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.

Outbreak City: How to Build a 28mm Zombie Gaming Table - Part 4

With the show looming and with TONS of work still to do I kinda knew I had to knuckle down and get the 'texturing' stage finished. You can play All Things Zombie on any surface really, but once I had the vision in my head, I just had to make it a reality.

I was working away from home during the week whilst this project progressed, and I wanted to get this to a 'ready-to-paint' stage before going  away again on the Sunday night.

Rather than lock myself away in the man-cave, and miss out on my family, I commandeered the living room on Saturday morning and set about moving things forward whilst the family caused even more chaos all around me.

The texturing progressed.

Whilst I was 100% behind this method, I couldn't help wonder what had really let myself into.

Cutting out squares of card for something small is one thing, anyone who has scratch built a slate roof knows that by the time you hit the second half the novelty diminishes, but this, as simple as it was in principle, was something else.

Perhaps I had over-estimated the time it was going to take... maybe... perhaps... erm... yeah... I did. A lot.

Minutes rolled into hours and daylight vanished. By the time everyone was tucked up into bed I put a little backgorund inspiration on.

Resident Evil flowed into Night of the Living Dead and as the credits rolled on Dawn of the Dead a little face appeared at the top of the stairs.

"Were they being chased by monsters Daddy?" Whoops, error.

My daughter was a awake and quite possibly scarred for life. It was around half three in the morning and I still had loads to do if I wanted to get a sealing coat of paint into the boards. I should be taking her up to bed again and settling her down.

"Can I help Daddy?"

I need all the help I can get, and my daughter; a hobbyist? Epic.

"Yes please." I confessed.

My other half woke up a few minutes later. For some inexplicable reason, none of us could sleep, so, perhaps in sympathy, an army of cardboard engineers marched onwards.

Cardboard Engineer Reinforcements - 3.30 am. Thank you guys - I love you.

Not only was the help appreciated but with three people sticking the tiles down, things progressed ever more rapidly. We finished the boards by the time the sun came up and thankfully, we all hit the sack, exhausted.

One of three 2' by 4'  sections.

On an easy Sunday filled with lots of sitting down quietly, pancakes and copious amounts of strong coffee I headed to the garage and sealed the edges of the boards and the sidewalks.

Sealing the main detail on the board, and the sides of the battens, with MDF Primer.

So far so good. Perhaps more of a 'How NOT to' guide for this stage, but after a close call the project was back on track again.

To be continued...

All Things Zombie

Random Encounter 1 - Scratch Built Ork Stompa

Following a huge amount of support from fellow bloggers I'm going to throw in a few random encounters These random encounters will include some of the non-zombie stuff I've been creating over the past few years, either just before or alongside the Outbreak City project.

Well badly Mech!

I recently discovered that Warhammer 40K had it's 25th Anniversary. That sounded like quite a cool landmark until I realised that it meant I had been playing 40K for 25 years; Yikes!


Ball point pen Supa Rockets!

As an Ork player who has never owned anything but Orks so, quite frankly, I'm not that good at 40K and haven't really developed any strategy other than a massed assault. GW got me into this hobby so despite me playing a whole heap of different games now, I still play 40K and LOTR occasionally.

Belly plates. Sigil is off the original Stompa.

Sat in my bits box for a number of years was the interior of a small waste paper bin which my buddy James said "You should make than into a Stompa." It seemed like a good idea, but I guessed a scratch-built Stompa would require quite a bit of work and whilst my bits box was full, there wasn't quite enough Orky Stuff.

Titan Close Combat Weapon - GW, Lego and other bitz.

With the introduction of Apocalypse, and the super-heavies, the Orks were blessed with one of the coolest Orky models ever, the Stompa. I picked one up and after struggling to build it (It isn't the easiest kit to build, but it looks good) I found they had very kindly included a few optional accessories. The excuses had to end, I now had the Orky bits I needed to scratch build another stompa.

Big Shoota turret.

The model progressed with polystyrene being parcel taped to the waste paper bin to build a basic frame with a layer of papier-maché on top to give a solid base for everything else to come.

Da bit dat makes da smoke and noise!

The feet were cardboard tube 'legs' with Hirst Arts blocks and for everything else I raided the bits box and tried to replicate GW's Stompa as closely as I could.

Ork pilot, otherwise known as a Stompa-er.

Cardboard and plasti-card 'plates' were glued onto the papier-maché with individual rivets super-glued in place. The head was a deodorant cap with stuff stuck on. Cannons, shootas and rockets were made from everything from pipes, to pens, to bits off an old star wars toy - essentially all the best junk out of my bitz box. I used spare goblin and Ork figures and one I'd saved from the original Stompa.

"We will fix it, we will mend it!"

It took quite a bit of time to finish and being a model for a GW game, enter scale creep (it ended up bigger than intended), but all it does the trick.

Shoulder plate courtesy of Darth Vader's Tie Figther circa 1980 something.

We tend to work on 'secret' projects for our 40K Apocalypse games so that there can be a big reveal come gaming day (a tradition stated by James), and this one was fun to deploy.

That's what I call a Deth Kannon!

And I couldn't post this without a comparison shot. Mummy on the left, completely scratch built. Baby on the right; GW's kit, with a few bits missing, used on mummy.

If 40K is your thing here's a video from a 40K Apocalypse game played in the Man-Cave back in May 2010, 7000 points per side. The two Stompas see action side by side.

Next time, we return to the construction of Outbreak City for my All Things Zombie campaign.

Outbeak City: How to Build a 28mm Zombie Gaming Table - Part 3

Part 3 of the construction of my All Things Zombie Gaming Table.

Start at the beginning to read the whole article.

With the raised sidewalks fixed onto the battened boards is was time to go about detailing the board.

The whole philisophy behind this gaming table was detail. The idea was that every inch of the table was treated like an individual figure base, so I felt it was important to avoid shortcuts wherever possible and 'do it for real'. With that in mind I went about cutting out individual paving stones and curbs to ensure the sidewalks would take dry-brushing and ink washes.

"It's Begun!" It was about now I realised how much time this might actually take. 

The curbstones were cut 2/8'' wide and 1'' long. On the corners I switched to 1/2 '' lengths to aid with the curve.

I painted about 10-12'' of PVA at a time as I lay the tiles.

You can just about see the cuts made in the underside of the sidewalk pieces to help define the drainage. I was working away from home for a couple of months whilst I was doing this, so most of the build was done when I came home at weekends but I was able to cut out the tiles during weeknights.

Undercuts, to represent storm drains.

The sidewalks themselves consist of three rows of 6/8'' by 4.5/8''.

Like most gamers, I am a hoarder or all things that 'might be useful one day' so I had a fair amount of card sitting ready to be used. However, to ensure that there was some 'real-world' variation in the paving, to represent replaced slabs, ground heave or gentle localised subsidence, I wanted variation.

For the most part the curbstones were cereal packets and the paving was mostly the type of card that comes in a box of 5 reams of A4 paper (one at the top, one at the bottom) with of different thicknesses card randomly mixed in.

Drain cover, added with checker-plate plasti-card.

On the corners I simply alternated long and short edges to follow the line into the curve and trimmed the edges of the tiles as I went. That gave me a flat edge to work from again.

The tiles were all laid in a basic bricklaying 'running bond' style, offset by half a tile. I deliberately left a small gap between every tile, so that they were not laid exactly flush and a coat of textured paint wouldn't obscure the edges of the tiles.

I added a few random 'broken' slabs, by simply cutting them in half of in thirds at appropriate looking angles.



Finished curb and sidewalk.

To be continued...

All Things Zombie

Outbreak City - How to Build a 28mm Zombie Gaming Table - Part 2

Missed part 1 of this article?

Part 2 of the construction of my All Things Zombie Outbreak City gaming table.

Once I had three identical 2' by 4' battened boards. I lay them side by side and marked the roads and sidewalks.

Measure twice. Draw once. Check, correct and re-draw.

To accommodate tollerances (and my shoddy woodworking) I swapped the boards around as I went, to check that they lined up on every side.

A note on road sizes. I opted for a four inch (10.2 cm) road width, the same approximate size as World Works Games roads, as it strikes a good balance between aesthetics and playability when trying to retain a city-block feel to the table.

Once I was comfortable the measurements I cut to size the second layer sections in 3mm MDF. Being above the level of the roads, this level would represent the sidewalks and hard-standing of the city.

Note: No round corners yets.

I laid out all the sections to check everything was going to fit ok and once I was sure it was within acceptable limits, I cut curves of the top layer into the corners with a jigsaw.

This was also the stage I added a few dropped curbs and cut small notches in the underside of the top layer to represent storm drains. In retrospect, to go the extra mile, I would have cut the storm drains a little deeper and routed small holes in corresponding locations in the sides roads to match.

Finally I fixed the curbs to the base-boards with PVA and, after leaving it to dry for a few days, marked two inch sidewalks onto these sections.

To be continued...

All Things Zombie

Outbreak City - How to Build a 28mm Zombie Gaming Table - Part 1

So, I'd agreed to run a display game at the Eastern Front Wargames Show last year I wanted to make sure the gaming board looked very much a part of the whole set up as I could.

Outbreak City at Eastern Front 2011 - Unfinished, but the foundation is there.

I take most of my 'new toys and figures' photographs on a 2' by 4' section of city board I build a few years back and for games, I use a 4' by 4' board built for a Lord of The Rings 'Shadow and Flame' campaign. Fine for getting the project off the ground and getting some games in but I really wanted to create a new gaming surface dedicated to Modern Zombie gaming.

All Things Zombie is normally played on a 3' by 3' table but to ensure the game didn't look out of place in the context of a big hall next to other large-table games, I decided on a 6' by 4' layout.

Inspired by this EPIC teaser shot from The Extraordinarii and I had a good idea of what I was after. 

The Extraordinarii's amazing 'Small Town USA' layout.

The devil is in the detail on this board: modelled surface with 3D detail, raised curbs, recessed roads, sidewalks and man-hole covers, street furniture, signs, stop-lights, telephone boxes and varying textures and colours. I love the fact this table is quite light and eventually, those are the shades and tones I am after.

I trimmed some A4 paper to scale and began sketching and after a few calculations I set off to the local hardware stores, B&Q and Homebase here in the UK, to buy some timber.

They conveniently sell 6mm MDF in 3' by 4' sheets, and I selected 38mm deep softwood to batten the sheets.

One board down.

I created the batten frame and everything was glued and screwed with all every drill hole counter-sunk.

The batten frame.

I only have one old drill, on a cord, so I had to switch the drill bit and counter-sink back and forth, using a chuck-key for every individual drill hole. My advice; buy or borrow a paired cordless drill set (that's my future plan) and have them set up ready, it will save loads of time.

3 completed base-boards.

Something that bugs me about modular gaming tables is when you accidentally knock them (and I tend to do that) and they shift out of alignment.

To stop this I drilled holes through the battening in every side so that the boards could be fixed together.

Guide holes for linking the boards.

I used a slightly larger than necessary drill bit for these holes to accommodate for unevenness in the boards and my inability to measure drill holes correctly. It worked out fine.

Wing-nut.

They are attached with bots and wing-nuts.

Bolt head.

An extra bit of time and thought, but well worth the effort to avoid player created earthquakes.

To be continued...

All Things Zombie

Outbreak City at Eastern Front 2011

We interrupt our scheduled programme to bring you this news from Outbreak City!

The Lead Will Walk The Earth will be running a display game at Eastern Front:The East of England Wargames Show in Norwich on Sunday 21st August 2011.

Eastern Front: East of England Wargames Show 2011

Historically, Norwich held host to a popular annual show for a number of years. The show began to wane and eventually fell by the wayside and now, after a prolonged drought, the new show organiser Kim Daniels decided Norwich was once again ready for wargaming event. Eastern Front premiered last year and was hugely successful.

The show features a number of display games, a strong list of traders, the ubiquitous bring-and-buy and three competitions: The National DBA league, Hordes/Warmachine and Flames of War.

Inspired by The Extraordinarii's stunning work on his Small Town USA project and in the tradition of all pivotal wargames events I have decided to construct a brand new 6' by 4' Modern City Wargames Table (the baseboard) ready for the event. "Quiiick!!!!" Always up for a slightly foolish challenge I dived right in and construction is in full flow, I will post a full 'this is how I did it' (or didn't quite manage it) after the event.

Luckily for me I kinda forgot that I had promised to make a Dystopian Wars Ocean table for my best buddy and, handily enough, he and Matt from Too Much Unpainted Lead will be running a Dystopian Wars display game at the show too. Double the Van-Damage! So I tried to grow and extra pair of hands (didn't work) and the garage is literally full to the brim with battened MDF. In for a penny, in for a pound. Wish me luck.

Eastern Front, The East of England Wargames Show is being held in the fabulous St. Andrews Hall venue in the centre of Norwich.

St Andrew's Hall - Norwich

Come support the show and if you do visit please drop in to The Lead Will Walk the Earth and introduce yourself.

The Lead Will Walk The Earth will returns to it's scheduled programming. RTA: An All Things Zombie Batrep Part 2 follows next episode.