Zombtober 2014 - Week 2

Fashionably late, or just too darn stubborn to change the date of my posting? Regardless of which category this post falls into here's my Week 2 update for Zombtober.

Just the base-colours on the two re-based Zombicide models at this stage and one or two colours on the other two (not pictured).

Base colours on two re-based Zombicide Walkers

It's been great to get back to some simple individual miniatures and photographing them against the terrain I made is reminding me how much fun I had just pulling the whole project together.

Working on these and seeing everyone's efforts is inspiring me to return to Outbreak City and get a few more games of my All Things Zombie: Final Fade Out campaign played.

Zombtober 2014 - Week 1

Okay, so apparently I missed one of the rules of Zombtober...

You know, that rule about posting updates on a Sunday? Yeah, I missed that part, so I claim ignorane, which is bliss in this instance as I've simply been working away oblivious and enjoying every minute of it, and anyway, rules are there to be broken right?

So far I've re-based both of the Zombicide miniatures on 25mm round bases and added some milliput detailing and everything is now undercoated and ready to paint (George was already undercoated and painting had already begun).

It'll be nice to get back to painting on a white undercoat. I switched to white when I started painting my Studio Miniatures zombies for my All Things Zombies games, it was clear the miniatures on thier website were not painted on a black base-coat. However, recently, due to the darker base colours I've used with the majority of my Dust Tactics miniatures, I've steered clear of white in many instances and to be honest, I've missed it.

Time to get some paint on these guys!

Zombtober 2014 - 1 The Beginning

I missed out on Zombtober last year as I was busy with work, however I really enjoyed reading everyone's posts and the cameraderie was cool, so this year: no excuses, count me in!

All Things Zombie was the reason I started this blog, mostly due to Matt telling me it'd be a great way to keep things moving on the Outbreak City project I'd started, so it's fitting to get back to painting some Zeds to add to the horde and one new survivor.

To keep things simple, rather than trying anything too ambitious, I'm going to paint just four miniatures, one per week, as a welcome break from all the Dust Tactics figures and terrain I've been enjoying, all to add to my Outbreak City play-set.

I started work on two of them and never got around to finishing them. The figures I'll be working with are:

1. Zombicide Walker - Male
2. Zombicide Walker - Female
3. Project Zeke Miniatures - 'William' Survivor
4. Studio Miniatures - Free Exclusive 'Not Zombie George A. Romero' which comes free with Zombie Horde 001

Zombicide walkers, Project Zeke William and Studio Miniatures 'Not' Zombie George

Both of the Zombicide miniatures will be re-based on 25m round bases and they'll all have milliput sculpted on top for a custom 'street' look.

I'm looking forward to the challenge and to seeing everyone else's updates too.

Project Zeke Miniatures: Zombie Survivors and Swat Team

Project Zeke Miniatures are a brand new miniatures company set up by Simon Hunter. Simon is a passionate Zombie Gaming fan with a dream to sculpt and produce his own 28mm zombie war gaming skirmish miniatures.

Kudos to Simon because: he is not a professional sculptor, he doesn't have the backing of a big company and he has avoided the crowd-funding route. He has done what he wanted by hard graft and focused on doing exactly what he set out to do. Simon has taken an idea all the way from concept to execution and that in itself is a head shot in our book.

Simon was kind enough to send us some free samples of his new miniatures hot off the press. Thank you Simon.

First up is William, a survivor armed with a hunting rifle with a knife taped to the barrel. He is clearly an outdoors type with cargo pants and shoulder length hair and a beard. He's also got some impromptu anti-bite armour (magazines and duct tape) which is a nice touch.

Second up comes a Private Security Squad, three miniatures in CQB getup which we think could find a lot of use anyone's All Things Zombie: Final Fade Out games.

Simon has also released a Limited Edition miniature 'Young Eddie' a biker armed with a street sweeper shotgun. Eddie ain't gonna take no $h*£!

These first few Project Zeke Miniatures look pretty nice to me with pretty crisp lines and minimal flash. They come on flat bases, which is not big deal although I'd honestly have liked to have seen them on slotta-type bases. I'm so used to re-basing now that it's not an issue.

A pretty neat feature of the Project Zeke Miniatures is that every survivor comes with a free random item of luggage, a holdall, military kit-bag, hiker's rucksack or teddy bear. We think that's a pretty darn cool idea and it'll be nice to see what everyone does with them.

Pick up these three brand new sets at Project Zeke Miniatures Web Store and to celebrate the launch Simon is offering a 10% discount to all customers up until the end of march, just use code launch10 on checkout.

Go check out Simon's Project Zeke Miniatures Blog and keep up to date with new releases and teasers at the Project Zeke Miniatures facebook page.

We'll be painting ours up right away, so watch this space for an update and scale comparisons.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

"Tidy your Man-Cave"

Do you ever get that feeling that you need a clear out?

After a massive amount of recent hobby time spread across several different projects at once the mess on the workbench finally got the better of me.

Spot the Project - If you dare?

With the second half of an unfinished a match of Blood Bowl and a try-out of Dust Tactics planned for yesterday and another Blood Bowl match, 1st try at Malifaux and another Dust tactics planed for next weekend I finally had a clear out of the man-cave and now I can actually see the gaming table.

Blood Bowl was great, despite a 2-0 defeat and Dust Tactics' fast-paced and uncomplicated gameplay sits perfectly with me, and... there's zombies in it!

Whilst The Lead Will Walk The Earth is a zombie gaming blog, and I mostly play All Things Zombie, if you fancy seeing anything else I'll happily post some choice zombie 'Diversions' if there's interest.

The sun is coming out; time to kiss SADS goodbye and start undercoating outside again.

Happy Hobby Days.

28mm Umbrella Corporation SUVs

Back long ago in the summer of 2011, Matt over at Too Much Unpainted Lead dropped me an email to say. "I saw what looked like a 28mm scale Hummer in Poundland the other day, they'd need a re-paint but they looked pretty good in your All Things Zombie games. Do you want me to pick you one up?"

Umbrella Corporation - Our Business is Life Itself.

"Three please." I replied and he duly emailed to report he'd purchased them up and he'd bring them over next time we got together.

Military Affairs? The General's Daughter in 28mm?

Weeks, then months, went by when every time we met I was greeted with "Damn.", then "Shit!", then "Bugger!" and finally "Bloody-fecking-arse-monkeys!" or something to that effect.

Just before New Year we played a French Indian War skirmish in 54mm and at last, Father Mattmass delivered three shiny new Hummers.

When you buy it and paint it right away it doesn't count. So I cracked right on with them right away.

From the outset I had the idea of 'company' vehicles, something to go with my Hazmat Squad and to fit with some planned military types. So a subtle but blatant use of the Umbrella Corporation logo seemed appropriate.

I unscrewed the chassis, took out the windows and seats, and simply re-painted with matt acrylic spray-paint, using plastic primer on the interior piece. I wasn't expecting any wear on the interior, but you never know about the paint sticking to that kind of plastic.

I gave the body of the Hummers a coat of satin varnish and printed re-scaled liveries and fixed them to the doors with Pritt Stick.

I am really pleased with how they turned out, especially considering the price and ease of conversion, as they took less than 2 hours over two evenings to complete.

Umbrella Corporation Cavalry?

Thank you Matt.

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

28mm BMX Bandits

Like a few other fellow bloggers I've been having difficulty with blogger this last week, guessing it might be an i.e. and hope to be able to sort that out this week. So a short post and deviation from my All Things Zombie gaming table posts for now.

Enjoy the little things, they say. Well some of the things I enjoy really are quite little.

My good friend James, who knows I am on a quest to fill Outbreak City with all sorts of awesome 'stuff' picked me up these BMXs for my birthday. In his words "I thought they'd look great just lying in the street." Thank you James!

The red bike and the blue bike had a race.

If you buy it and paint it right away it doesn't count...right...and if someone else buys it for you and you paint it right away, even better.

I always wanted a Raleigh Burner.

What I got was a Grifter instead.

These 28mm scale bikes are available from Black Cat Bases, as well as all sorts of other fantastic street-filling detritus, junk, bottles, cans and other waste that I can't wait to get my grubby little mitts on. Well worth checking out.

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