).

There has been a bit of time for playing around with CorelDraw as well. I am working on some terrain ideas. I have had an idea for some roads for ages. For a while now I have been thinking about doing them in laser cut MDF. This might take a while but it is doable. It will take a long time because of the scope of the amount of stuff I am actually wanting.

Tuesday, 26 September 2017

The Walking Dead & The Irony Of The Industry

I think I said yesterday that I had gotten hold of a copy of the Kickstarter box set. I have been after this for a while mainly because it has a few miniatures in it that are difficult to get hold of without Mantic points. The TV show and the comics are stuff I just love and to my mind are amongst the best in their respective genres.

At the time it came out I wasn't so sure that I was going to be interested in it so I didn't back it. Too much rigmarole I thought at the time. Whilst I am very happy with my purchase and the others I have made lately, especially as they were cheap, Mantic's latest releases have taken the edge off.
As you can see I was so happy to get this that I had
removed some figures for priming before I took some pictures
The kickstarter boxes are back on sale on their store. Admittedly seconds and more money than I paid for it. I suspect the guy who has a boxed set on eBay for £330 will be disappointed. What is naffing me off is there is a collectors edition set. This has three exclusive figures and three more that it says that are also exclusives (which I already have and have paid through the teeth for).  If I sat down what I have already paid for the bits in it, I would have been much better off buying this set and I would have got the three exclusive miniatures (really not available anywhere else unlike the kickstarter exclusives). As I really don't need all the duplicates (a third copy of the starter set might be too much and there is only one Governor and how many Lee and Clementine figures can I actually use (and the zombie with these two is great but is a bit distinctive)) I am not going to spend the money. I will wait to see if the exclusive come up on the web as all the other "exclusives" have done eventually.

To be honest, I shouldn't really complain, it makes me sound like a bit of a fan boy (and that hurts :) ). I keep buying the figures purely for the love of them.

Monday, 25 September 2017

Zombies Take Charge

Of my work bench at least...
Primed and ready to go
The eBay purchase of an All Out War Kickstarter box and Miles Behind Us arrived this morning. The day has been pretty much been all about that. I have prepped some stuff for Zomtober. The plan is to go through some of the box sets starting with The Road To Woodbury and moving on from there. I have done a few basing details on what I have started so far and made a fairly good attempt at the Brian Blake figure.

Zomtober

The zombies are coming. Well Zomtober is coming at least. I haven’t done Zomtober for a few years. It was a pleasure when I did and this year I am really looking forward to it. This may explain my sudden purchasing of large numbers of The Walking Dead: All Out War.
"To be a part of this you just need to paint one or more Zombies or Survivors each week, in any scale you like, posting it to your blog by that week's Sunday (we use Sunday's as the end of each Zomtober week). So that means posting one or more newly painted Zombie or Survivor minis each week on or before the 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th of October 2017. This year has a very tight start and there is nothing stopping bloggers starting that first mini early in readiness for the Sunday!"

Anyone commenting on THIS POST will get added to the blog list (and on mine too if you ask). Feel free to do something similar on your own blogs - as the word spreads, more and more bloggers can be involved!.

Eclectic Gentleman Tabletop Gamer - Pulp Citizen
Four Colour Super Minis - Rob
Fantorical - Blaxkleric
Mike's Random Wargaming Meanderings - Mike C
Saturday Mornings - Ivor Evans
28mm Victorian Warfare - Michael Awdry
Miniature Mayhem - Terry Silverthorn
ANYTHING BUT A 1! - Clint
Cheaphammer!!! - Kieron
The Wargame Addict - Wargame Addict
Lead Reckoning - Fred Jackson
da Gobbo's Grotto - Wargaming blog - da Gobbo Grotto
Never Mind The Jankers - Roy Williamson
Paintbrush and Superglue - Matt

It will be a giggle.


My plan is for six miniatures a week for a total of thirty. There will be a mix of survivors and zombies (should I say walkers or would that be sacrilege?)