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

Monday 10 March 2014

Ahoy, Me Heart-eaties

This was going to be a normal post of "Here's the rubbish I slapped paint on last week", but two bloggers' recent posts  (Mongo's and Irqan's) had me dig out a ship-model I'd made years ago. I can't even remember what I made it for in the first place, though I suspect I may have been a bit bored. I was possibly working on a "Boxer Rebellion" project at the time, but it may also have been for an African Colonial skirmish game.
The hull is made from a polystyrene base covered in filler and smoothed out, whilst the upper superstructure is all card or cardboard.
The various frames (door, windows and hatch) are all made from matchsticks whilst the hatch itself is "plastic canvas". The paddles are probably lollypop sticks and all the decking is made up of tapers (old version of coffee stirrers).
From the pointy front end to the rounded back end is about 16".
Distance across the two paddle wheels is about 6", whilst the main deck is 3" wide for the most part and sits about 1" above the table.
The roof of the cabin does lift off too, to reveal its only internal detail, a ships wheel.
The gubbins at the front is a couple of cog-wheels and a bit of chain, representing something vaguely nautical.
The figures you see are recently finished zombies, two Mega-Minis and one Wargames Factory that had to be repainted.

I finished rebasing my Zombiesmith minis (see right) and found a couple of figures of unknown origin amongst them - very curious.
One is a female (possibly futuristic), the other a large guy with  a pistol that looks too big even for him.
As well as rebasing , I've also added to my paint tray another mixed batch of civilians, armed and unarmed and the occassional misplaced zombie.
The other batch of civilains, some of which I showed last time have now all been finished (as much as they're ever going to be),
Here's my take on the Devil's Rejects although they're not meant ot be a direct take off of the actual rejects.

Here's my  paint-tray currently:
Left hand group, zombies, nearly all finished; centre group mostly zombies, getting there; right hand group mostly civilians, just started.

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

39 comments:

  1. That's a very nice boat/ship (I could never tell the difference) model. Give it a lick of paint and it'll look all the better. Your figure painting is coming along nicely and it seems to me that your lead mountain is shrinking. I wish mine could. A good post, Joe, with much to admire.

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    1. Thanks Bryan, I was always told that a boat is what you put on a ship, though I don't think that that's much help.
      My lead mountain gets smaller as I don't tend to buy figures any more (well not many).

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    2. I believe that a boat doesn't carry smaller craft, whereas a ship does; this is irrespective of the size of the thing. One certain way to annoy a submariner is to refer to his vessel as a "ship" (it's really a boat) :-) .

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    3. Thanks for that C6, I'm pleased that that is all cleared up now and I now be able to avoid annoying submariners in the future.

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    4. Ah, well. I live close to the submarine base at Faslane so we have quite a lot of navy families in town. It's important to know these things :-) .

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    5. I should have knoew it as well, both my dad and my brother in law were both mariners (RN) and the b-i-l was based at your neck of the woods (Helensburgh) when I visited him too.

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  2. Replies
    1. Thanks Al, what gave it away as a steamer ?

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  3. Excellent work with this ship!

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    1. Thanks Phil, though I doubt it'll ever be used

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  4. Nice steamer. Yes, many years ago we were doing colonial and Boxer games when you were coming to the club in Durham. Maybe it's of that vintage?

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    1. Thanks Colin, I do think it's from that era too.

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  5. Great modelling skills, thanks for sharing.

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    1. Np Irqan it was your post that inpired this one, now all I need is an excuse to show off all my other never-used ships !

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  6. Full steam ahead!

    Well can zombies swim?

    Looking good, and my oh my have you got the painting mojo back! Very nice to see Joe!

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    1. Thanks LS, I don't know if z's can swim, but what about floating and flailing their arms, inadvertantly causing motion ?
      As for figures, in my youth I'd have at least 100 or so figures on the go at once, but uniforms are far easier than individuals.

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  7. That ship is fantastic! And done from scratch, really amazing, as usual.

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    1. Thanks Mathyoo, and not toodiggicult at all, especially if you removed the paddle-wheels

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  8. Excellent boat/ship Joe.
    You should do a post- Apocalypse Now style campaign up the Tyne.
    Good to see you painting again, nice Rejects too.

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    1. Thanks Bob, it probably would make an interesting scenario

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  9. Cool boat! I would love to see an African Queen type scenario with that and zombies. Or a survivor group trying to make their way across a lake or river setting. That could be quite a fun campaign....

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    1. Thanks N667, even though combined ops have been a long time favourite of mine I don't think I'll ever get around to doing one.

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  10. As others have said, very nice boat.

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  11. I saw that boat and thought, ooh zed apocalypse survivors take to the water! With the proper stowage that could be the perfect survivor escape vehicle.
    just sayin...

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    1. I'm begiining to think that I may have to a scenario up for it (and some water and luggare and barricades....)

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  12. The boat looks great... remind me of a boat in the computer game left4dead

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    1. Thanks HW, can't recollect the L4D boat.

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  13. The side wheels do make this look like a colonial era vessel. I see no reason not to have a darkest Africa zombie game "King Zomboman's Mines!". Or a Boxer Zombie "55 nights in Peking" game or even a Zulu zombie game.... "Zombie Dawn" or maybe "Zomlu".

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    1. Yep, I think at th very least it's Victorian (I keep thinking it's based on a Thames tug), but I dolike your game suggestions.

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  14. The paddle ship is fantastic, I love it

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    1. Thanks SK, it could do with a new lick of paint though, time has not be kind to it.

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  15. I wish my scratchbuilt stuff turned out as good as yours do. Even though it is a few years old it looks marvellous what ever you built it for its fab.

    Nice work on the survivors and the zombies look good I quite like the fact there all wielding weapons or whatever they died carrying.

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    1. Thanks Brummie, it is quite old but like all the stuff I make it was made with wargaming in mind. It may still end up having a purpose one day.

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    1. Thanks Tito, I can't decide which is is either

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  17. Wow Zabadak, that is really cool. It's perfect for colonial games and as a great ship for zombie survivors. Looks terrific.

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    1. Thanks BC, though it could do with a little tidying up.

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  18. Excellent, that's great and perfect for your zombie period too!

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    1. Thanks ZombieAd, I'm sure I could fit iit into a zombie game somehow

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