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.

Civilians

I've managed to get a few figures to the stage where I'm happy enough to say that they're good enough for the table-top.
These four on the right are all Foundry figures from their Street Violence ranges, as with all foundry figures they're on the large side, even for a "28mm" figure, but they'll fit in with most of the other figures I have nonetheless. I selected these four from the  group as they could all easily double as rioters too. There is an excellent ATZ-BDTZ scenario with a riotous mob and these will fit the bill nicely as agent-provocateurs.

The next three are all Mega-Minis, whilst I'm happy with the Postman, I'm not that happy with the two delivery type chaps. I've painted these two several times and I've all but given up on them, so they'll have to do as they are. (The blurry photo is not to hide the awful painting, but is merely a reflection of the camera-man's skills -zero.)

It will come as no surprise to most of you that all of these are described as "28mm scale", of course we all know that there is no such thing.
The chap on the left is a Foundry, beside him is a Hasslefree and the three others are Offensive Miniatures (hostages).  The OM's are the most accurately proportioned imo,  though the Hasslefree Kev is also equally well proportioned, for a small adult or a teenager. (The Foundry guy to 1/60th scale woiuld have a hand with knuckles about eight inches across ! - but I still like him)

Last for this week are three more Foundry  (I think) and the nightwatchman type bloke is a Hasslefree.
Nothing much can be said about these four other than the nightwatchman looks like a giant against the Hasslefree figure above and I find kneeling figures aren't as usable as standing figures except in a set-piece.

Having finished the troopers a while back,  I've made a start on the next batch of zombie. They're nearly all Old Glory (and look very medieval for the most part), but there are a couple of Mega Minis in the mix too. You may be able to see a young girl wielding a hockey stick (very vogue atm) and dragging a teddy bear/doll
 and behind her is a basebal wielding kid too - these are both Mega-minis.


As I've started on this group of zombies I also needed another group so that there is a continuity in my production; the group that I pried from their abominable slotta-bases have now all been rebased onto washers.
This group is mostly Zombiesmith miniatures (and very good they are too). There are about twenty zombies and three pairs of survivors and their zombie counterparts. There are also a couple of random figures in the mix which could well be some very cheap Sci-fi figures  I picked up from goodness knows where.

I'll finish by welcoming my latest follower "Belique"and that's that for another week, except to say that as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.

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On the Cards

Rather than show you what I've managed to paint up this week (they're still awaiting their varnish-aarrgghhh) I'm showing what I received in the post last week.
Those of you that follow Colgar6's blog will already know that he like to use cards in his games and has developed  some of his own. I ordered two sets of cards from Artscow in January one was another set of event cards for ATZ designed to compliment Colgar6's (I already have his original deck) but the other was Colgar6's deck designed to be used with the game "Full Thrust".
This new deck for ATZ was designed by "Spendlove" and whilst I haven't looked through all the deck yet they look pretty good. As in the first deck there is a mix of styles to the cards but mostly they use photographs.

The cards are sturdy and well finished, with a semi-gloss look to them.
I haven't a clue what font is used on them but they are easily read.
They are also what is known as a Poker sized deck which means that the cards are slightly wider than what we'd normally play cards with (they're called bridge cards), which does mean that quite a lot of readable print can be put onto a card.

In ATZ the most frequent occurrence of an "event" in game terms would be the equivalent of throwing a 6 on a d6 each turn, which given that ATZ games have maybe two dozen turns or so means that on average I only expect about 4 events each time I play. Now, with 108 cards in my event deck I doubt I see much repetition of cards for a long time.

As I mentioned above, I also bought Colgar6's  excellent deck of cards for "Full Thrust" a game using miniature space craft.
The cards are of the same  robust quality of the ATZ cards adorned with pictures mainly from Star Trek. Whilst I may not be a fan of Star trek, no others are more iconic perhaps that Kirk,  Spock, Bones etc.






I haven't been slacking from my Zombies either, I painted up two dozen or more civilians and made a great start on the next wad of Zombies that are mainly Old Glory figures.
The picture on the right however, shows the first ever figures that I based for this project. They are zombie-smith miniatures, now released from the hell that was their slotta base. In between painting this week I'm hoping to mount these on my preferred 20mm bases using either washers or pennies.

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

Troopers

After the varnish disaster and much googling of remedies I managed to get these to a state where I was happy enough with them.
They're not the best of paintjobs, but after painting, "varnishing", repainting bits, gloss varnishing and finally matt varnishing again I was thoroughly sick of them.
I've pseudo organised them into five units,
A command section, three fireteams and a heavy weapons section.

The basic figure has theoretically interchangeable legs and arms with each body, as well as variations in back backs.
The figures actually do snap well together without glue, but it's obvious from some trials that different combinations are more suited together than others.

The back packs come two versions, the square box and the slim "futuristic"; cutting the pack away from the equipment is easy enough, but does leave a hole in the figures back where the pack plugs into it ! (easily remedied)
With the five sets I bought, I also bought an additional pack of heavy weapons bits in metal  (not whole figures).

 The heavy weapons' pack heads didn't have the visors of the plastics but did allow for some variation in figures. They have a band around their helmet (very Vietnam war-ish) instead.
I retained two of the radio packpacks to serve as RT's and two more I converted to just square packs, these will operate as the medics in the group.

Of the five heavy weapons, in the pack  I only ended up using these three as the others looked even more ludicrous than the huge minigun thing shown.So there's a flamethrower and another auto-fire weapon of some description.
The remainder of the force is armed with the standard rifle-thing but the alternate armaments are a "pistol" held with two hands  and another pistol held single-handed, but with a very large machete in the left hand (I cut a lot of these off).
"Do you want to know more?"
The above quote is frequently mentioned in the Starship Troopers films, which I had on in the background whilst I was basing these figures and I realised that the basic rifle-armed squaddie looked very similar to these guys - just a thought.

That's it for this week, all comments are of course welcomed and appreciated as always.

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.

Third Year !

Yes, this blog marks the beginning of my third year blogging; that I could find enough to write about and share with the blogging community is still very hard for me to believe.
My experience in the blogosphere at times has been a weird and wonderful experience and I've seen many wonderful blogs come and go.
I've never been one to tout my blog on other forums or blogs, nor have I put much importance on the number of "page views" "comments" or "followers" but nevertheless I've succeeded in my original targets.
I intended that this blog would be the "story" of how I tackled a completely new (to me) game. Originally I wanted to make a post a week (check), have at least a dozen followers (check) and get a regular comment count of about half a dozen a week (check) - so I'm more than pleased.

My first Full Thrust models

I've re-instated my originally intended painting/building regime of doing at least an hour a week towards something hobby-related and over this last week I've actually managed to maintain this. The Sci-fi troopers I showed last week are all but finished (despite a varnishing catastrophe) and will be finished very soon.
I've cleaned and undercoated a fleet of space ships (a Xmas present), which will be a welcome distraction from figures. I first played Full Thrust about 20 years ago and it's still a good game.

My last Poundland purchases

This week will see me visit "Poundland" once more to see what, if anything, they have of interest. I tend to visit whenever I have to make a hopsital visit (they're routing these days and quarterly thank goodness).
My last visit produced some excellent toy fire-fighting vehicles and a couple of cars which I haven't previously shown. There were two distinct models and three or four colours available for each, but I made do with just the two.

I'm hoping that this week I'll be making more in-roads into my lead mountain, finishing off the troopers and experimenting with painting a space ship (Starship ?), though the Bouillon tin still stares at me invitingly (I aim to make a model of something with it).

That's it for this week, except of course to welcome my latest followers TamsinP (a prolific painter) and George. I would also like to plug Bob Kinnear's blog, as he's just started blogging and would probably appreciate all the encouragement he can get.

As always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.

Painting again !

Well the title tells it all really, I've actually picked my brushes up and started painting figures again, this after a hiatus of nearly a year (due to my then rapidly failing eyesight).
I did manage to paint scenery and model buildings though so I haven't been completely idle, though in the last two months I've done little to nothing hobby-related.
To ease back into the painting habit and my regime of doing something towards my zombie project I started with these EM-4 plastic (and some metal parts) sci-fi troopers. They're cheap and cheerful multi-part figures (£2.55 for 5 !) and will serve as the military forces in my campaign.
I chose these first mostly because they're uniformed, which makes painting a lot easier than my horde of other civilian and zombie figures.

Like many others I have a host of figures in various stages of completion.
In this photo I have zombies, civilians, a hazmat crew and packages of various figures.
Most figures of the figures shown have been undercoated and based, whilst the figures in the bottom right are finished save for their bases.
These were an unexpected gift from a fellow blogger whose name of Bryan must remain anonymous. (He also supplied the Heroclix clown)
The boxes in the back contain a lot of figures mostly from  Black Cat Bases, which I intend for gangster games.On the same shelf to the right of the above are more figures which were again in various stages of completion (some very nearly finished) which I'd been painting before my eyesight gave out.

Also on the back-burner are my small collection of clowns, once again based and undercoated ready to go. Once more several of these were gifted to me from an anonymous benefactor.
They're a mix of Eureka, Black Cat Bases and two or three of whom I can't recall the origin of. I do have an idea how these will be used in my campaign at some point, but not as the "Evil Killer Clowns" we're used to. (As an aside: Is it just me or does anyone else think that there's a strange propensity for clowns to be shown armed with meat cleavers ?)

That's it for another week other than to welcome my latest follower "Chris Stoesen" and as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.