Music for Zombie Gaming - Part 6

The video game itself was kinda Marmite, some loved it, and some really couldn't get along with it.

I was in the former camp and from a score perspective it set the scene perfectly.

The Walking Dead Video Game's score is full on small town America gone sour, slow lilting melodies, minor key strings with hints of mournful bluegrass guitar reminiscent of Ennio Moricone's spaghetti western years.

Jarred Emmerson-Johnson's accompaniment to the game is a slow burner and is far less dramatic than many other zombie themes but it's great for game build up and those character driven moments where you're just not sure if one of your favourite characters is going to make it. I've painted to is numerous times, just don't expect it to leave you feeling happy, hopeful or in any way good about surviving the apocalypse.

Music for Zombie Gaming - Part 5

So here's where the purists go mental, sorry guys. 28 Days Later... yeah, I said it. Whilst upon release it was never touted as a zombie movie and even now we recognise it as an 'Infected' movie, even director Danny Boyle went on record years later to say "I kinda wanted to make a zombie movie, but I had to do things differently to get away with it.'

So whilst the movie threw a 'runners' spin on genre, John Murphy's soundtrack on the other hand really hits the spot.

Slow building, haunting and and subtly discordant, the Original Soundtrack makes a superb backdrop to any zombie game.

Personally, I would mark this as the first of the 'modern' Zombie scores, heralding in a new era of themes specifically for the genre as we know it today. As a stand alone soundtrack it is not specifically innovative. It relies upon the standards of the horror genre in building tension and conflict, music box style melodies with contrasting resonance in the strong section but I'm pretty sure it has influenced composers of the genre since it's release. For example, as it is hard not to hear its influence in Bear McCreary's work.

Judge Dredd Miniatures: Judges

Drokk!

I was an avid reader of 2000AD Monthly back in the day and Dredd unquestionably was my favourite character. A few years back I sold my collection of original GW Judge Dredd Miniatures... fool that I am, I was never gonna need them right?... Wrong!

The Dredd movie did it for me, I dragged out my old Dredd Mags, picked up Case File No. 1 and got all nostalgic about old stony face.

That's when I found the Judge Dredd Miniatures Game, available as a free download at the time, simple enough.

And then... I found the Kickstarter and signed up at surprisingly low level (no idea how I manged to maintain that, considering the 'giddy fury' that ensued). I got my name in the recently released rulebook credits and picked up a pack of Judges.

In Grud's name they were really quite fun to paint. Nothing too fancy here, just plain colours, washes, a few highlights and some gloss varnish on the helmets.

I've a few more to go, but this was enough to play a few quick games and get to grips with the rules and Outbreak City was perfectly happy to sub itself as the Big Meg.

Street Judge
Street Judge
Female Street Judge

3D Forge Miniatures - Zombie Miniatures Kickstarter

A quick blog post as I wanted to share this Kickstarter from 3D Forge Miniatures.

A friend of mine brought this to my attention and just in case others hadn't seen it I thought I'd share it right away, looks pretty awesome to me.

Most importantly, check out the survivors! Can't wait to see the updates on poses for these.
There are some great character zombies in here!
The devil is in the detail.
 This stuff is rubbish! Well... you know what I mean.


 There's a few basic rewards and some of the entry packs look like pretty awesome value to me.

Check out the Kickstarter here:

Zombie Miniatures,Survivors, Barricades and Walls in 28mm.




Incursion: 3D Play Set - Part 2

Slow but steady progress with this. Not a great deal to talk about as the process is pretty self explanatory.

I simply marked out the grid and then filled in the blanks. The hashed areas are where the 'block's, or walls, will go. I up-scaled the board a little, so that getting the 40mm DS based figures in and out of the terrain wouldn't be a problem.

I managed to get the second board done, so here's the two individual boards joined together.

Incursion 3D Play Set: Both boards in planning stage. Miniature for scale.
There's a long way to go, but it's definitely taking shape. The miniature is for scale. That's a 40mm DS based miniature down there.

I also started downloading some graphics ready to use on the interior. Such as this. It'd be rude not to.


Even more All Things Zombie survivors

Once more here's three more of the bargain £1 miniatures I picked up. Both suitable for All Things Zombie and for playing the Judge Dredd Miniatures game.

I have no idea what this gun is but I think it'll leave a big hole in anything it hits!
Heavy with BAMP
Close protection with BAP
The top figure was already based and the second two are both completely flat, so the detailing is just painted on.

I think these are all Copplestone miniatures, but feel free to let me know if they're not. They are all great scuplt and nice and easy to paint.

Music for Zombie Gaming - Part 4

Zombies were human once... they just went and got a little bit bitten by another zombie.

For the most part my zombie gaming playlist is pretty serious, full of dark, brooding soundtracks and ambient incidental music. If I was playing a 'serious' tabletop rpg, I'd keep this out of the list, otherwise, it's all good.

So without further ado, we present 'In the heart of every zombie is a man', by Chris Pickenpaugh.

Yet more All Things Zombie survivors

When you see a bargain it is best not to miss out. So when I stopped by a barrow-load of 28mm random modern miniatures a while back I picked out a good few of them.

Here's three more.

Incidentally, I was also getting geared up for the Judge Dredd Miniatures Kickstarter at the time, so whilst the first figure will get used as an All Things Zombie survivor the second two are very much Mega-City One inspired.

Bryan's recent post on the Judge Dredd Miniatures Rule Book reminded me about these. Seems like I'm not the only one who has been inspired to play a little MC-1 action.

Female Survivor: Colour Palette is definitely Mega City One inspired.
Young Punk or Juve. I think he's gonna be attracting a few zombies!
Don't think she'll last long in the Zombie Apocalypse... but she'll look great on the streets of the Big Meg!
Once again, I really have no idea which manufacturer these are from, I just thought they looked cool, and at £1 each, it was difficult to say no!

The figures were already based, too rounded for my tastes but... £1... they'll do.

Let me know if you know who made them!

Incursion: 3D Playset - Part 1

Not much to report on this recently, as I'd mostly been doing stuff related to the 7th Annual Festival of Zombie Culture.

Incursion 3D Play-set

However, here's an update on the Incursion 3D play-set.

I decided to go for a battened board on MDF, the same as nearly all my other gaming tables, because it is a technique I am familiar with an it should suit the scale and format.

Board 1 - Stage 1
This is simply the first board marked out on battened MDF. Early days, but it's a start.

Incursion - I smell a 3D Playset


Nazi Zombies, US Deisel powered Combat Suits, scantily clad sub-machinegun wielding frauleins and the gritty British MI-13 comandos duke it out deep in the bowels of Gibraltar in an Epic Weird World War 2 struggle to destroy or deploy the dreaded Doomsday device - What's not to like?

Ein, Zwei, Die and all that!

At Salute 2011 (that's right... 2011... two years ago!!!) I picked up the Axis and Allied starter sets and a few extra figures (a zombie horde) to get the juices flowing. The trial games with cardboard counters were fun, challenging and, just as Mr Jim Bailey intended methinks - gagging for a 3D play-set and lots opf pretty models.

Inspired by Herrodadog's awesome 3D Incursion boards (you rock sir, you paved the way) and alongside every other ludicrously ambitious project I had underway, I set out to build my own 3D playset.

Whoopsy. I just couldn't help myself.

Targets were set, deadlines missed and the whole project almost abandoned for quite some time as I lived away from home working a full time job, maintained two businesses and got involved in all sorts of other nerdish fun along the way. However...here was the basic plan.

Two 24' by 30' self-contained fully modelled 3D terrain boards
40+ miniatures
9 objective markers
Resin counters
9 Doors

Easy, right...? Not exactly... but fun.

A Belated Thank You To Another Blogger - Colin

This was a post I meant to write and post about two years ago.

Back in August 2011 I'd decided to put on an All Things Zombie display game at the Norwich Wargames Show - Eastern Front.

After seeing my post, fellow blogger Colin, of Down Among the Lead Men fame, offered to come along and help.

We'd never met before and literally shared just a few emails and Colin travelled quite some distance and added his substantial zombie horde to mine and brought some survivors too. It was a good job he did as I had less than 60 zombies at the time, and as we were playing on a 6' by 4', using vehicles and being quite casual with our weapons fire, there were quite a few zombies being created each turn.

The games were great fun and after a few hours of demo play a few passers by asked if they could join in. So the display game turned rather quickly into a participation game, with two guys enjoying themselves so much they came back to play a second scenario.

Heroquest skeleton Feasting Counter Thank you Colin.
Colin very kindly gave me three zombie feasting counters by way of thanks, we used them in the game and I have to say they're a perfect way to count down the turns in ATZ. The fact they are the skeletons from Heroquest is also pretty awesome too.

Thank you Colin.

Music for Zombie Gaming - Part 3

There seems to me to be, for the most part, three typical styles of music when it comes to zombie movies or games in recent years.

Techno/Industrial, Rock/Metal and creepy sinister and often discordant orchestral

He's something from the first category from two rather clever chaps... Tomandandy that finds a firm place in my zombie gaming playlist.

I wasn't so exactly sold on Resident Evil when it I first encountered it, it was the sci-fi element that kinda put me off.

It's certainly not that I don't like sci-fi, I love it, I just prefer my zombies in the more classic sense, even if I don't mind the running 'infected'.

Now... the whole franchise has really grown on me and despite the purist roots, for me the likes of Resident Evil, Left4Dead and Zombicide have created a firm place for 'mutant' undead.

Here's a track from Resident Evil: Afterlife



We got a Mighty Convoy!

We've got a long way to go, and a short time to get there.

I'd been looking for an articulated lorry to use on my All Things Zombie games and found a few that would fit the bill, the trouble is, the only ones I found were about £50 each, and whilst I'm not adverse to spending a bit of money on my games, that's a little too much for just one model that'll only use every now and then.

Thankfully, a chance visit to a local Entertainer store to buy some cars for my son, allowed me to find this. Although the model wasn't marked scale-wise and I'm sure that is isn't 1:43 (like the majority of the model cars I use) it seems to fit pretty well.

Best thing... it was £8.00, bargain!


It'll certainly count a location all by itself as there's bound to be either useful supplies or zombies in the back!

More All Things Zombie Survivors

At The Norwich Wargame Show 'Eastern Front' I managed to pick up some 28mm miniatures for £1 each, that's right £1 each!

The offering was pretty broad and everything was pre-based (hence the rather 'rounded' bases (I prefer to keep mine as flat as possible) and was mostly sci-fi or modern from a variety of manufacturers with a few gems hidden amongst a great deal of considerably 'meh' stuff. Thankfully there was plenty of miniatures suitable for my All Things Zombie campaign.

I can honestly say I don't actually know specifically which manufacturers these are, so if anyone does know, feel free to let us know.

Female Survivor with handgun
Street punk with handgun
Female gang member with sawn-off shotgun
The bottom figure actually had a flat base. So as an experiment, the detail of the paving is actually just painted directly onto the flat base.

I think they'll make pretty good survivors or Enemy forces for my All Things Zombie games.

Music for Zombie Gaming - Part 2

Video games do a pretty nifty job of mixing visual with audio and whilst graphically games have come a long way, I think it is the soundtracks that have improved more than anything over the years.

Arguably, some of the worlds finest up-and-coming-composers have cut their teeth on video games, Steve Jablonsky comes to mind, responsible for the first three Gears of War games and all three Transformers movies among others.

Left 4 Dead was a pretty decent game, setting aside the creeping horror for pure unadulterated action and whilst it missed the mark for many purists, it's a popular franchise for good reason, you get to shoot lots and lots of zombies... make that gazillions of zombies!

Mike Morasky's themes are dark, sinister and there's some wonderful use of piano and bluegrass guitar that gives it a small-town American feel form time to time. Pretty much all of the tunes are worth adding. I even like in game recordings from Left4Dead 2 from the Midnight Riders. Last seen somewhere near the whispering oaks fairground. Check out their website for more info.


To finish off, here's another track from me back in 97. Entropy - Machine.

Billy! Get to da Chappa!!!

Ever since I started Zombie gaming I've always wanted to include an obligatory 'Get to da chappa!' scenario in one of my All Things Zombie games.

Trouble is, despite my best efforts, I never really found a decent enough looking helicopter for the right price.

Thankfully I finally managed I pick up this bad boy about 6 months ago.

28mm Model for scale
1/43 scale Fast Lane Agusta A109 fully licensed Die Cast Helicopter.

It was £14.99 from ToysRUs, and I'm pretty pleased with how it looks on the table top and it is likely to feature in my next big game.

Music for Zombie Gaming - Part 1

I don't know about you, but when I get into something, I REALLY get into something.

You know; watch the movie, read the book, wear the t-shirt and listen to the theme tune... whilst drinking a cup of tea from a mug with a bio-hazard logo on it... that kind of thing.

Music has been a massive part of my life for years. Before I got a real job I was a working musician. Click on the EP cover below and you can listen to one of our tracks from 1997.Yes, that's me on bass and lead vocal. Sheesh, 97 feels like a long time ago these days!


When I'm playing a game miniatures game, board game or working on a hobby project, I usually gravitate towards film, television and video game soundtracks.

So for a bit of variety, I'll be posting some of my favourite zombie gaming tracks.

Johnny Cash is not who I naturally think of when it comes to the Zombie Apocalypse in musical form but the use of 'The Man Comes Around' during the closing credits of the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead nailed it for me. This track made the playlist pretty early on.

I'm back!

So... that was what they call a Hiatus then?

After setting up Zombie Shop, and then JJD UK, both of which have been and continue to be fantastic fun, and then taking a full time job over 200 miles from home things became a little difficult to keep the blog going. Travel, late nights and a crazy schedule meant something had to give, unfortunately it was the blogging.


So. Just over 18 months later and I'm finally back home, this time (fingers crossed) for good.

Thankfully there wasn't a complete vacuum in gaming or hobby or Zombies, and luckily, after starting blogging I got into the habit of taking pictures of things as I made them, so to make up for lost time, I'll be posting a few tasty morsels of everything I've been up to.

So what's next?

There's the completion of Outbreak City for my All Things Zombie campaign, quite a bit of Dust Tactics, new survivors for ATZ, some Judge Dredd miniatures, a 3D Incursion Board (that's half-way through) and more Live Roleplaying fun.

Most of all though... I've missed you guys.