Starting another year…

I haven’t started painting for 2018 yet.

I thought I’d post a group shot of all my painted figures for Zombicide: Black Plague. They did make up 80% of what I painted in 2017 and it’s really nice looking at them all set out.

Three of us played yesterday – making this my first game of anything for 2018 – and it was great that everyone had painted survivors.

Here’s a few slightly closer shots:

 

In the same theme of completed sets, here’s a group that were finished in 2016. There were individual posts at the time, but I meant to take a group shot once all had been finished. They have all been on a side desk collecting dust for too long. Now I can put them away in cases or on my bookshelf for display.

 

These figures are meant to be (with one exception) 1985 Citadel figures, “Lord of the Rings” series.

ME-1 Fellowship Heroes – Aragon, Frodo with ring, Gandalf. (Front centre)

ME-2 Fellowship Heroes – Legolas, & Gimli with axe. (Centre)

ME-11 Gandalf and Shadowfax. (Left. I didn’t keep the Gandalf rider, only the horse.)

ME-13 Frodo and horse. (Front right)

ME-15 Gimli with axe, shield, and horse. (Front)

ME-21 Boromir and horse. (Front left.)

ME-35 Beorn, Werebear. (Rear left)

ME-51 Orcs of the Red Eye. (Rear rightish)

ME-55 Mouth of Sauron and skeletal horse.

ME-61 Sauron and throne. (Only the throne remains!)

ME-62 Saruman the White and horse. (Right)

ME-74 Snagga, Goblins. (Front right)

ME-83 Tom Bombadil & Fatty Lumpkin. (Left. I didn’t keep Tom)

The exception is M049, “Angmar Troll with cleaver”, a Mithril Miniatures (1988), Witchking of Angmar series. (Rear leftish)

I can’t remember which of the three horses/ponies on the right are which any more.

Interesting note: The base for “Boromir’s horse” was actually marked ‘Aragorn’.

Thanks to Azazel for painting Sauron’s Throne! (The rest I did myself.)

Zombicide: BP – Painting Survivors Completed

This will be my last post for 2017. Tonight my wife and I head to Tasmania for a week, so no more painting until the new year. In any case, these three figures are the last of my Zombicide: Black Plague survivors. They are also the last Zombicide figures that I had planned to paint. Walkers, Runners, Fatties and NPCs can stay as they are. (I did paint the runner bases red, to make them stand out from the walkers.)

 

William – Sean Bean as Boromir (Lord of the Rings) and possibly Eddard Stark (Game of Thrones)

Scowl – Batman!

Hitch – David Bowie as Jareth, the Goblin King from the movie “Labyrinth”

These three were all straightforward to paint except for the beard on William. The card clearly show a distinctly bearded Sean Bean, but there isn’t a sculpted beard on the figure, so I’ve painted this on free-hand. Its okay, but I did a better job with Paul in one of my earlier posts. I feel that ‘William’ matches the clothes of Boromir more than Ned Stark. He’s only missing a horn. There’s a lot of debate over this figure, but there’s no reason why both roles couldn’t be intended.

All three are basic melee characters. I feel ‘Hitch’ could have had at least one magic skill to fit with Labyrinth more, but Slippery and Taunt suit the role.

This brings my painted figures to 95 for the year, which I’m very happy with. I would have liked to hit 100, but that can be a goal for next year. After I finish the 14 Star Wars mini’s that sit undercoated on my desk, I have a strong temptation to paint all the figures from my ‘Space Crusade’ board game.

For my first post next year, I might get all the painted Zombicide figures out and take a group photo!

Best wishes all for Christmas and the New Year!

 

EDIT: One of those axes that Scowl holds broke when I started on the figure. I superglued it back on, and its still holding together mid-2018, even though the figure has been in and out of the storage box many times. This is the only breakage that has occurred with the nearly 200 figures I have for Z:BP!

Zombicide: BP – Painting Survivors #12

Three more Zombicide: Black Plague survivors completed and only three more to paint.

This set are mostly guest artist figures:

– Morrigan, dark Elf bodyguard – Wulfsburg Expansion

– Antha, Human witch – by Mark Simonetti.

– Merieil, Elf magesmith – by Naiade.

 

These were all interesting to paint. Both Morrigan and Merieil have a considerable amount of detail, although the colours shown on the cards don’t make it stand out. Antha is the complete opposite – a fairly basic sculpt, but the colour is everything! I didn’t follow card colours exactly in each case.

I can’t look at Morrigan without thinking of a female version of Drizzt Do’Urden, and I can’t be the only one. I made slight variations with colours, mostly to give a bit more contrast in clothes and equipment. My dark elfs (D&D background) have almost black skin (and red eyes), not the pale grey of the card image. I messed things up doing this – I had just the right blend of really dark grey (almost black) painted, then decided to remove the strand of hair that hangs down over her face. It had been annoying me right since undercoating. This meant having to repaint the face again, and I didn’t get the colour quite right – too much black. I’ve managed to lighten the skin tone a little, but not quite back to my original plan. I stopped before I make things worse. I’m still thinking of a hint of detail on the boots, and the mask (maybe red not the black/grey on the card).

Antha’s sculpt really only has simple crossed sashes at the front and the “dangling strips” that define lines of colour. I’d thought that painting her with any accuracy was going to be very challenging – but once I got going, I was actually having fun. There’s more free-hand detail there than I would ever have expected to achieve, but with a really steady hand and a really fine brush more could still be done. I’m thrilled with the final look.

Merieil was a nice sculpt and fairly easy painting. There’s some detail sculpted that’s not on the card (elbow & knee pads) and I reversed the hair and skin coolours. I’m not used to elves with pink/purple skin, so I went with my “fair maiden” pale flesh and some “lavender” over white for the hair. The skin didn’t work out quite as smoothly as I’d have liked, but it’s not quite as bad as it looks in the photo.

 

I’ve got two survivors to go – three to show, but one already painted. I’m going away for the last week of December, so I don’t expect to get any more painting done except for the final Z:BP survivors this year.

Zombicide: BP – Painting Survivors #11

The weather in Melbourne (Aust) is extremely confused. November/December has gone from record breaking 30+ temperatures to cold and nearly flooded (a month’s rain in a day?). At least cooler weather means I’m happier to paint, and I look like finishing my Zombicide survivors before Christmas.

These three are all movie/TV characters:

Lady Faye – Snow White (Kirsten Stewart from the 2012 movie “Snow White & the Huntsman”)

Danton – William Wallace (Mel Gibson from the 1995 movie “Braveheart”)

Xuxa – Xena (Lucy Lawless from the 1995 TV series “Xena, Warrior Princess”)

These three were fairly good to paint – nice poses and sculpts. I looked at images on the web to get a better idea of details, which didn’t always help. For example, the Lady Faye figure has a rose emblem on her shield – but in the movie it’s a tree. I painted it red just to be simple. Mel gibson wore tartan in the movie, and I tracked more images (and the tartan) down. The card doesn’t show the tartan – its shows a plain dark brown cloth. The actual tartan is a pale grey/reddish-brown/darker brown pattern which I attempted to paint but didn’t do very well. I didn’t want to try and clean it all off and start again, and gives a bit of variety in the colours of the figure and looks (unintentionally) blood spattered. Xena is surprisingly quite accurate with colours and design (card vs TV series), but I may go back and touch up some detail with gold or bronze metallic, rather than leave the mostly silver detail.

All the survivor’s skills are pretty much straight forward melee. While the “Xuxa” figure holds a bow, she has no specifically ranged skills.

There’s only six survivors to go, and I have two painted already. I’ll keep painting and hopefully have two more sets of three to post over the next week or two.

Zombicide: BP – Painting Survivors #10

Painting started well during the week with me getting another set completed, then my enthusiasm died due to the continued hot weather.

This set includes:

Falstaff – Dracula (Gary Oldman from 1992 “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”)

Lucas – Godfrey de Ibelin (Liam Neeson from 2005 “Kingdom of Heaven”)

Sylvia – Black Plague Hero Box

Julian – Black Plague Hero Box

All four are fairly general melee hero’s, with two exceptions. Lucas has “Spellcaster” as a red skill, which I feel is a bit late to be considering magic, unless ‘Reaper: Combat’ if that was taken at orange. Sylvia has distinct melee skills until red – then she has three ‘Combat’ options, which I feel is great at that stage because it works with any equipment you’ve gained.

Falstaff was easy to paint; he’s basically red with black ink, though I did give him a brown base coat to ensure the red wasn’t going to be bright. Lucas has dark hair on the card, but it’s much more a light brown in the movie. I’ve painted his hair to match the movie, but it’s looking a bit lighter in the pictures than it actually is. I didn’t bother painting the “mask” on Sylvia’s face. Julian’s cloak looks to me (on the card) as if it has a purple hue near the top and more blue-grey at the bottom – I just used a dark purple I have all over with a little dark blue/gray and black for shading. I wasn’t concerned about highlighting these figures. They are board game figures, and I want them finished… so unless a particular figure makes me want to spend some extra effort I’m just happy to use ink for shading and leave it at that.

Zombicide: BP – Painting Survivors #9

More survivors! Most of these were fun to paint – mostly simple colour schemes and some different colours.

The four figures are:

Clovis – Original Black Plague

Theo – Wulfsburg Expansion

Gowan – “Connor McLeod” (Christopher Lambert, Highlander movie.)

Troy – “Ash” (Bruce Campbell, Army of Darkness movie.)

There’s quite a variety in “quality” when it comes to the movie characters – the cards are generally very close to the actors representation, but the actual figure faces aren’t always so good. Troy’s card certainly looks like Bruce Campbell, but I feel figure is close but not great. ‘Gowan’ is worse – with perhaps the exception of the shield, the pose and gear is accurate, but the face doesn’t look that much like Christopher Lambert to me. The tartan is wrong too.

 

“Everyone yell at the enemy!”

I like tartan and Highlander (Scottish ancestry), but I’ve dreaded painting it. I wouldn’t say my first attempt is great, but it came together better than I’d hoped. In future, I’d paint slightly differently – light background colour, darker colour, then fine stripes, rather than trying to darken ‘squares’ after the lines. I used movie stills for accurate tartan colours.

     Gowan/Connor McLeod close-up

 

I was pleased to get to ‘Ash’ – since I completed ‘Evil Ash’ (Survivor/Necromancer) a long time ago. I found a sculpting error with this figure too – there’s no sword hilt below the crossbar. The hilt should be visible between his hands – but there’s just an empty gap – and the very end of it should probably extend just below his left hand. I couldn’t be bothered trying to fill the gap, or manufacture a ‘repair’ – it’s not obvious unless you are looking very closely at his hands.

I also noticed after painting and getting ready to type that Theo’s base should be blue/green. His skill set is melee/ranged, so I’ve repainted half the base.

Zombicide: BP – Painting Survivors #8

I’ve actually completed 5 survivors over the past two weeks, but the fifth can wait until I’ve done a few more.

They are:

– Gregoire (Navarre, Rutger Hauer from “Ladyhawke”)

– Ann (Original ZBP)

– Paul (The Huntsman, Chris Hemsworth from “Snow White and the Huntsman”)

– Silas (Original ZBP)

 

I’ve thrown out three of my “fine” point brushes recently – two had lost too many bristles, and generally they were very scruffy and useless for detail. I was very happy to discover I have a Citadel ‘Detail Brush’ which didn’t look worthwhile until I actually put paint on it – it has a great point and is just what I’ve needed. Gregoire was good to paint – I like the pose and detail and I could happily get to everything. I found that the colours of his cloak on the card compared to the actual figure didn’t make sense. So I got some images from ‘Ladyhawke’ to get a good look at the costume… and painted the cloak to match the movie – black outside, red inside. I’m a little disappointed with the scabbard on the figure – it doesn’t “fold” into the cloak – it just stops – like there’s only the top quarter.

Ann was very straightforward. Very dark blue robes, and silvered plate mail. Probably the fastest painting of any Zombicide figure I’ve done.

 

Paul’s figure is slight and small compared to nearly every other survivor. I’ve never much liked this one because of the proportions. I’d expect a longer handle with that size axe blade, or a smaller blade like on the card. The colours – black, dark brown, red-brown and pale greenish/white – don’t stand out. I used a bit of grey on his wrist-guards, and there’s a bit more highlighting/shading than the pictures show. I probably should have just done either the pants or jacket in a completely different colour! Another failing – he has a short beard on the card (and in the movie) but it’s not sculpted on the figure! I’m not comfortable with fine free-hand painting of detail, but I am very proud of how this worked.

Silas has a lot more colour and variety. I really like the pose, but find it amusing that while there’s bow and quiver on his back, he has his sword out and swinging. Every skill this survivor has is ‘ranged’, not melee!

That’s 31 out of 50 survivors completed!

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.