Zombicide: BP – Painting Survivors #7

Another four figures completed. That puts me just past halfway through the survivors that I have. I’d love to have them all finished by the end of the year, but that means I’ll have to complete 3 each week – that’s probably not going to happen!

These four are from an assortment of “sets”:

Nelly – Original game

James – William of Baskerville (Sean Connery) “The Name of the Rose” (‘James’ surely a reference to another of his movie roles!)

Arnaud – Hero Box

Redcap Rodney – Special Guest artist (Marc Simonetti)

 

I photographed them before varnishing today. I used to do this, and today I remembered a major reason for doing it – to note things I might have missed. I’d forgotten to silver Arnaud’s jacket clasps and the belt studs. The weather is perfect for drying figures, so now they are outside drying so I’ll get a second coat of varnish on them before it’s late in afternoon.

These four were all pretty straight forward figures to paint. Each had one or two main colour(s), and not a lot a fiddly detail requiring extra attention. The exception to that was sandal straps on Nelly and James. I need a couple of fine brushes to replace the two that died recently. I don’t have a brush that I’m happy with for painting thin lines. If I did I would have given the brown line on Nelly’s skirt a go. I suppose that I can add that in future…

 

My wife likes both James and Arnaud – she likes searching every turn, so ‘Search: +1 card‘ and ‘+1 free Search Action‘ go down very well with her. While having two distinct “Magic” skills, he has ‘+1 max range’ (good for both magic and ranged weapons) and two “Combat” skills, making him a fairly flexible survivor. Rodney stands out as a valuable melee survivor right from the beginning with ‘+1 Damage: Melee’, as a Fatty or Abomination killer right from the beginning of a game.

This also brings my number of completed figures this year to 74, a big improvement over the last two years. If I can finish the Zombicide survivors I’ll be very close to 100 miniatures!

Zombicide: BP – Painting Survivors #6

Only three figures completed today, although I did spray undercoat another dozen ready to work on during the week. I ready should have photographed them before the spray varnish – there’s a fair bit of reflection on Stormcrow. He was an annoying figure to paint, since the card image is all brown with little variation. He’s been partly done (browns) for at least a month before I got stuck into finishing him off over the last few days. He finally got an assortment of browns, with some grey and black for variety.

 

From left to right: Dr. Stormcrow (Kickstarter exclusive, artist Adrian Smith), Glynda (Hero Box), Mizar (by guest artist Paul Bonner).

There is a suggestion that Mizar is based on “Illyn Payne” (Game of Thrones) – the face/expression certainly match, even if even nothing else does.

Glynda is pretty much what you would expect from a melee dwarf character, and Mizar is similarly a straight-forward caster.

Dr Stormcrow is very different from most of the other survivors: His entry skill of ‘Hold your nose’ fits the character perfectly, and I think ‘Zombie link’ goes well with the theme too. The other skills are the best options you could have on a Zombicide survivor – all ‘Combat’ and no specific melee/ranged/magic options – allowing you to work with whatever situation you need each turn, as well as making the most of whatever equipment you have collected.

 

Zombicide: BP – Painting Survivors #5

I got another four survivors finished! This includes two figures I considered to be the best “ranged” survivors in all the ones that I have.

 

Front view

From left to right: “Ariane” – Wulfsberg, “Cadence” – Guest artist Mark Simonetti, “Genevieve” – Guest artist Paul Bonner, and “Tucker” – Hero Box #1.

Ariane is an interesting survivor. Her skills are quite varied – Jump, +1 Move, +1 Melee, +1 die Combat, +1 to roll Ranged, Spellcaster. I’ve painted her base half blue, signifying ‘melee’, since the other skills aren’t available until red level when a player can pretty much focus on whatever they wish. Tucker has similar variety – Shove, Lucky and Spellcaster up to orange, then two combat skills and ‘reload’ at red. He’s dressed like a priest or monk, and ‘Spellcaster’ defines him as a magic character (orange base) in my mind. (Shove and Lucky lend themselves to any style of play.) For a figure holding a heavy crossbow, I’m suprised that the only distinct ranged skill he gets is ‘free reload’ at red, which I can’t see anyone taking over +1 die combat, or +1 Combat action.

 

Rear view

Now my favourites…

Cadence starts with ‘Marksman’, a great ranged skill to have at the beginning. With the exception of two ‘combat’ skills at red, all the other options are ranged – potentially allowing either up to six (ranged) actions in a turn, or adding +2 dice to any ranged attack.

Genevieve is identical in skills except for beginning with ‘+1 Damage Ranged’. Give her a crossbow, and you can kill Abominations at blue level.

My wife’s favourite game would be one with of these characters with +2 dice options and the ‘Chaos Bow’. (Four hits = Dragonfire!)

I’m quite pleased with my painting on these four, but disapointed with the sculpt for Geneveive’s head. It’s quite thin and the facial expression isn’t the best. In fact the entire figure is a bit taller/thinner than the card image – which I much prefer.