A letter from Joe!

Hey again guys!


today, when I've came home, a nice little envelope was waiting for me, all the way from US of A! Thanks for the decals Joe. And don't worry, they haven't came a day too late. My private life is crumbling down to the foundations at the moment and it made my day a bit :). I can't wait to get my TAG minies now, I'll jump on SWAT guys right away and will do my best to make sure those decals look as good as possible!

Hobby wise, again, I can't really do too much. I planned on painting mini me for Shelldrake's campaign, but I need to catch some sleep first. Maybe tomorrow, I really planned to have him finished before I come home.


Well, hope you guys are all right, I will probably post some ideas for my campaign settings next week and after I get home, I'll have enough time to double time the project, should start the campaign itself by august (pretty blind shot at this one, I have no idea how long it will take to get everything up and running :P)

Cheers,
Mathyoo

Not even an update post!

Hello,

just dropping by....its a working weekend this week, and I wouldn't even be home if I wouldn't have to rush here and finish some of the work for the faculty. Madam was not satisfied with the work I've put into her little paper, so I had to fix some things. I still, obviously, can't do much, because libaries are closed on the weekends, and I am on a limited time, but well, I hope this time she'll be satisfied enough to let me be.

Otherwise, I got some tan, I got some bruises, I eat shitty food and I won't be sleeping much next week due to night watches...can't remember what is the right word here. Its about 4 people spending the night awake, 2 hours each, to make sure everything is as it should be, and if, say, fires would start, to get the alarm sounding and all. That is nothing special by itself, but we have 8 guys and 7 days. I don't know who is the mastermind behind this, but it  takes from 6-8 hours of sleep away from  each us (depending on 4 or 3 days of duty) this week. That is one night. Ah well, why bother...16 days and Im as free as a bird!

I don't even have time to check the forums, I will be home tomorrow and will try to check those. I will run over the new blog posts to check the pics, you'll have to excuse me for not taking time to go over them properly and comment today!

Have at least as much fun blogging as I have kilometers to cross walking, and see you next weekend!

Mantic Hasslefree Adventurers unboxing

Hello guys!

On thursday, my package from Wayland games arrived. In it, there were Hasslefree zombie hunters in mantic case (more on that curiosity later) and two "loads", an old couple. Missing was a strip of greenstuff that I've ordered and which I will run out of very soon. This makes me sad, I was really looking forward to it. I was just warming myself up for converting some mantic zeds  and giving them a bit more modern clothes. This does give me an excuse to buy more stuff next time they will have a free shipping thingie, hehe.

 Here is the pic of the things as I got them:

 And old woman, an old man and a huge "carry case". Second pic shows you the other side of the case, if you're interested in some fluff. Let me ask you to pay attention at the lower paragraph on back side "...please do not eat them." So, those are miniature figures, not miniature bacon. Keep that in mind!

When I've ordered the adventurers, I though they are from Hasslefree. Sure it said it comes in a "mantic case", but I didn't think much of it. I even went to check minies I get in the box on the list of hasslefree producs (to avoid any double buying in future :P), and found them all... except "Kenny"  from the case was called "Ken (b)"...or did I? Read on, I'll explain you everything.  However, first thing that came to my mind when I saw the case up close was "wow that ain't painted too well". Don't get me wrong, its nicely painted, above my skill, but still, I've expected something more...artistic? And whole case is much more "meh" from up close.

 After I've opened the case, here's what I saw:

...and it all made sense, looks like Mantic and Hasslefree teamed up. I went to check the Mantic's page and even read how at least one mini in each box (you also have some kids, which I'd like to get and two boxes of females, which are not what I'd want at the moment. At least not the "soldiers" one, they're all the same, hehe).
Included in the box were 4 bases and a "mantic point". Got to find those from the zeds, too. Not sure where I've put them so they wouldnt get lost -.-

Here are all the minies put in a row. Remember, hunters from hasslemantic and old couple from hasslefree. Second mini from left had his barrel broken. I guled it on and my optimism vanished after 3 sec when it fell of and got lost somewhere in all the cuts from cleaning the miniatures. As you can see, Tony guy (the first from left) is huge. And Kev is kinda small. I know he is supposed to be based on the sculptor, Kev White himself, but still, it really is a small mini. So, he has to be perfect to represent me, hah! To be honest, I am 178 cm tall and I call that average (which missus finds funny), but Im skinny enough to look smaller. Unless I find a better miniature, I think civilian version of Kev (with an axe!) will be my alter ego in the campaign. The pose of that mini is just sick...so good. But I am not a katana guy and pistol is "meh"...ah well, more on that once I get him!

I think this picture is good enough so you can play a little game with me! None of the 4 minies is unavailable at Hasslefree's, but they are kind of converted. Spot the differences and post them in the comments below!

What did you say...how do I know they're from mantic? Well, check the slotta tabs, silly! On pic above you can see they all have "hasslefree" written on the tab. And on the other side... :

If you wondered, miniatures came with lots of flash and mould lines. They're awesome sculpts, but crappy molds. Was more of a hasslemuch than hasslefree job, cleaning them up! But I did it once I was done, I had to admire the detail again. Actually, every time I grab them, I just have to watch how cool those minies are. Really awesome. I have much lower standards, to be fair, but it is still nice to have few of the top miniatures.

Here are some more pics of the minies. I will base my old couple once I get a hold of some 20mm bases, as 25mm seem too big for them...well, at least for the lady.

A

I've also took some size comparishon shots and another shot of the redhead from previous post:

Mantic-HF, Mantic zed, Mantic-HF Kev (Looks just like me, doesn't he? :P), WGF Zed, Urban war male, Mantic-HF Ken and Grant, Urban war female

And for the end, some close ups for scale and the "bonus" redhead:

I hope this was helpful at least to the guys who, as myself, were unavare of "Mantic-HF" deals!

And here is a hint for those, interested in an old couple: Click me softly!

Thanks for reading,

Mathyoo

First survivors spotted!

When I bought my Urban war female militia with pistols, I've got one guy instead of girl. I wrote about it to Urban war, and after quite some time (my mail went in their junk, but the guy apologized like 3 times or so :P), I've got it. It was one of my favorites, but isn't any more. When my brother and I played On the road scenario (short report with few findings to follow some other day next month, when I won't have time to do anything but want to keep posting), he was playing with those 3 miniatures. The "lost girl" was his sheeple, because he voted her the ugliest :P.

To show you what I mean, here are two pictures of my (first!) 3 survivors:

They don't have the names yet, but when we played they were named Tanya, Sonya and Alex(andra). There is no extensive thinking behind the pickings. We wanted to name them for the laughs and my brother figured the first one (so Tanya) looks like a russian (no offense here ;) ) so they were all Eastern Europeans. From left to right:
Tanya wears red and black combination and is my hands-down favorite from those three. I've tried to give her latex boots an imitation of gloss, but failed. Did gloss varnished her, tho, so half work done there! I hope you can see she has a patch over her eye. It looks uber cool to me, and no, it wasn't planned. I made a lifetime mistake of trying to paint the girl's eyes. My hand shook and I blew half of her face. So I just made her a patch, problem solved. She has the best face for it, from the 3, so I can call myself pretty lucky. As most of the figures, she is dressed in short skirt, to confuse the living and some kind of lether jacket.
Sonya, in the middle has black and red combination as well, but I've gave her green skirt and blonde hair. We don't want them all to look identical now, do we? Nothing else special, you can see the grey dots at the eyes, I am not trying to fix that anymore! I could do more work on her belt, but the thing is, I was working for 3 days on those 3, because I lack the time (lots to do by the end of the week :( ).
Alex is the one that came late. You can see she is quite muscular, which isn't weird, considering she carries this huge pistol. I wanted to get more constrast between her top and pants, but kind of failed. I did gave her red all star converse shoes, which are quite a lovely touch!

Let that be all for today. I am surprisingly brief, but honestly, I've been typing for 3 days now about IAEA and intelligence's role on countering terrorism, so I hate my keyboard a bit at the moment, hehe.

I could also tell you I got drafted a little "thinking post" for my campaign...as said I will post it some day next month and it will include few short ideas and a to-do list (very shortened, I may add) before I start my campaign. Currently, I am searching the net for suitable miniatures for the heroes to-be.




Cheers,
Mathyoo

Altering Mantic zombies

Well, Mantic's zombies are okay. They're cheap, plastic, come in big boxes and nicely detailed. I, to be honest, prefer Wargames factory zombies, because they're modern and not as big (mantic's are heroic, probably to fit with GW's style). But WGF's are not nearly as nice.

As you can read in my review, you get 10 (or in my case, 11) sprues, 3 (or 4) zeds per sprue. That surely allows you for MILLIONS of combinations, with different arm (yes, only one), torso, legs, head, different angles etc etc. But the cruel reality is, they still look all the same. Rougly one third has arms stretched out, chasing things, 1/3 has one arm lift up, pointing left, like signalising, 33.3% are bowed forward like they're puking or at least saying hello to Japan. You can make some crawlers, but those are all the same, too. And making a crawler leaves you with torsoless legs, which isn't too zombific. I mean, no brains = no walking dead. And what you get there is a walking spine. I made one and won't do it anymore. I did more crawlers, which leaves me with spare legs.  Again, keep in mind I like mantic and keep in mind that even as I prefer WGF zombies, story is the same. Plastic zeds are anyways more or less meant for bulking the horde and if you are a beginner, as myself, buy 1 box of each, add a box of mantic ghouls and youre at 80 zombies or more, all for, what...a bit over 50 pounds? It is a good way to get you started. That was my point.
   So, to cut the chatter, and show some pic, what have I done so far?

I went by the book (NMRIH) and I've decided to make some special zombies that I could use in my game. Ladies (any ladies out there? At all?) and gents, I present you....


The howler:

The howler is a zombie that...well, howls, and was actually made by mistake. I was sick of my zombies being bent forward, so I cut the torso on two pieces. Then I picked the smaller piece and reversed it (front is at back). I glued on the rest and Bob is someone's uncle :P. I filled the little gaps that appeared with some green stuff. I even put his head in this position totally unawared. So, he will be played as zed, as rager, or, if I, master of his soul, decide that way, a howler.

The tongue guy:

The tongue is a zed that grabs you with a tongue and beats you up...or something. I haven't played the game (Left for dead, if Im correct?), so this was a new kind of zombie to me, but as it was a question of cutting his lower jaw, putting a wire in his mouth, coating it in putty and shaping the cut jaw ( I saved his original one but lost it before I managed to finish the tongue. Plus I think I wouldn't use it as it would end up awkward. Thats all what it is to this zombie. So, few minutes of work and voila, you got yourself a special zed!

The shambler:

The shambler isn't a special zed by himself...but the thing is, all Mantic zeds look way too...hmm...active? So, what I did was I took the both-hands-in-the-air zed and I've cut them. Yes, sir, just chopped'em right off! I cut them so they could be positioned at different angle, and here he is, a sad zed. I even put his head looking down...it is a hard life with no friends around :(.

Here is another pic, so you can see he really is sad...or confused. It depends on level of your humanity:

The crawlers:

You are correct! The crawlers crawl. I build one with repositioned arm and showed him few posts back. Hes nothing special so I haven't included him here. This one is different. I was thinking...I don't want him to hold head nor hand, so I chopped his hand. Then I figured, he's a crawler, he had to get thorn apart, no? So I've chopped his jaw (tongue test!) and added some extra guts. The tongue would probably get ripped off, but it looks cooler that way, hehe.

The second guy is a WIP and a more complicated. The idea was, I'd sculpt him legs, so we could say he got hit by a car or fell from the roof or something, and broken them. I used miliput to see how it is like and I am not satisfied. Miliput gets dusty, kinda like DAS putty, while greenstuff is more stretchy. I had it mixed so I've made the basis for extra work from it. I will use the rest to sculpt some random scenery. As you can, hopefuly, see from the pic, it's a failed concept. And idea that got smashed by my skills, etc etc. His torso was so highly angled, it actually looks weird. his legs came out short. I made him a bit..."heavier" and after few layers of GS, I hope he will look a bit more decent, because I really liked the idea, lol. Well, more sculpting practice!

I also went on and tried to sculpt a T-shirt on one of mantic zeds, to get him dressed up, too many chest showing around. But well...I am not sure I will do that too many, and will jsut keep them fantasy-styled. Maybe called them patients :D




As it goes for other "special" zeds, I am missing (out of top of my head), a brute, a fat zombie and a smart one. First two will probably come from Tengu's models, but I will probably give it a try at sculpting, too. Brute is just bulkied zed and fatty is my extra legs I was talking about + blob of putty. Sounds easy, just like the crawler from the last pic :P.  I still have no plans for making the smart zed, but might do it when I get struck by an idea. 

Well, thanks again for looking, thanks for 2 thousand views and feel free to comment.

Playing the game!

Hello, after I had my roads built, I obviously had to play the game!

First, I picked supply run scenario, set it all up and quit playing it quite soon, way too complicated for my tired brains, lol. Then I went for "defend" scenario. Pretty basic, zombies came close to your stronghold, you have to kill them. Seems easy. I rolled to see how many zeds will attack the stronghold. Got 37 (no new would be generated), counted my zombies = 25. Yikes! I need to build more...badly. I just played with 25 then. I rolled random weapons for survivors, had a sniper, a rifle and two large caliber (Bad ass, whatever you want to call them) pistols.

Here is their last stand:
You can see surivors on top of the store and behind silver car on the parking lot:

 "Snipers" view...undead! So many! Oh my...

 Zacks closing in. You can see them clustering on the right, under the "rifle" girl...poor lost souls, unable to reach our heroes!

 Zombies reaching two survivors taking cover behind a car:

The horde, stretching arms towards some fresh braaaaains:

 

 The group two - only 1 zombie made it to the melee, sniper on the rooftop was of great assistance:

Got no more pictures, but the group on the ground ran around behind the store, climbed on truck and helped group on the rooftop kill the rest of the zeds - Mathyoo survived and won, yay!

I am slowly getting used to rules, acutally really simple once you get in. I need more survivors, here I rolled for weapons because all pistols becomes boring fast. REALLY need more zombies. So bad, I've ran and assembled some just after I've finished the game. And I need peace. I played on our dining table, which mean family members kept coming here mocking me about being a child...unaware of the fact, I am just training for the future, lol!

I will also leave my 6 zeds sculpts aside for now and will try to sculpt a fat and a strong guy from Mantic "left overs" (when you make a crawler you're left with legs and spine, which is much "meh", so I can use legs to build something else. Or something, considering my skills lol.

And I have to check Shelldrake's home rules again, twist them a bit and start using them to make zeds act as I think they should, being relentless and dumb....oh and attracted by gunfire, thats just too good to pass :P

Oh, talking about Shelldrake (I've written upper part of the post before I left this week)  - I found out I got unfollowed on your blog again...I am not sure what's the point, but I am following again now, lol.

I've also been to Vienna on "school trip" - I don't know how to call it to sound more mature, but we went to UN HQ Vienna and OSCE HQ...so that was all professional. Those were both okay, but the trip has payed itself back as I went checking the surroundings of hotel and found GK (or something) shop - I was hoping for some cheap cars (saw none...no cars at all), but I did got myself a shinny nice, big-potted X-27, or, the holy Tamiya Clear red. This big pot should last me for a while, so I've only picked one. Got to fix my zombie sextet tomorrow and should've paint moooooar! :D

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions...

Hello,

after I got rules on wednesday and played for first 10 minutes, I got this need to get the streets done as soon as possible. Paper was not enough!

So, I've decided it was enough of thinking (I was thinking if I should keep 2.5 cm spare on each side of the tiles or push road to one edge, thus giving me more space to make street parkings later on), and I had to do something. And I did.

I took out the tiles and started drawing the outlay. I've decided to divide 30x30 cm tiles like this: 2.5cm spare (mostly for fences to box in the parking lot, but also for flowers, or just random things), 5 cm sidewalk, 15 cm lanes (1 7.5 wide for each direction), 5 cm sidewalk, 2.5 cm spare.

Then I cut one tile on 6 straps for sidewalk. This gives me enough for 3 tiles, so I need 4 tiles of cork for 3 tiles of road.

I've put it on the board, to see how good I've cut it:
You can see I got sharp corners. I was planning on rounding them, but that would be pretty hard. And cutting round shapes with in cork...I was afraid I might do more damage than good. Nobody really drives on those roads, so there is no real problem, hehehe.

I went on with gluing, just used dilluted PVA. After I had all done, I put some intellectual weight on them, just to make sure bond is good. There was a little bit wrapping, but nothing really bad. I hope books didn't move any of the sidewalks, because that would end up bad.

I have left it to dry over night and went to apply sand next morning.

 After I managed to get the sand on (notes to self: apply in patches on bigger surfaces, let REALLY dry), I went on with painting blakc paint. I took three coats. Above is a picture of my workstatio nin my room. The thing is it started raining and I had to move inside. I strongly advise you keep things outside, all the sand that chipped from the tiles made my room my own little desert!

Picture below has just a (blurry) close up on the road tiles:

After the tiles were sufficiently black, I went on with grays. Sorry for the blurry pictures again, it was all messy and I had to take a pic and work on ASAP :P. So....the firs, I had sidewalks pretty dark. That wasn't good enough, so I went with ligher gray all over them. Here is before / now picture to see if I made a right decision:

 After a while, I saw I was drybrushing light grey too much over the roads. I gave roads a knock-back wash of dilluted black paint. Did same for the sidewalks, so you don't get blinded by all the brightness:

Next I went to paint some lines and such. I wanted to include some yelow paint in, just because I like it. Didn't want to do it too much, so I went for border lines only. Below you can see all nine tiles put together to form 90x90 cm square. That is 1.5cm short of 3x3 feet, but thats unnoticable. Here, you can see I didn't left any of the tiles blank. Those that don't have main street on them, have a strip, 7.5cm (so 1 lane) wide, of local roads. I am not happy with the rest of the free space painted. Its only greys and such, but I think I should go with green, could also use those as a rural roads then. Well, that's done is done, I only had black and grey paint (yup, 2 paints for all you see (minus white, red and yelow thingies), just mixed different amounts of grey in black and voila. 

 Here is a close up on a "detail". I've designated this square (otherwise identical to 4 others) for my box store, no-parking zone is there to give the space for loading docks. Check few posts back, where I've shown you the store - it has 2 openings on the back for storage. Don't mind my fabolous skills for making an even cross -.-

 Here is a close up on 3 tiles, two roads and a parking lot. I've played a bit, made one parking slot for disabled. Apart from color it is no different from others, all are 5 cm wide (because 7.5 seem too wide, nobody is going to park a bus here). Parking slots are 10 cm long, so you can see how I channeled the drive-in to allow for extra space needed. I now also reminded, I wanted to draw a disabled stickman on the parking slot, but will fix that some other day.

Well, that is it for now, those nine tiles allow for quite a variety of table set-ups. I will make curves one day, but for now, I think that is good enough. The bad side about mixing paints is, I have no clue how I will be able to make another tile just like those. To be honest, I was just slapping paints on, didn't think too much.

I wanted to seal it with matt varnish but it is raining outside and I am a chicken when it comes to spray paints. That varnish is my only can so far, I've even painted black by hand.

Overall I am pretty satisfied with how it turned out, but I'd change those areas of nothing to something nicer, marks are not the best etc...but it is my first board after all!

Now, while I wait I might as well go build some extra stuff, either zombies, "Joe's" fences ;), jersey barriers and some other junk to make the board look better than it is, heh.

Hope you've enjoyed!

Mathyoo