Zomtober Week 5

This week was slowed down by a water leak from an upstairs shower to a ground floor closet.  Quite a mess!  This slowed down my progress on my zombie horde...

Water and drywall do not mix!

I worked on two groups of toxic zombies from the Toxic Mall expansion for Zombicide. I added yellow/green highlights to designate them as 'toxic'.

Red group zombies

Yellow group zombies

I also repainted (mostly just retouching the existing scheme) a Horrorclix 'candystriper' which seemed to be a vampire type character of some sort.  I repainted the flesh to be less pale and red and more normal.  I added some additional red touches to her outfit and then based her on a plastic coin decorated with some craft paper to look like a tile floor.

Survivor and scenery

Finally I added a trash dumpster from Reaper Bones.  Great item for the urban landscape.  I left the lid unglued so it opens.

The lid propped open

This week all together now!

Week 5 all together!

Another Zomtober comes to a close.  It was pretty productive, although I didn't quiet hit my goal of finishing my Zombicide zombies off.  At least progress was made! 

I really enjoyed everyone's entries, they were quite inspiring.  Besides the painting, the background stories and mix of survivors and zombies gives great ideas.  If you haven't already seen the other blogs, check out the links from my page - there are some very excellent Zomtober entries out there!

Zomtober Week 4

Another week!  This week it's time to take out the trash...  (You'll see what I mean!)

The prison figures from Zombicide have been completed.  These are groups yellow and pink, for the colors used on some highlights.

Squad Pink

Team Yellow

I also completed two abominations, one from the basic game and one from Prison Outbreak.  I am pretty happy with the red armored portions of the prison abomination, I like how it turned out.

ABOMINATIONS!  (Slipped into a 40K inquisitor voice there.)

Needing some food, I added a survivor.  This is a Dark Reaper Chronoscope figure, Jake Ryan, he is based on a Secret Weapons ruined street base.  I have him in a fairly plain outfit, I figure he may have been a police detective or something before the apocalypse.

Survivor Jake

Finally, I painted up some scatter terrain from Malifaux.  The set is Suburb Props, and is a set of various refuse containers and two sets of wooden crates.  They have fair detail and painted up pretty quickly.  To be fair, I had primed these some time ago, but finished them this week.

Scatter terrain

The whole week together, terrain and all was pretty productive.  More zombies than survivors by a wide margin, but at least I managed one more survivor.

More zombies for the horde!

One week to go for Zomtober!  It's been great seeing everyone's progress.  I can't wait to see where we finish!

Fun in the Desert

Sorry for the lack of updates, but I just got back from an extended vacation in the southwest USA.  My wife and I flew to Las Vegas and drove to visit my brother's family (we met our new niece!) in Sacramento, CA.  We stopped by Death Valley as well as Lake Tahoe.  I took a few pictures, some of which I figured might be interesting...

McCarran Airport Welcomes us to Las Vegas...

North of Las Vegas we passed to the west of a military base.  For being so secret, everyone seems to know about it!

Just over those hills is Area 51...

Apparently there's aliens around?

Being Nevada, of course there's a brothel attached!

Entering Death Valley, we stopped a couple places to get some pics.  It was about 1PM and 113 degrees F (about 45 degrees C) outside.  Nice and cool!

We stopped at a ghost town just outside Death Valley as well.  It's called Rhyolite, and can be found on google maps, if you are curious.  I found the ruins interesting, I kept expecting some sort of apocalyptic survivors to emerge from the shadows!

Abandoned caboose

Great weathering on the inside!

Most of the town was just partial ruins.  Still cool and inspiring for scenery.

This used to be the bank

There were several cool buildings in ruins.  A couple felt a bit more creepy...

Graffiti in the small room.

 

Another day, and Lake Tahoe.  It was pretty, less inspiration for gaming, but good looking.

Landslide!

 

After a few days in Sacramento we headed back to Vegas.  Our trip took us near Edwards Air Force base, including an aircraft boneyard.  Still it was mostly desert...

Miles of this.  Sand and Cactus.

Aircraft boneyard, pretty far off.

A solar power setup.  Pretty cool to see.

We finished up back in Vegas.  The strip is pretty crazy, and goes from family fun to adults only.

From off the strip - pretty cool view

It was a fun trip, but tiring.  I'm glad to be home.  I'm planning a return to gaming once I've rested a bit.

Scenery: Ruined Gas Station (Flo's V8 Cafe) Finished

The detail work for the gas station is complete, I'm hoping a "less is more" effect is better.  I added some various cans, newspapers and such scattered around the pump areas.  The truck has been replaced with a die cast pickup truck that I destroyed and added some various car and truck parts to give it a ruined feel.  I decided to leave the roof alone (for now) to make it easier to get to the inside of the building.

On to some pics!

Top View

Burned out truck (with a box/crate in the back)

Top view left side

The sign is removable, makes it easier for storage and if it gets hit during play, it *should* just breakaway where it connects to the toy base.  I hope I don't have to prove out my theory!  I tried to add some fun details, like beer cans, newspapers, an out of gas sign, tires, etc.  It was pretty fun to start putting junk on the toy set, it would have been very easy to go overboard!

Ruined truck, damaged overhead

They're out of gas

Dawn shows the front of the station

Dawn stands at the entrance

I considered adding handrails to the entrance ramp (in real life I am certain the government would require them!) but they were a bit too fiddly, and would just get in the way of moving figs around the area.  The various items added were just to add some junk feel to the ruins.  Most of the items actually came from this toy.  The various tires are from a box of tires I have from stripping them off various toy cars.

Some sort of vacuum?

Pile of tires (some Fallout influence here)

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  Hopefully I'll get to place it on a table soon.

Comments and questions are very welcome!

Scenery: Tables and Stools and Construction Barrels

Thanks everyone for the notes of encouragement and the well wishes, I appreciate it all!  I've managed to get back to some gaming activities.  My leg is still pretty sore but at least I can do some stuff.  I've decided to get back with some smaller projects.

Tables and stools

Starting out I decided to go with some scatter terrain pieces I've been meaning to make.  I'm copying a quick and easy plan for stools and tables from another blogger, Nathan "Ironworker" Miller, who has a fun sci-fi blog.  It's basically just some wooden spools and thumbtacks painted for stools.  I made five sets of four, and painted the 'seat' a different color for each set.  The tables are some pre-cut wooden shapes (circles/squares/etc) used for table tops on some pegs.  These went together quickly and easily, I base coated them with a mix of black and terracotta spray paints, but left the tops unpainted.

Tabletop choices

For the tabletops, I tried a couple of different finishes, the grayish was painting, I was trying for a more modern composite look, it is usable, but not what I wanted.  The other two are two different wood stains.  I like how they turned out and used those for the rest of the tables.

Zombicide fig moves towards Dawn

They look pretty decent, and can be tipped over to use for cover if needed.  I may make a couple more batches of tables if I find a need.  Otherwise they will appear in various shops (like my Starbucks building) for cover and interest.

Now I need some chairs...

My other project was painting up some construction barrels.  They are a pretty common sight in construction zones, and I got a couple of sets from Secret Weapons at Christmas last year.  They are a nice molded barrel, and look pretty accurate.

Bags of Barrels!

They painted up very easy.  I washed them, then primed them white.  I masked off two stripes for each barrel (rather than try and paint a straight line, I thought this may be easier/better).  I used Krylon safety orange spray paint.  This is the same paint I used for my PEF markers, it has a reflective quality, and recreates the reflective nature of the barrels pretty well.

Typical Wisconsin road...

Dawn stands among the barrels

Reflecting Safety!

A small start, but I'm hoping to be able to get back to more gaming soon.  I downloaded the 'new' melee rules for tweaking the melee rules from ATZ:FFO to Fade to Black.  I'm not sure if I will make the change right away, but I am considering it for the next time I play just to try them out if nothing else.

Stay tuned!