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

Iron Ivan Games - No More Room in Hell review

Hello guys,

today I got my copy of Iron Ivan Games' No more room in hell book. For those that don't know, it is a rulebook that (I copy) "allows you to create a group of characters amidst the end of the living world...and the start of the living-dead world."

Before I start anything, I would like to stat that I have never posted review of the rulebooks before, and I hope I won't mess anything up, regarding the copyrights.

The rulebook is 80 pages long soft-back book, A4 size, which I, guess, is pretty common. The pages are stapled together, so the book won't fall apart as easily as some of the other rulebooks I own. I will dress it in plastic "shirt", just to add to its protection.

To play the game, you'll need D10s (it says at least 20, which means I'd need more, hehe), some colured tokens, a scatter dice and, being a miniatures game, miniatures and some terrain.

I haven't read trough it all yet, but there are two thing that I've learned from start: a) it has some minor typing mistakes, like some parts not being bold that should, I found price for 1 weapon missing on one chart (but you can look it up in other, so there is nothing really wrong with it)...so general little mistakes that appear after someone has printed the book. Nothing too dramatic. The second thing is extensive use of humour. And I love it! Apart from random jokes, they have a funny way of naming phases. So, movement phase becomes Fearful footing and, for example, shooting phase is named "Gruesome gunplay".

Rulebook is somewhat short, as I said, it only has 80 pages, but it covers pretty much everything you'd come up with. It covers:

- Survivors
There are 3 kinds of them, the badass guys, the badass' friends guys and the walking diner types. The first type has the most wounds (called Survive! points, to keep up with the phases namings), can carry the best weapons and the most equipment. The latter, the poorest are there just to provide Zeds with someone else to eat but your hero!

-Weapons and equipment
There are rules for various melee and range weapons and equipment, ranging from pistols, shotguns, heavy machineguns  to rocket launchers, flamethrowers and molotovs. Melee ranges from "throwing starts" (shurikens if you're a ninja!), to brass knuckles and riot shield. Equipment ranges from walkie talkies, radios and such to ballistic armour and "anti bite" armour.

- Zombies
There are MANY varieties of zombies in the book. There are (using mostly my namings to keep it simple :P):
* The (I quote) "slow moving re-animated dead (what us diehards refer to as Romero Zombies, the one true Zombies if you aks me)" - so, ordinary shamblers that die only by destroying the brains.
* The fast zombies (that aren't really zombies, Ragers, or, in this game, Runners) - they move much faster, driven by hunger, but you can kill them as any other human, so they die faster. Like really die, not die-to-live-some-more die.
*The tongue zombie, that uses his tongue to pull poor souls to him. I can imagine myself converting this one right now! Those are such a badass zombies that they're uber rare.
*The fat zombies, whose only purpose is to get close, burst, cover you in their putrescine, efectively putting a spot light on the survivor for any other undead lurkers.
*The loud zombies, who's purpose is to call in more of his friends.
*The strong zombie, being just that - strong. A Hulk, you get the point.
*Crawler! My favorite since I bought Mantic zombies. Not because they'd be particulary interesting or anything, just because I have some, hehe.
*The brains guy. That is a specially smart zombie...hmm...think of him as of a student. Someone who act like he is the smartest guy around, but hes still just a zombie. He has some special rules, making other zombies get smarter and even use weapons.

-Psychology
 As we can all imagine, seeing a walking corpse is bad. Seeing walking corpse of a friend or loved ones, is even worse. The sight of your friend being a meal for the Zeds can get you to jump right in and let 'em have it or run away. Oh, your hero could alternatively wet himself...but that doesn't make him a hero anymore, does it?

-Vehicles
The book covers rules for vehicles, starting vehicles, using vehicles, shooting from vehicles, improving vehicles and so on. You can acutally use the book to play Mad Max games with leaving zombie part out.

-Campaign
My favorite part. It has various scenarios, tips and tables for story telling, limited ammo, limited food, limited nerves and so on. Campaign is written with 2 players versus zombies in mind, but you can just as well play alone.

I must say I am really happy I got this. Sure the book with its 80 pages doesn't cover all the thing that, for example, Two hour wargames' ATZ trilogy with around 300 does, but it still has pretty much everything. The positive side oh being shorter is price, I've got mine a bit cheaper from Maelstrom games store. Not that I am paid to advertise or anything, but they send the book with free shipping anywhere on the globe.

_____
Now that I got the rules, you can definately expect a post about getting all those various zombie types, by either conversion or buying particular models. And I will play some games shortly, to learn the rules. I will post one or two report in few days. If nothing else, so someone can check If I understand the rules correctly, hehe. And, last but not least, I can work with preparations for my campaign!

Hope you found informations helpful,
Mathyoo

The "horde" grows

I got to chill now, I am spoiling you! As discussed before, cutting time for video games really gets more done (if anyone had any doubts!). I haven't got my rulebook yesterday, so I hope it comes today. Unfortunately, today is the day in the week I am gone for whole day, so it might as well come tomorrow. I will post a review of the rules as I get them. Then you can expect some test AARs, plans for campaign and so on! I will be gone for whole month in May, but I expect my campaign to start some time mid summer.

/random blabbering off

Still not even "H" of a horde, but here are some shots of my new 3 zombies that I've painted:

To try new things, I went with "pale" compared to "rotten". Greenish zombies always looked kinda funny to me, but now, I prefer them over the "pale" ones. Will try mixing both colours with next batch, I guess.

So, to the pics:

 On the picture above are the newest 3 zeds. Still haven't came to painting the eyes, but I should at least leave them black next time. The scientist (and not a docotor!) on the left wears ugly "lucky" shirt. Seems it didn't work. I gave him black pants because I didn't want to give him any weird colur. Didn't come out too bad. I had to gave him extra blood stains as he didn't seem to have any wounds. The guy in the middle has bad blood stain on the face (I hoped it would turn out better), but he has quite nice yelow vest. I've build it from orange brown, started adding yellow, then a bit white for final highlight. The third guy is nothing special, random couch potato. He has a paper bag or something on his base, to add a little variation.

 Here is my unded sextet. Not much, but well, can you point me to 1 man, who had something before he got it? :P

 And the back side. Just to show you some of the stains. Doctor scientist has a head wound, but I guess it had to be a light one, if he still walks!

 HOOOORDE APPROACHING! Here you can see, side-by-side the pale and the rotting zombies.

 And again, this time, to also show you how two of the same torsos can look quite different with different paint, some conversion and other hand.

Down below are single shots of zombies for Shelldrake's campaign, if needed:

I must say I enjoy painting those zombies more and more. Especially because anything works! It can be pale, it can be rotten, it can be grey, it could be tanned...if you mess something you just put some blood over it and voila! The worse you paint it, the zombier it looks! :P
You can see I've add a little (too much) blood on the bases. I guess roads could get dirty with undead shambling around!

Thanks for checking!
Matevž

Zombie town needs a name!

Hello guys!

For starters, progress check:
- Yesterday I've started painting some zombies, now I am struggling with my motivation, after I finish the bases, I will DOUBLE the size of my "horde". Sounds like big stuff, eh? Well, not if you go from trio to sextet!
- I found out ordering Tamiya clear red costs much, considering the postage. Due to all that complications, I've mixed some red, black and gloss varnish. So far, varnish doesn't seem to show itself, so I might try and varnish over the "blood" to get that gory effect. I will show minies tomorrow or some other day.
- Got myself some dice, nothing spectacular, I hope rules will be here tomorrow, but probably on tuesday.
- No progress with the city, but hey, a man can't do it all over night!

The main reason I am writing is because I would like to hear your suggestions about naming my city. I don't like to think about it as a "city", it needs some personalisation, hehe.

There are no boundaries, but I would like it to be somewhat unique. Gravesend, Mayhem city and Outbreak city are thus ruled out. It would be nice to have something that is at least by far connected with zombie apocalypse. So no gaming in "Hamburg"! My campaign will be set in fictional country where they speak bad english, if that helps. If anyone has strong attack of imaginations and originality, we could work out the name for the country, too.

I, so far, only came to "Autumn", after listening to the podcast called (hold your breath!) (here it comes...) Autumn!

I like it because it has this idea of something bad aproaching...you know "Winter is coming!" simbolics. Not too original, I guess. And it is kind of neutral, I wouldn't like to name my city "Catastrophe" or "Doomity" :P

As for reward...unfortunately I can only offer you my eternal gratitude and warm feeling someone gets as he reminds himself there is a struggle of life and death going on in city he named.

I would also be more than happy, if there would be such wish, to include mini you, or mini-your-identity in campaign / city.

I have actually written all my plans for campaign, but I've decided to show that at latter date. After I will get the book and will see the limitations, I will post my idea of campaign. For now, let me just say that I am planning for something special ;).

Thanks for help in advance,

Matevž

More WIP buildings

Hello,

last two days I've been working on the exterior of my buildings, to get things moving somewhat.

Here are the pictures:

The picture below shows you all the buildings I currently have. There is 1 bigger, 1 story house with a garrage, two little twin houses, an apartment block and a box store I showed few days back.

All I was doing these two days was actually building roofs and sticking matches around the buildings.
Here you can see close up on front and behind of the little buildings. They're supposed to be identical. Right doorway, however, has a bit dented step, i cut a bit too short again, and figured some variety could be nice. 

 A close up on zombeighors, having a little mornin' chat.

The mighty apartment building from front. There is an apartment down bottom, on first floor and on top floor. Top one is a bit smaller but has a terrace that offers a nice view of the town. Needs fencing, we don't want anyone to fall off, do we?

 The side of the building:

 ...and all the components:
You can see top floor, with little "box" for staircase, ground and first floor are basically identical, except for the fron doors, of course. The thinner section is for staircase, which I might or might not build once. It would be "snail" type, a little 5x5 cm "cube" that starts low and grows , you get it :P

 I will do some "garage" doors for delivery section of my box store: That is the "top" section, with two openings. In the "store" part, there will be glass doors. Or none, but you know, a man can plan. Naturally, floor plan is smaller than expected, so once I get to building shelves, I have to rethink my strategy.

 And for the end, the building that still looks quite small, but way too big compared to others, the "suburbian queen". building from front. Blue zed is in a garrage.

 The little variety:

 Here is the 3x3 board, using paper "testers". It looks funilly largely-small. Mostly small. I've only used cars from poundland, didn't bother finding the others, hehe.

 Most of the cars are too big. Especially the police and bus. Here, each lane is 5cm wide, plus 5 cm for sidewalks + 5 cm spare (each side). If you add a sidewalk, two police cars can't meet, and don't get me started about the bus.
I was thinking I would add another centimeter to each lane, and another half centimeter for each of the sidewalks. That half would be on half of the sidewalk and I would "plant" hedgerows, dividing sidewalk on two sides - for bikes and for pedestrians - as its done here, in a town close to me. Still don't have the picture, but I guess you could imagine.

The problem is, I lose 5 extra centimeters on each side. It leaves me with 3.5, which is still something...but i lose the simetry of 5. Its not something really disturbing, to be honest. And on the plus side, I would really like to see my bus drive around normaly.  The thing is, 5 is enough for other vehicles. How wide are the roads you guys are using?  And I would love to hear your opinions on that, don't want to start building a board and end up with something that I don't like.

Oh, and I've ordered some hasslefree minies, but more on that when they arrive! :P

Cheers,
Matevž