Zombicide: Black Plague – Cry Wolf!

“Night I left the city, I dreamt of a wolf…

He came from where the winds are cold, And truth is seen through keyholes
…strange longings never sleep, Now he’s come where no hearts beat

Cry wolf – Time to worry
Cry wolf – Time to worry now”

— Cry Wolf, Aha (1986)

 

I’ve got 24 Wolfz that I’ve wanted to paint for a while, and put to dual use – Zombicide and D&D/Pathfinder. Wolves are commonly encountered in most RPGs and I’ve only had a single wolf mini. As such, I decided to simply paint them as wolves, and not detail the bones/torn flesh that show. I wasn’t concerned about being really fussy about preparing or painting them. (For example: I could have filled the wounds.) They aren’t unique figures like nearly everything else I’ve painted, and as Zombicide game pieces, they are going to get a lot of handling – they can be back and forward between the board and their storage box multiple times in a game.

I collected a few images of wolves when I was going to paint my Wolf Abominations, and found some more before I started the Wolfz. I’m sure every painted/prepainted wolf I’ve seen is grey. In real life wolves are mostly white – with black, grey and a variety of browns across their back. I chose three schemes to work with, building on my usual white undercoat. One (hopefully) would be a realistic colour scheme, and the other two more common colours.

 

1. Brown wolfz

 

1. More white, particular underbelly and legs, then a mix of lighter and darker browns across the back. Brown ink.
2. Pale grey base coat, a little darker grey across the back. Black ink.
3. Mid/dark grey base coat, some black mixed with my dark grey, and a little gun-metal across the back. Black ink.

 

2. Light grey wolfz

 

Then I went back and retouched paws and underbelly with white on each group, and dry-brushed some white across the fur on the backs on each wolf. I have a dull red flesh colour called “Native American” – I use it a lot for mouths and wounds. They all got a bit of that and a touch of my normal red for tongues. A bright orange for the eyes, black for nose, claws and then a dot in every eye! White on teeth. Red bases make them stand out as individual figures and on the board. They have had two (possibly three) coats of varnish which I realise is a can of gloss, not the matte I prefer. [There’s only a little reflection in most of the photos, with the group shot getting the worst.]

 

3. Dark grey wolfz

 

The final results looks good, but only the brown wolves really stand out. After inking – both my “light” grey and “dark” grey wolves look very similar. In any case, they are all finished and they are going to be very nice in game!

 

Oh the joys of painting!

What’s more fun than painting 48 black pupils in a row on Zombicide Wolfz? Working outside while you wait for the first coat of vanish to dry and then realising as you spray the second coat… that you only have propellant coming out of the can!

Recent changes in my work mean I have much more free time than usual. Given this fact and my aim to paint more figures this year than last year, and playing  a lot of Z:BP over the last two weekends – I decided it was time to paint my 24 Zombicide Black Plague Wolfz, before going back to Star Wars figures. This nearly double the number of figures I’ve painted for 2017.

The weather this afternoon has been great. I finished painting and got the figures all outside to dry. I spent time “gardening”, and had plenty of time for two coats of spray varnish. I’m happy that I had a spare can of clear acrylic. I’m really not sure if the first can ran out before or during my first coat, so I’ll give them another coat tomorrow morning regardless and hope tomorrows showers hold off long enough for me to sit the wolves outside to dry for an hour.

Assuming everything goes well, I’ll take photo’s of the completed minis tomorrow and post again.

Painting for Gamma World

I finished the last of this group last weekend, but only got around to photographing them today. We had been using most of these figures for some time, but unpainted.

 

So here’s the group from left to right:

Red Desert (Green Folk, Cacti), Hack (Pure Strain Human), Ambo (Altered Human), Bitcoin (Live Metal), Ironbark (Green Folk, Tree) and Where (New Animal, Feline).

I didn’t paint the humanoid feline – that’s actually a D&D pre-painted mini that I specifically bought for the campaign. I may have to rework it, since the game character is male but the figure turned out to be female. There is a second D&D catfolk figure that I thought was female – I’ve seen more images now, that make me think that one is actually male, but rather effeminate looking.

Three of these figures are from my West End Games Star Wars figures – two from the Bounty Hunters set, and one from the Rebel Characters set. The two bounty hunters appeared in “The Empire Strikes Back”.

 

 

Dengar, Female Gambler and IG-88: I didn’t want to copy the colours from the movie for my Dengar/Hack. That has a pale grey/white under-suit and dark rusty brown armour. My armour is more a dark grey/gunmetal, with silver edges and the occasional brownish patch. IG-88 in the movie looks shiny silver and/or dark brown rust, depending on the shot/image. I started with a dark grey, then gunmetal. Touches of silver, antique copper and antique gold add some variety. The Bitcoin character is an android – he looks human at first glance, but has glowing red eyes. Using a distinct robot figure makes the figure stand out on the table and helps remind me that he’s ‘live metal”. At some point I may find another human-looking figure and paint him up “correctly”, maybe with silver showing under wounds or something. The ‘Rebel Characters’ set aren’t based on specific movie characters so I just went with colours I felt comfortable with.

 

 

The two plants in the group were mostly scratch built. I got some plastic trees in a $2 tube of plastic dinosaurs! Most of one of these was trimmed slightly, glued into a base and given a full repaint over the former green plastic. I’ve been doing garage roof repairs recently and kept a bunch of thin silicon “bits” with this in mind. The tree roots are glued silicon (trimmed where necessary) and with moulding paste to fill the gaps and blend the edges together before painting. A bit more glue and some sand helped texture the bases.

 

 

“Ironbark” was my first plant; I then went on to making a cactus. My first attempt at this looks like a mutant Christmas tree (no picture) and the second is the one on the right. Paddle pop sticks cut to make a cross-shaped stalk and then foam-core board carved to shape and glued on top. Plastic tree “leaves” made great spines once stuck into pin holes. My wife (who plays Red Desert) said she’d been thinking of a mexican-style cactus, so after collecting some more cacti images (Saguaro cacti) I collected small sticks/branches from the garden and produced the figure on the left. I was hesitant to break the “arm” branches and glue them to the more upright shape that the Saguaro actually has. I may try that with another branch and see if I can get it to the right shape without making it too fragile and do yet another cactus. I’d like to do a more realistic tree and a bush too, but I’ll need to go model shopping – I could do with some flock for leaves. I’ve got wire, so some green-stuff wouldn’t hurt for this type of work either!