Zombicide: BP – Painting Survivors #2

Morgan – Merlin (Nicol Williamson) from the movie “Excalibur” (1981).

Bob – Tim the Enchanter (John Cleese) from the movie “Monty Python & The Holy Grail”.

Baldric – Original Black Plague set.

Karl – Black Plague, Wulfsburg expansion.

 

 

Another four survivors finished. Mostly straightforward painting with these, except that both Baldric and Karl have a number of items hanging from their belts. I did spend some extra time doing some extra shading on the cloaks/robes that they all wear in addition to using ink.

 

 

I hadn’t realised (until I was going to paint the figure) that Karl wears a wolf-skin across his back. I suppose I hadn’t looked closely at the card image (or the figure) until this last week. My previous wolf painting was good preparation!

Three are straight magic skill characters – thus orange bases. Karl does have two “Combat Action” skills, but with +1 die Magic and Spellcaster as skills, I think it more likely the character will be used with magic than melee or ranged. Morgan has three distinct magic skills, but he starts with +1 die Combat at blue, and has melee choices at orange and red. As a result he’s got a dual colour base (orange/blue) to signify his playability as either magic or melee, or a combination of the two.

 

I’ve been taking photos with my phone for a while – mostly because it’s easier to use. I haven’t been particularly happy with the quality of the pics though, so today I found batteries for my camera and used that. I think they are much better, so it looks like camera again in future.

EDIT: I watched Excaliber during the week.  (Mostly to show my wife the story of Arthur, since watching ‘King Arthur: Legend of the Sword’ earlier this month didn’t explain anything.) As a result I’ve just repainted ‘Morgan’s’ skullcap to silver (like Merlin in the movie) and I think it looks much better!

Zombicide: BP – Painting Survivors #1

After doing the wolves, I did plan on going back to my Star Wars figures, since I’ve actually finished three and have others started. I’ve been playing Zombicide quite a bit over the last month, and it would be good to start seeing painted heroes/survivors. I’d been procrastinating a bit with the SW figures and I felt like a change, so here’s a group I got done fairly quickly. It does help when you already know what colours you want to use.

These five are the ‘Knights of the Round Table’ from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” I loved this movie when I saw it, but watching it again (to show my wife a few years ago) I found it rather disappointing. (Lots of very funny moments interspersed with bits that now seemed silly or stupid, rather than funny.) Thankfully, “Life of Brian” is still a very funny and well-done film, which stands up well after the passing years. Okay, enough about the movies. Figures, from left to right:

Montalban – Sir Robin the Brave (Eric Idle)

Mortimer – King Arthur (Graham Chapman)

Gilbert – Sir Bedevere (Terry Jones)

Beauregard – Sir Gawain (Michael Palin)

Chauncey – Sir Lancelot (John Cleese)

 

They made a good group of figures to start with because they are all basically the same – chain mail, sword, white surcoats, and belts. Getting fine lines of colour painted around the surcoat edging wasn’t the easiest thing, and neither is painting a lot of colour over or around all the white areas. The green checks on ‘Montalban’ were the hardest. The final work looks great from a distance, but it’s not as neat as I would have liked close up.

I wanted to keep to the colours as shown on their cards, and only made small changes. ‘Chauncey’ has purple (not black) surcoat edging, ‘Beauregard’ has orange edging (the card looks more brown) and I did the shield stripe in orange to match the surcoat (argent a pale tenne), which I think looks a lot better than just black. Gilbert’s shield has a blue fleur de lis with white/blue background (argent a bendlet azure). I didn’t like blue on blue, so I went with a plain white background. The feathers in his helmet also changed to blue rather than black.

 

Finally, the base colour. My wife suggested painting the bases in different colours to represent each survivors combat style or progression – melee, ranged, or magic. I’ve chosen blue for melee, green for ranged and probably orange for magic. Some heroes don’t follow one specific path so I might also do some half and half bases.

You may note that there’s a lot less ‘blood’ on Montalban – surcoat & sword. (It’s mostly on his right hip, and not visible in the pictures.) This wasn’t intentional, but if you know anything about “Sir Robin the Brave”, then you’ll know it’s appropriate!

Edit: I had a sudden concerned thought about my use of the word tabard. As a result, I’ve just been through this whole post and changed tabard to surcoat. Tabards are open at the sides, surcoats are not, as well as being longer with slits at the bottom front and back for riding.