Welcome to my blog, the story of my continuing journey into the World of Zombie Wargames.

Monday 10 February 2014

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly and Beyond !

Well I've all but managed to keep up with my self imposed painting/building regime of an hour a day, except it's been all painting.
Unfortunately I've had some very mixed results hence the title.
Firstly The Good:
The figures in the first three photographs were all painted by fellow blogger Bryan/Vampifan and given to me as a present.
The two of us email one another regularly and I think he sent them to me at a period when I was feeling very low last year. The painting is of course to his usual high standard and he had the forethought to put them on bases using blue-tac as he knew I'd be putting them onto my 20mm washers. I believe that they were all surplus to his own needs (they're swaps) but are a very generous gift imo and did cheer me up no-end as they were completely unexpected.
Most of you will no-doubt have realised that they are Studio Miniatures' figures and are miniature versions of well known fictional personalities.
The few I think know of are (from l to r and top to bottom): #4 and #2 Not Woody Harrelson and his sidekick from "Zombieland", #5 Arnie as not the terminator (?), #7 Not Daryl from "The Walking Dead" and #8 George Romero as a Zombie.
Whilst I'm not a big fan of Studio Minis' survivor figures they do have some of the best zombies (if not the best) available. Having said that these are among the best survivors I have !

The final figure is yet another that I haven't actually painted (all I have did was base all of these).
It is an EM-4 miniature from one of their painted metal figure ranges (I forget which), for some reason he was omitted when I'd based the others previously.
When I bought these they were a mere £12.50 for five painted figures (with five 20 sided dice too) and is a far better paint-job than I'd anticipated (for the price).
The customer service from Em-4 was top notch and I can't fault praise it enough.
EM_4 plastic troopers

Next then, on to The Bad:
Finishing these was actually the objective of last week's efforts, but alas as I entered the final furlong I had one of those disasters that make you want to pack it all in and go home.
Unfortunately I was already home and could merely sit in horror watching the varnish I'd applied turn into a milky white coating over them. Undaunted by this set-back, I gave up on them.
I have since made a few attempts at re-painting them but I've also turned to the Interweb and used my google-fu to find some solutions to the problem and even though I've not tried any of the remedial courses at least I'm now hopeful of their recovery to mediocrity.
The Bad is merely my way of saying that the next batch are in fact unfinished although I have managed to base-up and apply a bit of paint here and there to a very mixed bag of figures. Amongst these are a few zombies (from the now defunct Mega-Minis and a plastic one from Wargames Factory. The remainder are civilians; some Foundy, Mega-Minis, Offensive Minatures (hostages), a single Hasslefree and four minis that are the 28mm counterparts of "The Devil's Rejects).
(From the TMP forum page they're now available from Raven painting.)

On to Beyond !
A destroyer ?
This is my first ever attempt at painting one of GZG (Ground Zero Games ) from their Full Thrust range.
Whilst I've never actually had dealing with GZG, my son has and has had exemplary customer service from them.
It seems that from time to time you actually get a little more than you ordered from them as a thank you and there's not many manufacturers that do that !
I'm not entirely happy with the colour scheme yet and may "tart it up" a bit, but for the moment it's adequate enough.

No prizes for spotting the space ship
I also have a part share in a long roll of "Space papery/vinyl stuff" as shown on here on the floor.
It's actually forty feet long and four foot wide and you can just see the "roll" underneath at the top of the photo.
Obviously from the photo you can see that it didn't come as a roll per se and was in fact folded over after it was wrapped around a sheet of card, but I think that the creases will disappear after being wrapped around a proper tube for a while.
It's made of a plastic stuff, thicker than a carrier bag or black rubbish sack but won't be as strong as one of the more expensive gaming mats that are currently available as a space warfare surface.
The price however is what really sets it apart from the other £60 mats, on ebay it's available from about a tenner, which, if cut into five 8 foot x 4 foot mats (or six 6 foot x 4 foot ones) works out at about £2 a mat ! At that price I think I can put up with the creases.

That's it for this week, as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.


32 comments:

  1. A great gift!! Nice one Bryan! Isn't the 3rd figure Mad Max? And the 6th looks like Snake Pliskin from Escape fron New York??

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    1. Yes, Ray it was a great gift. Mad Max ? Snake Piskin ? Pass and pass.

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    2. They are available from Hasslefree too.

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  2. Hi Joe, we all have bad days, weeks even years don't let it get you down. Things will and do change. I have found that any break from painting results in a deteriation of past skill, and the need to get your eye back in, so just relax you'll be back in the saddle in no time. Don't be so hard on yourself, we are all our own worst critic. In my short dealings with Bryan, I have found him to be an amazingly kind and generous person. Count yourself lucky to have a friend like that. Keep your chin up.

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    1. Thanks Bob, I'm not downhearted at all, I look on things like that very pragmatically and you're right I amlucky to have Bryan as a friend.

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  3. Hey, nice to see you've finally got round to rebasing those figures I sent you. Okay, so from left to right they are versions of John McClane (Bruce Willis in Die Hard), Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg in Zombieland), and Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson in the Mad Max trilogy). Second photo shows Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson in Zombieland), the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger from The Terminator) and Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell from Escape from New York). The third photo shows Darryl (from the Walking Dead) and the king of zombie films, George A Romero himself (as a zombie).
    I also have that painted set of EM4 figures you mentioned and they are of a very high standard. Lots to admire in this post, Joe.

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    1. Thanks Bryan for that info, I don't think I did too badly on guessing who they were meant to be. They were actually based last year, but I never got around to painting their bases.

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  4. Firstly a great gift Bryan is one of the good guys.
    Not seen the em4 plastics before but I like them now I see them
    GZG FSE Brill.

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    1. Thanks Cliint, I do really like the EM-4 stuff, I can't recommend them enough.
      Thanks also for the encouragement with the GZG ship too, it seemed to take no time at all to get it to the stage it's at now, which really surprised me and made a great change from figures.

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  5. Very nice collection. Sorry to hear of your varnishing woes. I imagine it was either to thickly applied or to humid. I had the same thing happen to me last year :( and that was brush on.

    The space mat is brilliant and at that kind of price you can't knock it at all. Would it be possible to glue it to a more rigid surface?

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    1. Thanks Brummie, I had the varnishing problem a year or two back but I thought I's got over it. I've a couple of remedies to try - I doubt it's a humidity thing, but I do thin my varnish lot. I think the main culprit would be me not mixing it enough before use.
      It is intended to glue the mat thing to a thin sheet of mdf/hardboard or similar.

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  6. That's a lot of miniatures in the making! Well done on the effort!

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    1. Thanks Mathyoo, I was used to having a hundred or so on the painting table in the past when I painted up armies.

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  7. Very nice from Vampifan, hopefully you'll be able to sort the varnish mishap out my friend.

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    1. Yes Al, he's a true gent and fingers crossed about the varnish too.

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  8. Nice bunch of figures. I really like the scheme on your starship - I wouldn't change it at all. I had the same problem with varnish on some 6mm infantry. I read online that brushing liberally with water, letting it dry and repeating many times helps. I was skeptical but tried it. After just one application it was noticeably better and I was astonished to see that after many repeats it worked well. It took out enough of the haze to make the figures passable. I'm not sure how that'll work for you but maybe it's worth a shot. Good luck! Keep up the good work.

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    1. Thanks Ironmonk, I'm still surfing the net for others' paint schemes on their space ships. As for the varniish, I have three suggestions that have occurred regulalry namely, water (lots), olive oil (tiny amounts) and gloss varnish, then matt again.I'llfind out which works best this week.

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  9. Great set of characters, they painted up nicely. I have seen the terminator figure, but I wasn't sure if he would be a good fit but he turned out very well.

    The space mat you have is a nice inexpensive alternative to the more pricey mats available. I have gotten a cheap plastic/vinyl table cloth from last Halloween that I can use if I ever dig out a space game.

    The group of civilians will be great for objective markers and general zombie food. Where was the firefighter from?

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    1. Thanks N667, I heard about the mat from the TMP boards, but no-one there had tried it, so....
      Although the Arnie figure is fairly big, he is wellproportioned.

      I've used the civilians as background figures and zombie food in the few games I played so far and they do make good zombie fodder. I see a lot of games where in the early stages of the apocalypse it looks more like they are taking place in a ghost town games rather than a thrving metropolis. The firefighter is a Mega-MIni zombie (you don't see many firefighters either).

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  10. Bryan is a good guy! Models are great!

    One of the guys at my club just had the same bad luck on an Eldar flyer he had been working on for a month. The earth shook that day.....

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    1. Yes LS,he's one of the best, I can only imagine your mate saying things like "oh bother" etc.

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  11. I really like them. Plenty of character in the painting.

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    1. You're right, if only I could get the same effect.

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  12. A great gift and some great progress too.

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    1. Thanks Michael, the blogging community is truly generous.

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  13. Nice one Joe and love that space mat too!

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  14. you don't happen to have a link for that Sapce Matt stuff, do you?

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    1. If you type in "Strarry Night Roll" into the ebay search, you'llget many companies offering you this.
      I've found it now for £9.16 including postage !

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  15. Zab, I think all the minis look great, especially Max, even the milky troopers. I don't see the "milk".

    If it's a frosty look, save them for cold weather scenarios; I'd try some Minwax tudor satin stain. It could remove the milk look, but they'll be glossy. You'd have to matte them again. I matte my gloss with any variety of matte clear coat spray paints, which now I follow by a Vallejo matte varnish applied full strength via an air brush. Together with the Minwax I get a triple strong anti-chip protection.

    What varnish do you use or probably no longer use.

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    1. Thanks for that BC, I'veuse water then gloss varnish, then another coat of matt and that seems to have sorted it. I originally used aHumrol Matte varnish, but I think I hadn't mixed it thoroughly-doh !

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