Defending the outpost!

Hey guys,


let me start with saying I simply DO NOT GET IT. I got this shiny sony ericsson something phone...no big deal, I like them plain and simple. This one is even recylced or something. Anyways, what the F-word? Seriously, we're in frikin 2012 and I can't simply plug the phone, copy the pics and be done with it. It took me AGES to get those pictures on the computer. Rant over, heres the blog post:



I've finally got around to playing a game again.  I've set up a table using my new sandbags and fences, I think I looks pretty okay, but there is still something missing...maybe some kind of foliage or something, I am simply not satisfied.

Well, to scenario. I've picked my probaby favorite scenario, pretty straight forward. Phantom group 47 was on a recon mission. They've barricaded themselves in two small buildings in suburbs. They are so called "Forward observation" post, protecting the flanks of much bigger opperation. The "Humanity restored" emergency government is running a cleaning operations in city centre, reclaiming the city and with it, a civilisation in this part of Unnamed State (US :P). The team has spotted a large horde of undead (a horde so large, I had to build extra zeds for this scenario!), approaching their way. They were ordered to hold their position AT ALL COSTS. They sure pack a lot of firepower, but experienced veteran of zombie war, grizzled lieutenant Ian "Shell" Drake has a second thoughts about the experience of their team.

Here is the team's composition (I've made Shell a shot caller so he can lead his team, everything else, except for primary weapons was rolled for. So, sheeple was just rolled badly :P):

The explanation of the team is below. They follow from left to right:


Lt. Ian "Shell" Drake - shot caller
GUTS - 10
GUNS - 8
FISTS - 7

Had to have 1 drawback skill. I've rolled 3 times in a row for a "fat bastard", which can only be taken for campaign play. I've then rolled a loner, which prevents him from joining any group, or lending his guts score to them. Which, of course, are the best you can get. Only for him now.

He is armed with an assault rifle and I've rollef for a second weapon - a club :D

pvt. Simonsky - sheeple

A sheeple represents the unnamed heroes, okay "heroes", in Phantom group 47, Simonsky is a greenhorn. It is his first mission and now that the problems are approaching, it might as well be his last. I've made his name up, nobody cares anyways.

GUTS - 7
GUNS - 5
FISTS - 5

His skill was decided by me,a weapons specialist, because he carries a light machine gun.

sgt. Johnny "Lord" Siwoc - back up

Lord has seen some action with Shell. His ancestors were fearsome Wikings, but he tends to hide that.

GUTS - 8
GUNS - 6
FISTS - 5

His previous experience granted him nerves of steel, so he won't be troubled if his mates die too much. Orders are orders!
Armed with an assault rifle, just as his BFF, Drake. Oh, and a spear. He is a wiking after all! HUZZAH!

pvt. Fan - sheeple

Fan is another greenhorn. He was recruited as the team went on their positions, so his fighting spirit is a bit low. He talks a lot and he told the team that he loves, what slovenians call "vampi" (tripe, the dish), so Simonsky calls him "Vampifan" now and then. I've really rolled high for his stats, which made him really bad.
GUTS - 4
GUNS - 5
FISTS - 3

Armed with an assault rifle (and underbarrel grenade launcher that I don't count as I don't have rules for it yet :P).


Here is the preview of the battlefield. It is 3x3 table and I think 3x4 would do better. Then again,  if zombies would be placed further back, noone would have a range to them, except a LMG, so if we rethink it, size might be just fine. Our heores are ready to defend themselves in barricaded green and blue buildings. Please do not ask me about tactical benefits of positioning an OP on the low ground. Lets say they just ran back here, and their main spotting post was on top of the minimart (half black building on north)

So, this is their little sandbaged outpost that they have to defend. Attacking are 41 zeds (I had to build 4 more, which equals 1 sprue of Mantics and 1 headless zombie that I had on used sprue. I don't like those, but well, I need 1 fast and I don't want to build 2 sprues of zeds :P)

We got Fan - Lord - Simonsky and Shell, from left to right.

 Above, you can see how splendid Fan shot his rifle on first round. To translate it to people, who don't know the NMRIH system, its a miss, and two jams. Or ran-out-of-ammo tests. The thing is, you'd have to do hard survive check (roll 5 or less on 2 dice) or your gun rans out of ammo. Sheeples only have 1 die for survive rolls, so they can't make it. That, according to rules, is because they're here to die. Sorry Fan.

 Above, you can see zeds moving forward, closing in on our desperate team.

 Below, you can see a horde forming. 8 zeds or more in a group makes a horde. Hordes are bad for your health.

 

 Not much happens in a "Defend the.." scenario. You defend, they come. You can't call in more zeds, so you just fire away all you got. Or do you?

Here is the result of second round of shooting. Blue for Lord, red for Simonsky. With 2 dice for survive! tests, Lord had a chance to fix his weapon. He didn't. Simonsky was out of his ammo, too. Looks like someone forgot to pack their 5.56x45!

 So, we got 3 guys out of 4 with no more ammunition on second turn. Could it get worse, you aks yourselves? Of course. It was "something" in the air for zeds, a roll of:

 (thats 10, not 0), made them extra hungry and allowed them an 8" move. This got them here:

 You can see they're closing in pretty fast. We got a group of 7 (not a horde, hah!), closing in on blue building and two hordes running around the fence to get to Shell the destructor. On top of the minimart, you can see the casualties. Yes, the guys killed something before they ran out of ammo. Except for Fan. He seems to dislike firearms.

Next activation comes and zeds engaged our brave heroes in melee:

At this point, team of 3 brave soldiers got scared. They failed their GUTS check, which means the lowest GUTS member had to roll on fear reaction table. It can get you anywhere, from frenzy to suicide. Fan, however, got fast legs and backed away from the attackers.

There was a bloody fight between Lord and some zeds. I am not sure how rules for melee work, so I just went 3 zeds in contact with the window where Lord was, against him. He won the fight. After all 3 were dead, I started next turn.
This time, zeds launched another attack, bringing Simonsky in. I left Fan behind, as if they didn't charge  him, because he ran awa...err...tactically withdrawn. GUTS check was failed again and it was Simonsky's turn to roll. He got frenzied, he saw all red and squeezed the trigger. DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA! DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA! Zeds fell in group...it was a bloody massacre! - Oh! No, wait. That would be, if he'd had any ammo. So nothing happened. Except they both died eventually. Zeds are cruel.

 And so did Shell, right after the two brave heroes. The zeds from blue house then attacked Fan. He failed the GUTS check, rolled on the table and ran away again. This time of table and probably all the way back to friendly forces.

 Well, this concludes the game. I still forget few things, so I just left the table set and I'll play again tomorrow. A different scenario next time. I am not sure I understand how melee works, and I think I should gave everyone another turn of shooting, because they should probably carry 1 pack of ammo. But I figured this might as well be for campaign play only, so I just went with the worst case scenario. It makes a bit more interesting play, hehe. Another problem with the melee is, I am not sure if Fan should get charged or not, but if he ran away, it made more sense to leave him behind. The rules are not written the best, or thats just me being a bimbo, but well, common sense works best for me.



There is some extra for you, Mantic zeds I've painted last week:

 The first 3, I spent hours working on their skin and ruined it with a wash. But they look better this way. A bit rotten.

 And crawlers. Oh, and that weird body-less thing. I really dislike that. But I love crawlers, so...here we have the walking legs :P

 A back shot of my conversion. The reason for unnatural pose of his legs is, that he has fallen from somewhere high. It might not look as good as I've planned, but I figured its funny.

 Thats it for today. I've also took pictures of the bodies and body bags and the things I was talking about last time, but I will show those next time. Can't give you all, can I?


Thanks for reading,
Mathyoo

A short update

Hello,

As far as the hobby goes, I am currently working on:

- some bodies
- some body bags
- some zombie conversions (just modifiying the WGF and Mantic zeds a bit)
- some survivors conversions (I have converted two TAG miniatures and changed them in 2 of the main stars for my campaign!)
- painting more zeds!

I've also sculpted some sandbag walls from air drying clay, nothing spectacular but it gets the job done.

And non-zombie-horror-related, but still horror related, I've figured sculpting people is somewhat hard and I am now trying myslef at one of the Cthulhu mythos monsters.

So...this all sounds great and all, but there are, unfortunately, no pictures. And there will be none for next 3 weeks as my parents took the camera on their vacation. I will try taking some with my cell phone, but I'm not really...hmm...used to using that camera. And cable connection to PC is all weird. Well, got pictures off the phone once, might as well do it again!


Cheers until the next time,

Mathyoo

The Phantom group

 Hey,

a bit late with my next post, but I was doing a little of everything and I've ended up with nothing to show. I've painted TAG's SAS without packs . I've decided to call them The Phantom group (after watching Young Indiana's Jones Chronicles epizode Phantom train :P). In my story, those are special forces soldiers, who, after the apocalypse, took over recon missions. They operate around the safe places that are still run by the government. My certain team is obviously on a short mission, as they got no packs (yes, I wanted to buy minies without packs and yes, I'd buy those with biggest backpacks if I could pick again :P). I've painted them in urban uniform with olive drab equipemnt, as I did it with Grom. The cammo gave me quite some trouble as those minies have bigger surfaces than just the pants of Grom. I think I made too big blobs of white and german grey (not black!), will fix it next time. Their scarves were painted as usual arabic ones...didn't knew what else would I want to do. I might add everyone has its own colour, we got black, red, green, blue strips). Lets take a closer look...

First  soldier is armed with M4 rifle, equiped with red-dot aiming device and a tactical lamp. He looks a bit like robber with that scarf pulled over his mouth. I am sorry to see bare heads, to be honest. I'd give them all boonie hats! The second solider is armed with M4 and M203 grenade launcher. NMRIH doesn't have special rules for grenade launchers, but I will just play them as greenades that have a further range. IRL, their killing power is much bigger, if anyone is interested :P. Third guy has the best kind of vest (check second photo for the back details...i love the net). He is armed with FN Minimi...or M249 SAW for the Americans, or L108A1 SAW for the British. Fourth figure is armed identically as the first one and is my favorite mini of the 4. He has a cool boonie hat. Obviously, he was chosen to lead this team! We could probably even give him a name at this early stage...something like...out of my head....Ian "Shell" Drake or something :D.


What is cool about those minies, is the IDEA of the face paint. It, however, didn't work. There is something that bothers me, but I can't really define what excatly...its just wrong.  Here's a close up of probably the best attempt:

Thats about it. I will go sculpt and model more this week, I am working on two characters for the campaign, but I will show them when I also get the rest. The problem is, there are too many people fit to fight the appocalypse and I will probably leave some guys out. FOR NOW. Because I'd have to order from Copplestone's  to get those certain minies :P.

Well, thats ALMOST it for today. Because I also have to show you this cool freebie Pete at TAG's sent me as part of his facebook thingie:

When I was chosing mine, I knew I wanted this one. Its TOTALLY made for the zombie apocalypse. I can imagine you could see men chopping someone's heads during the outbreak!


Thanks for looking,

Mathyoo

Unboxing The assault group miniatures

Hello,

the assault group has entered the building!

I would like to say it right on the begining. I have nothing to do with TAG at all, I've only ordered one order. But wow, I love them! They mostly produce historical wargaming stuff that I don't play, but I'll surely go back and buy some russians and all once I get around to gaming chechen wars. Or something. I like those MVD russians with visors. And the rest of the SWAT guys. The rest, you ask? Well, I got the best pack now!

Miniatures came as they always do, in a nice carboard box with some filling to keep the minies safe. This is what was in the packet:

Oh, yeah, sorry for blurry pics again. I blame the enthusiasm this time!

 From left top to right bottom we got .50 cal SWAT sniper freebie, SAS guys, SWAT with gasmasks (sooo cool!), a bag o'weapons and equipment - I've really complicated my order here and I must thank Pete for a hundreth time...such a great service. Then we got mixed african militia with SMG (I wanted the one with MP5, but I wrote it wrong, I got what I asked for. I really liked the other one for a conversion, but I will just make this one work). In there are two deltas in civilian clothes and another SWAT guy,with a riot shield. Also ment for converting. Last pack is mix of african militia with rifles and shotguns to represent random survivors.

 Above is a large scaleshot pic. We got mantic zed, mantic-hasslefree Kev, TAG, Mantic, TAG, mantic-hasslefree tony, TAG, WGF zed, TAG, Urban war girl, mantic.

 A closer pic of a part of the line. Keep in mind Hasslefree's Kev is on the smaller scale on purpose. And that mantic zeds are a bit larger, so I guess we could say TAG's minies are a little bit on the larger side.

 Another part of the line, this time with smaller TAG mini (african with SMG) and WGF zeds, which are a bit smaller figs overall.

Here is the poor missordered mini. I wanted african militiaman with MP5 and a baseball cap, but I've already think of ideas how to use this guy. If all goes well, this may even end up as a better choice!





If I go on to minies themselves, they're made somewhat basic, compared to, say Hasslefree minies, but we must keep in mind, they're also much cheaper. Some of the weapons seem a bit small, for example one of the DELTA guys...but most of the miniatures seem pretty good to me. Detail is decent, eyes on some of the faces are a bit "hidden", but that can probably be fixed with a basecoat. I've bought a great variety of different pacs, but If you'd buy from same range...say, 4 packs of SWAT guys, you'd notice that they got same bodies, yet there are not two that would be the same.




I've decided to make a purchase because now I have a decent number of survivors to support my gaming. I could also buy some of the marines or british soldiers for the army, but I will go with SAS guys I bought for now. Then I will either keep it that way or I will go with eureka's germans. Honestly, I  think I'll just use SWAT for the "hard hitting" hunters.

The biggest gem in my order are the weapons. TAG sells them at 10 per pack, but Pete said I could mix as I'd want. I REALLY felt bad because I took horrible advantage over his kindness, but now I got such a great mixture of weapons that my survivors will acutally be able to find a 3D gun while searching the house. The downside of the idea is, that I need to get myself some furniture!

Well, thanks yet again for reading, I hope someone finds the short review useful. I will now go and base all the minies, diploma can wait. Then I will probably go make some sandbag emplacements and defenses so I can play "defend" scenario from NMRIH. With .50 cal emplacements. It doesn't get much cooler if you ask me!

Cheers,
Mathyoo

oh and it's Lord Siwoc's birthday today!

Wire fencing

I  have an exam tomorrow morning. It is know as a hard one, so I shouldn't have left the books last week, and especially this weekend. But well, I wouldn't be a student, if I'd did it, so instead, I felt an urge to a) do what I've shown in the previous post and b) finish my fences. I've cut plasticard before I left in May, and I never really felt a need to make them just yet....until yesterday evening. I should state, that I REALLY tried to study, but nothing goes in. I am simply too exhausted from May. Sure it was a week since I came home, but I don't know, it takes time, I guess. So, I kept reading since wednesday, but damn facts just don't get in my head. I also listened to band of your youth, the Sex pistols, so "we don't careeee". I'll worry about that tomorrow, hehe. Let me quit complaining before I come to politics and enjoy few pictures of my day-worthy work:

Ladies (still not sure, any ladies around? :) ) and gentlemen, I present you no less than 1 meter of wire fencing:

Idea is taken from Lucky Joe's, before anyone will admire my ingenuity!


Below, they're on my table. There are 3 pieces, 15 cm long, 5 10 cm long and 1 five. I've cut plasticard a while ago, the rest was done yesterday and today.

The poles are made of skewers, which are basically longer and thicker toothpicks. So, I've cut the poles, around 6 cm long, super glued them to plasticard (some of them more than once, but I don't have such a thick drill). Then I've applied white glue, put them in sand (twice), painted the bases, painted the poles (one coat of red to make them look old ;) ), cut the fences, washed the fences with dilluted black paint, quickly dried them with a tissue. Glued the fences on, voila. They will get a coat of varnish tomorrow.

There is not much I could say about the fences. I made some variety, above you can see a hole in one and the 5cm one. It was spare, more or less, so I just made it ripped.

Below, there is a nice atmospheric picture of Grom bravely running for the hole in the fence, while being followed by the undead. Two of the girls provide some covering fire and third just looks nice.

Well, thats it for today, I'll go check my papers a little bit now. If things go as they should, next report should follow as soon as tomorrow or on tuesday, featuring a review of something!

Thanks for looking,
Mathyoo

Even more work in progress...

 What I got for you today, is whole lot of something, but actually nothing. It is some work in progress, most of it was done since my last update, but there are some little bits that were done long before that.


On the picture below, you got most of the sculpting. I've also converted some more zombies, but that can be reviewed once I paint them. I tried myself at sculpting slovenian army's webbing. It turned out roughly okay, but well, it was a rush job.

That don't matter, however, because I don't have a photo of him. Here are some WIP body bags, bodies, little conversion of the spare "armoured Ken" I have (this one had his rifle broken, so I got a new one, didnt want this one to just be useless so I tried myself at sculpting FN F2000S rifle...WIP :P). Oh and there, in top right corner are some little garbage bags made of left overs. I've noticed the little one is turned wrong, I've took some other pictures with it placed right, but strangely, those were all blurry.

A close up on Ken and body bags. Rifle was a hard work, I had to chop magazine off, shorten it as much as I could and put some GS on it just to make it look like a lot of effort. I tried the same thing on the back side, but it turned out worse. I have no idea how I am going to sculpt a red dot.
Body bags are pretty simple concept, one is empty and the other is not. The second one was too thin and I've put some extra putty on it. I was using miliput and I couldn't blend soft on soft, so I will just wait for it to cure and sand it some time later. I have few ideas with some living dead in them, like hand stucking out, visible head etc.

 A close up on bodies this time. They are few months old, what I did was just bulky them out a bit. I think next stage should be greenstuff now, as I find miliput hard to work with for any detailed work.

 And last of the group, the garbage bags. Nothing spectacular, I've followed this tutorial. If you compare mine to his, I didn't really get the point, but oh well, who'll notice if I just put some on a corner of a building, eh?

 ...talking about buildings, I've started painting mine. I bough a set of 8 paints and this is where I am so far:

 The little buildings are going to...err...I plan them to be bright. I will paint blue with lighter shade and I will just paint green again and again until black below is covered. I may also suggest that if you are going to paint your buildings any time soon, seriously consider buying a spray paint. My undercoat is black paint, painted by hand. It takes about 3 coats to cover the cork. That being said, check the green building. Consider a lighter undercoat, or at least base colour after the black.

 The big building is failed. I wanted to go with earthy tones, used "terracota" and when I've painted first 2 layers, I figured I want my roofs too look like that. So I started adding some yelow to brighten it up. I will also wash roofs with dilluted black paint to get them a bit darker.

I will keep working on the buildings exterior, and will move to interior walls once I've got them all painted, probably. Just so, to avoid looking at natural cork on my table.

Thanks for looking,
Mathyoo

Horde doubles again!

Hello, finally a worthy update again!

During weekend and last three days, I've been slowly working on painting my horde. I've decided I'd go with 6 this time. I found out painting 3 at a time would take way too long, but while I was painting, I also figured that 6 is too much for me. I was also exhausted from last month and I've been sloppy. They still came out okay, I think...in the end, they're just a tiny drops in an undead wave of destruction and despair.

Below, you can see the pics. Sorry for bad quality, again. And sorry for lack of a decent background, too lazy to put sheet of foamboard on the end. But I did put them on a road tile, all I need now is a building and scene is set!

All 6 of them:

 It isn't too noticable, but most of them are slightly converted. Not the first, he is just a dumb placed ballerina. I still am not sure If I really wanted him to stand that way, lol. Second one is a doctor. I gave him face mask and that thing for listening to breathing. Somehow I keep forgeting how it is called. Stetoscope or something. Check his cool blue crocs :D. Third one is my first african american and he has his left wrist sculpted profesionally by me.You didn't see it coming, eh? :D Nothing but repositioned left arm on the fourth one, a knife-in-the-belly of the fifth and nothing changed at all on the sixth. I did, however, built (and, indeed, painted) him as an (ex) soldier. He is dressed in urban cammo uniform that soldiers who came to contain the outbreak wore. Looks like he was off duty, as he carries no extra gear.

 Above is my horde in all its might, chasing poor weekend solider across the town. At this point, I think calling my little group a "horde" is an insult to other zombie bloggers. So, lets refer to it as a GROWING HORDE! That fixes it!

Last two pics are just a little bonus. Yes, dark again. Sorry.

Here are my two army men both togethers, posing for pic:

And what I think is a better picture of Grom, the character for Shelldrake's PBB, which I will hopefully start playing with the rest of the survivors.

Now that we got the machinery rolling, whats next?
To be honest, I am kind of tired of painting minies for a while. Which is good, because I will go paint some of those buildings I've made a while ago. I also sculpt a bit now and then, got some dead bodies and garbage started. I am waiting for greenstuff at the moment, but I've also came home with an idea of slovenian soldiers. I spent at least few minutes a day since last friday, drawing some sketches and making ideas for packs. It is a bit high flying goal, considering my limited sculpting practice and skills, but well, some ambition is always good, people say.

Thanks for looking,
Mathyoo

3,000 views!

Hey guys!

Just a short thank you post for this weekend.

The blog has been less than active over May due to my absence, but that will change now and we're back in business!

A big thank you for all the support, all this blogging wouldn't even be half the fun without you guys showing interest in the posts and sharing ideas and comments.


Cheers,
Mathyoo