Zomtober Part 5 - the Big Reveal

Well here we are, the end of October, and with it the fifth and final week of this year’s Zomtober.

This means that, first of all, I need to post a zombie or survivor for the week. Here we go:

Muuuuuuuurrrrrr...andatory

It’s another zombie, one that I’ll admit I rushed, but it’s good to get a model off the enormous pile of unpainted models I own. The photo hasn’t come out very well for some reason, but he’s lost all the skin from his face, which is a nice gory detail for a zombie.

Anyway, with that out of the way I can move on to the main event, my somewhat over-hyped secret project. It turns out that it’s this:

Home sweet home

 A post-apocalyptic outpost, made from a toy caravan!

 I’d been planning to do something with the toy caravan for a while, and the idea hit me that might it would make a nice post-apoc terrain piece. I’ve tried to be fairly agnostic about what type of apocalypse this fits into, so hopefully I could use this for Terminator as well as zombie games.

Ideal for the young professional wanting to start out on their own and avoid being dragged off by cannibals.

So, some details. The inspiration for this is kind of a combination of a location in Fallout: New Vegas (a ranger station made of caravans) and the image of Andrea standing guard on top of Dale’s RV in the Walking Dead.

 My thinking is that this is someone’s hideout. They’ve wheeled it into position amongst some jersey barriers for some extra protection, and welded on whatever bits of junk they can find to block the windows and make things a bit less exposed.

Rusty corrugated iron always adds a touch of class

On the roof, there’s a sniper nest - a chair, a table (which I’m particularly pleased with - it’s a warhammer goblin shield with some legs made from offcuts of MDF and looks a lot like rattan garden furniture) and a bucket (from an old model train kit I’ve had for decades) for... sanitary purposes. There’s also a mattress in case things get bad enough that the roof is a better option than sleeping inside.

Great facilities for al fresco dining

The roof is accessed by a fencing section propped up as a ladder, and protected with barbed wire, which was a bugger to paint.

Overall I’m pleased with the result here, and I might be tempted to add a few more bits to it in the future. I think it’s versatile enough that it might make it to the table more than once, too.

All that said, I think it can sensibly only count as one model for accounting purposes, so doesn’t have a massive impact on my totals...

Painted: 161
Acquired: 160

Woo hoo! I’m back to a positive score! Admittedly I could have painted one model on the first of January to get to the same point, but still!

Zomtober goes 4th

I've had a bit of a trickier time of it this week. I've not had a much time with the paintbrushes as I'd have liked, so I had to quickly knock out a survivor so I could keep up with the rules. Here he is then...

I've got a gun! And I'm not really sure how to use it!

I'm not particularly thrilled with this model, to be honest. The pose came out kind of weird, for one thing (this is the only angle to photo it from that doesn't look odd) and I was rushing it so the it's not the best paint job I've ever done. 

Still, it meets the rules, and it's good enough for the tabletop, so that'll do!

Next, I've now established a tradition of showing infuriatingly uninformative pictures of my work-in-progress secret project, so here's one for this week.

It's the aesthetic appeal that really draws readers to this blog.

If you can't work out what I'm doing by now, I don't really think I can help you.

Right then, I've painted another model, so the counter ticks inexorably on...

Painted: 159
Acquired: 160

Oooh, but it's tense.

Zomtober part 3

Zomtober's third Sunday is upon us! Let's see what I've come up with this time.

First of all, I needed to follow the rules and get a zombie or survivor painted. I decided to go with a zombie this time, and found this one lying around...

Mmmnnnurrrgh.

I think this is a Studio Miniatures one. I'm fairly sure Kieron gave me a sprue of these, some years ago. I decided to try and give this one a "hospital" look. I think really it should have short sleeves for infection control reasons, but I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that this doesn't have much effect on zombie plague either way.

Second, for reasons even I don't fully understand, I painted a portaloo (port-a-potty for the Atlantically challenged).

No reason to think you won't still get
caught short after the zombie apocalypse.

This is one of a set of two that I got from Fenris Games at some point in the distant past. It's a nice enough little piece of sight-blocking terrain, and it fits zombies as well as anything else, so there you go.

Finally, it's time for another frustratingly inconclusive glimpse of my overhyped secret project:

I feel like the Mastermind theme should be playing.

If that doesn't key you in to exactly what's going on, then frankly, nothing will.

Right then, what's that done to the scores? Let's find out...

Painted: 158
Acquired: 160

Almost back at "no impact whatsoever", so that's going well!

Zomtober Week 2

We’ve reached the second Sunday in October. If you don’t believe me, go and check a calendar. I’ll wait. 

As you’re still reading, I’ll assume you’re in agreement vis-a-vis the date (although wait until you realise how many weeks there are until
Christmas, that’s going to blow your mind) and therefore will be happy for me to present my work for the second week of Zomtober. 

Here it is!

Wave your crowbar in the air like you just don't care

That’s right, I’ve just done a single survivor again, and I’m trying to hide that fact with unnecessarily verbose blog posting. 

He’s another plastic Wargames Factory fella. I dithered around what colour to do the jumpsuit, but in the end figured that a prisoner was more use than a mechanic for future games. He also doesn’t have a gun, which tends to be unusual with these models, so he’d fit nicely with the rioters I bought at great expense over six years ago and have yet to paint. 

So, I’ve met the rules of Zomtober for another week, and knocked another model off the to-do pile, both of which are good things. However, my real aim for Zomtober is to complete a secret project! That’s moving fairly nicely, so here’s a bit of a teaser - what could this be all about?

Concrete proof of something or other

One last thing then - my painting total for the year. With another survivor done, that can tick along ever so slightly...

Painted: 156
Acquired: 160

I’m now painfully close to having made no dent whatsoever. So that’s... good, maybe?

Anyway, stick around for next week, who knows what might happen?

Zomtober kicks off

October is here, and that means it's time for Zomtober to start!

As ever, the rules are simple - post about a newly painted zombie or survivor every Sunday throughout October. 

So, my first Zomtober post this year is also simple. A single survivor...

This is one of the Wargames Factory apocalypse survivors, that I've had assembled for a long time but never painted. He was a very easy paint job, which was nice as otherwise I think I'd have fallen at the first hurdle and failed to make the first post...

Conveniently, getting another model painted also nudges my painting totals for the year in the right direction, so here's where they stand at the moment...

Painted: 155
Acquired: 160

More purple stuff, but at a different scale

As I mentioned in my last post, I've bought a fair amount of Dropzone Commander stuff recently. Seemed like the next thing to do was start painting it, so here we are.

Assuming anyone is still reading by this point, let's have a look at what I've done.

First of all, half a dozen of these fellas:

Stompy stompy, blasty blasty

These are Ronin - armoured battlesuit things. At some point in the future, everyone seems to be agreed that armoured battlesuits will become vital. Not quite sure why that should be the case, but there we are. This version is good because it can appear from being transported and shoot stuff in the same turn, which most things can't normally. So that's nice.

Continuing the "things that are apparently a good idea in sci-fi" theme, we have a walking tank!

More stompy stompy, more blasty blasty

This is a Coyote Command Walker. I feel quite safe posting this here even though I'd normally hide it until it makes it onto the table. This is because I've been bemoaning the lack of one of these for so long that no one would believe I didn't buy it anyway. This is good in the game because it's a lot tougher than most things in my army, and also because it has an ejector seat, so the commander inside can survive for a bit longer when it is inevitably wrecked around the mid point of turn 2.

There we are then, short and sweet, but it all adds to the numbers...

Painted: 154
Acquired: 162

I'm planning to do Zomtober again this year! I didn't do it last time round (in fact I'm not sure when I did last do it) but I've got plans for this one, so keep watching here...

Plagued by Value

It's been a difficult few weeks for my goal of painting more models than I acquire in 2017.

The problem has been Dropzone Commander. It's a great game, but for some time I've struggled to do well at it. Because I'm an excellent workman, the issue has obviously been my tools, specifically the lack of a solid core to base my army around.

This nagging feeling that I could do better at the game if I just spent more money left me very receptive to a series of surprisingly good offers on Shaltari models. I'm not sure why these all came at the same time from different sellers, but the upshot is I've added 41 models to the pile. On top of that, I ended up with 3 freebie models at Partizan, so all told my "acquired" total has increased by 44. This isn't exactly what I had planned.

Fortunately, I had a creative solution, made available by Hawk Wargames' other offering. As you can't miss if you've read my blog at all recently, I've been building up my Dropfleet Commander fleet, so first of all I added another 3 frigates, to round out a couple of groups:

3. That's a start

These are pretty small, but I thought I could go smaller. So I took things down a level with some bombers...

3 + 12 = 15. Getting better

This both improved my numbers, and guaranteed that people would complain that these "don't count" as models. I found both to be pleasing, but I thought I could go further with both, so I went to the fighters:

3 + 12 + 15 = 30. That'll do!

These can't sensibly be described as anything other than Very Small. Their diminutive nature allowed me to rattle through them very quickly, and I suffered only temporary blindness as a result, which was nice.

So, what's the end result of all that on my numbers?

Painted: 147
Acquired: 162

Certainly not the direction I'd have liked it to take, but I'm only 15 models away from evening things up again. I have some of the Dropzone bits on the go now, so hopefully it won't take me too long to close the gap. On the other hand, recently an excess of real life has limited my available painting time, so there's still a reasonable chance that I run out of year before I get things back on track.

Oooh, it's tense!