Red October Subs & Sandwiches

One of the things I decided I needed to add to my gaming collection is modern/post-apocalyptic buildings with interiors.  These are largely what all the scatter terrain I've been painting over the past couple of weeks will be populating.

About two or three years ago I bought a set from TT Combat that was 3 single floor store fronts with second floor apartments.  Unfortunately I assembled two of the buildings before I became aware of a problem (it's one of those 'now that I've seen it, I can't unsee it' things), there is no way to get from the first floor to the second floor.  For my third building I will be cutting out a hole in the ceiling/floor to accommodate a staircase but for the two I've already built I just decided to leave the second floor off.

I should also point out to anyone new to MDF scenery that it largely comes in two flavours; super basic having no interior detail but being amazingly inexpensive, and fully detailed but far more expensive.  All of the TT Combat buildings I got fall into the first category.  That may seem basic but the price was amazing and they can be dressed up with scatter terrain.

I actually tried something a little different this time and undercoated the building dark brown and then painted over top of that.  I was hoping to get more of a dirty worn look and that seems to have worked out fairly well.  I also decided to add a splash of colour and detail by wallpapering the interior walls, which I think makes the building look more like a real place and less like a model kit.

I took these pictures while I was waiting for the Mod-Podge on the paper to dry so I will probably still go back and dirty it up a bit.  I also kept the doors I cut off the building as I may use those as rubble or in another terrain project.

What are your thoughts?  For about $10 worth of kit and material an less than 2 hours work I'm really happy with this and using it as a template I should be able to get a reasonable collection of buildings done fairly quickly.

-Jay

Are those mattresses....sanitary?

I mentioned in my last post that after acquiring my 'fantasy' beds I had found some beds more appropriate to post-apocalyptic gaming.

A few years ago when I placed my first order for TT Combat buildings I grabbed a couple of their resin accessory packs which included these...gently-used mattresses.

These are perfect as they look like the exact bedding you find scattered around the capitol wasteland in Fallout 3.

My collection of scatter terrain is filling in nicely but hopefully on Tuesday I'll have time to finally complete a more sizable piece.

-Jay

Barricades, Scatter Terrain, and Objective Markers

Although I've still got a few miniatures I need to get painted in the next few days I've decided to take a short detour and get some modern/near-future/post-apocalyptic terrain done.  Traditionally I've done most of my gaming away from my home so my terrain collection has been relatively sparse for the amount of gaming I do.  With everything going on in the world right now I've been exploring solo miniature gaming a bit and it's definitely highlighted some shortfalls in my collection.  I'm reasonably well stocked for fantasy terrain but my modern/near-future collection is a little bit one-dimensional. 
The main things I wanted to get done over the next few days were some scatter terrain and one building with a detailed interior.  Today is the scatter terrain.

I've started with two of Mantic's Walking Dead All Out War scenery packs.  These packs are AMAZING and terrific value for money.  I highly recommend them to anyone looking for scatter terrain for any modern or near-future gaming.  The key features of the Walking Dead packs for me are that they are 'generic' real-world styled (so nothing to tie them to a specific game or even genre really) so they should work across every game I want to use them for, and being plastic they take paint well and should be very durable and hold up to regular use.

First up are the barricades.  The Walking Dead barricades are extremely well detailed without being cluttered or difficult to paint.  I also really appreciate that the sculptor put as much work into the backside of every barricade as they did in to the front facing side.

The thing I really liked visually about these barricades is that they have enough different materials and textures to be visually interesting without being too 'busy'.

Next up are the objective markers, which when not being used as objective markers can just be some clutter and window dressing for the tabletop.

The objective markers are nice (I have to come up with a better way to paint garbage bags though), with my one real criticism being that the backpack and the suitcase feel way too big and out of scale with the other pieces as well as the 25-28mm models they are meant to work with.  Having said that, having modeled representations of objectives rather than flat counters is a huge improvement and in my case (with two sets) I would only end up using them in games that required more than six objective markers.

I'm really happy with how all this stuff turned out and it looks good with pretty much any period appropriate models.

Next up is a single small building with some interior details!

And always please remember that The Walking Dead All Out War and many other great miniature games are available from your Friendly Local Game Store.

-Jay

Is anybody looking for a saviour?

Continuing with my "theme" for The Walking Dead, which at this point is just the 'No-Rick-Grimes-club' I've got three more survivors ready to put a stop to Rick's violent Ricktatorship.

For anyone following my posts but not familiar with the game there are themed factions other than Rick's Group but unfortunately due to the sequence of releases I have a hodge-podge of antagonists without a real theme.

First up I have my new leader (sorry Shane); Negan.

Negan is an absolute beast in close combat and has a leader ability that is fuelled by making an example out of his less worthwhile followers.

Sticking with that I needed to add some low point cost cannon fodder and luckily had two unaligned figures on hand.

Reggie came in the Shane pack.  I don't recall his role in the story but his role in the game will be a low cost figure that I can use to fill out a force.

Andy came in Negan's pack and will fill the same role as Reggie.  Oddly (odd to me anyway) Andy looks a lot like John McClane from the first Die Hard movie.  Unfortunately I didn't realise until I took a picture how pronounced the mold line around his head was.

Happily this gives me a few more options to build around if I play my next game before The Governor is released.

-Jay

Every good cop needs a partner

Now that I've finished my two larger boxes I've got 6 of the boosters for Walking Dead All Out War to work my way through.

Initially I just got a bunch of characters I either thought were cool (looking at you Ezekiel) or I picked packs that I thought would work well in multiple games.  Now that I'm getting ready to play it turns out I have a lot of Rick's group, which I don't really need for my next batch of games.  Having said that I did get one pack which  would be immediately useful and that's Rick's best buddy Shane.

Shane is an unaligned figure so he can be used with every faction, he's also got a leader skill so he can form the core of your group, and again he's just a cool survivor model overall.  One of the other things I really liked about the Shane pack is that although all the boosters come with 1 more zombie, Shane's pack actually comes with Zombie-Shane which is perfect.  In The Walking Dead when a character is killed they can come back as a zombie, so it's nice to have this figure.

In addition to painting Shane and his zombie version I went back and touched up two of the figures I had previously painted.  Somehow on my first pass through I completely missed painting Rick's badge on his jacket.  I also didn't like where I placed the blood and gore on Patrick's bat so I went back and added some.

I think my next Walking Dead paint plan will be to pull the zombies from all my other boosters and paint them all in one batch so I have enough zombies for when we step our games up to 300+ points.

-Jay

Woodbury cage fighters

After playing our first couple of games of Walking Dead All Out War yesterday my buddy Ash and I decided to go paint some more stuff and try some bigger themed scenarios when we get together next.

Ash is doing Rick's group and my original plan was to do The Governor and his men but given the current shortage of figure for that faction I may end up doing The Governor-and-others-who hate-Rick.  Having said that Ash did hook me up with two of the new members of the Woodbury faction; Eugene and Harold.

My recollection of the Woodbury period in the comics is vague but Eugene and Harold are two cage fighters who are less than friendly with each other (that's the spoiler-free version).  They'll give me some muscle and then maybe I can round my group out with Rick's disgruntled former partner Shane.

As part of their post apocalyptic cage fighting gear both of these guys have slapped on some crude armour made of old sports gear.  Eugene has some football pads on, while Harold has put on most of a baseball catcher's gear.

I really like the look and feel of these figures (especially Harold) as I feel they would fit as scavengers or raiders in almost any post apocalyptic setting.

-Jay

I'm not saying these guys are red-shirts, but.....

I've wrapped up the figures from the initial Walking Dead starter box.

The funny thing about the way the game is structured is that because you and your opponent will be playing two separate groups of survivors you'll need a fair number of  'filler' characters.  That is to say for every memorable character like Rick or Negan you'll need a bunch of John Doe's to fill out your force.

Every character in the game is based on a character from the comic but to be honest it's been so long since I read the comics that my knowledge of characters who don't also feature on the TV show is pretty poor.

Having said that one of the things I really like about these lesser known characters is that they will feel more at home in other games than someone as recognisable as Rick.

Today's additions are Derek and Liam.

So between my starter game and Road To Woodbury I now have 17 zombies and 7 survivors done.  That feels like a good start.

-Jay

Take your child to work day - APOCALYPSE EDITION!!

When Walking Dead All Out War came out I was super stoked about it and painted up the Road To Woodbury set right away so I could play the solo version of the game right away.

Fast forward to a year-plus later and I'm finally getting ready to play against a live opponent.  During my initial rush I painted a pile of zombies but the only survivor I needed was Brian Blake so I painted him and then kind of forgot about the rest of the survivors while I merrily went on adding zombies to my collection.

For my games this week I needed to get at least 4 more survivors done but if I get motivated to do some late night painting I might add a few of the survivors from the boosters as well (I'm thinking Shane and Andrea first).

This morning I painted Rick and son Carl.  The funny thing is as key as they are to the story and as good as they are in the game I initially felt no pressure to get them done because even if I wanted to use them in a game I have my Studio Miniatures versions already painted.

These figures continue to highlight what a great job Mantic did not only with the sculpting but the casting on these figures.  The Walking Dead figures are cast in a medium that seems to be somewhere between hard plastic and soft vinyl.  It's a bit soft but holds a high level of detail.  I really like all the figures I've gotten so far in The Walking Dead line and even if I don't play the game a lot I'm sure their figures will find their way into other games I'm playing as well.

-Jay

These are the zombies I passed on the road to Woodbury

I got a little swept up in painting Walking Dead models this weekend, I meant to move on to my Wrath Of Kings stuff but while I was waiting for some Teknes models to dry from being cleaned I decided to just start my next batch of 5 zombies.  Somehow "just start" turned into my painting all 5 zombies from the Prelude To Woodbury set in one sitting.

Having added these walkers puts me in a pretty good position for playing Walking Dead.  From what I've seen most (maybe all?) games are played on a 20" by 20" surface so I can't conceive of needing too many more walkers.  Going forward I don't think there will be any more big batches of walkers as for the most part I should be painting single walkers that come in the extra character boosters.

Alright...scenery and/or pig-men next!

-Jay

Walking Dead Survivors - The Governor, Sandra & Patrick

(apologies up front for the dodgy lighting)

After getting my first 12 zombies done for Walking Dead All Out War I finally started on my survivors last night.  Like most conventional miniature games survivors are grouped in factions that determine who sides with who, I actually ignored this and prioritised the 3 figures that are used in the solo play scenarios first.  So this batch of survivors doesn't include anyone from Rick Grimes' Ricktatorship.

First up; The Governor.  The Governor is also the first Walking Dead figure I've painted that does not come in the core game set.  There is an expansion called Prelude To Woodbury that includes The Governor and 5 more walker figures.  I wanted to get him done first because the Prelude To Woodbury set is designed for solo play and that means I can give the game a try some day after work this week.

The Governor is one of the figures that really anchors this game as being based on the comics rather than the TV show.  The figure is a picture perfect representation of The Governor from the comics but literally looks nothing like his TV counter-part.  I really like this model as he once again has some nice textures and has an extremely well sculpted and cast pistol.

Next up; Sandra & Patrick.  To be honest I don't really remember some of the stories from the early comics so the characters that come in the main box who aren't Rick & Carl I don't really remember at all.  Having  said that these are again some great 'generic' survivor miniatures and are the two figures used in the early 'how to play' scenarios.

Walking Dead All Out War uses a points system for choosing forces and like a lot of resources based force selection systems there will always be a place for lightly equipped B-list characters to round out forces after players have chosen their big flashy models.  I also suspect that for some of my other post-apocalypse campaign games figures like this will be ideal for when I go on a losing streak and need some cheap replacements for lost warband members.

It looks like after 3 days of painting I'm ready to play some games!

-Jay

"Walking" my way from skirmish to all out war....

Last night/this morning I finished up my remaining 6 zombies from the Walking Dead All Out War box game.

Overall I'm really enjoying these figures.  I know I've referenced this before but when I'm painting batches of models I really like it when they have nice texture detail without being overly busy and these models seem to be a great blend of that.

My next step is going to be splitting my painting between two different sets.  I want to paint the 2 survivors required for the 'learn to play' scenario in the core game set, but I am also going to paint The Governor who comes in his own solo play adventure/add-on.  Once those are done I'm going to get one of the scenery packs painted up and then I should be ready to give the game a try.

Its really rewarding to feel like I'm getting something done from start to finish in a relatively short period of time.

After this its time to hit Wrath Of Kings and start doing more pig-men for a different game.

-Jay

First six walkers for Walking Dead All Out War

A few weeks ago I got a copy of Walking Dead All Out War by Mantic Entertainment.  Before I get to my first batch of models I want to talk about the product itself a bit.

I've bought some Mantic stuff in the past and I've seen a bunch of their stuff that I hadn't personally purchased by way of my friends.  Based on my experience I had actually decided to pass on Walking Dead because I had not been satisfied with the models I had previously purchased.  When I saw Walking Dead in the shop the core game had a window in the front of the box showing  6 of the figures, which was a great choice because the models were fantastic and MUCH better than I expected.  At every turn as I went through the box (and 3 more subsequent boxes) I've gotten more and more impressed.  The game has solo play rules, which I thought was great.  In addition I didn't realise until I opened my fourth box that every zombie figure is unique, there are no duplicates in any box I've opened or from one box to the next.  So so far I have 19 unique zombie figures to add my collection!  Last (and probably least) someone at  Mantic decided that the figures integral bases should be the same diameter and thickness as a traditional 25mm slotta-base, its a bonus because it means they will blend in with my existing zombie and survivor models.

So far tonight I've managed to paint 6 zombies.

If I'm successful in not falling asleep in the next few minutes then I will hopefully finish another half dozen zombies tonight and then I can hopefully get my first three survivors done tomorrow.

-Jay