"Check out ma new car!"

My sister is awesome. Why?...cos she's the kind of sister that knows geek is chic and, whilst she is not a gamer, she knows I am and knows how much I enjoy my hobbies. I had a delightful surprise at a recent family get-together when she announced 'We've got a present for you.' and my nephew, 2 years old, offered me a broken toy. Copious amounts of 'mashing' had wrecked the drive mechanism and axle of a 1/43 (or thereabouts) Hummer and, as no amount of repair was not going to make it usable as a child's toy again, it was very kindly offered to the Outbreak City collection. As gamers we're all about the free stuff and copious amounts of superglue followed. The results speak for themselves. I am pretty sure this will be the chosen transport for my gang of intrepid survivors in my All Things Zombie campaign.

"That's how we roll"

I managed to get another of TommyGun's buildings completed. It is just a small one but a great addition and, considering that every band of survivors will at some point realise 'We need drugs, bandages and first aid supplies.', a rather likely objective destination.

Night Nurse, tampons, something for the weekend sir?



I've only played a few small test games on the set-up and now it is reaching a more substantial size I think it is high time for a 'reveal'. We have a club game planned for the week after next where Outbreak City will be making it's debut public appearance. I'll be starting work on the scenario this weekend and I'll be sure to post pictures and a battle report following the action.

Just in today; RPGNow have offered up this freebie in their latest newsletter, from the guys at AnCON, a complete card game in pdf. format. Zombies Attack! great for when you have some friends over and want to get your a zomb fix but don't have time to get the whole playset out.


Zombielarp: Evolution is this weekend. I managed to finish another side project ready for it, my most ambitious mod yet. Behold - the Nerf Stampede! The air restrictor has been removed and it has received a vinyl dye, plastic primer and acrylic paint job. I plan on strapping a video camera to the top of the gun. The footage could make for some interesting viewing.

Full Auto Zombie-slayer or hopeless security blanket?

Go Team Mactabalis!

Flu-like symptoms and new additions

A week away on business and a bout of flu that left friends and family members ‘in the know’ wondering if they should simply put a bullet in my brain before I started chewing on them were not events that meant a whole lot of hobby done of late.

Microtactix supermarket

Before those two occurrences another building for my All Things Zombie Outbreak City did get completed. The Microtactix supermarket. It was a tricky build due to the inset entrance. It wouldn’t have been a problem if I had worked in card but my decision to use foamcore bit back. The building is very flavoursome and will likely be an obvious survivor destination.

I have another supermarket, this time from TommyGun, underway and look forward to filling them both with plenty of groceries and loot.

I did add a few additional roof access stairs and air conditioning units, to add a little more flavour and some cover for roof-top battles.

Air Con Unit

Before I went away or succumbed to being patient zero I ordered a plethora of new toys to keep the postman busy and give me something to look forward to.

The Ebbles Archive DVD finally arrived. Whoot! Unfortunately a trip to the post-office and an additional payment to Mr Revenue and Customs was required to collect the treasure trove of card-modelling goodness. Thankfully there is so much in the DVD that by the time I got it home and started browsing the charge seemed irrelevant. So many of the models work superbly for zombie gaming; underground bases a la that Umbrella Corporation, check, military vehicles, check, barracks, check, stock room supplies, check, bathroom sink (and showers) check. Whilst there is a gritty sci-fi theme running through the work there are tons of great models screaming out to be built.

Ebbles FUS, pre-build print outs

The first model to be made was a simple workshop bench, to add to the generator workshop, following Doug and Bryan’s, advice a medium FUS is printed and ready to go.


What I wouldn't do for two chainsaws and a canoe paddle

Studio Miniatures Zombie Horde #1 have had a little love, just a few pieces have been de-flashed and are ready for basing. They should be hitting the painting table soon.

Studio Miniatures - Awesome

Studio Miniatures Zombies

I needed a few more survivors and having trawled the Ebbles DVD I’m tempted to give Gun Crawl a go, with a zombie make-over. To that end I purchased the Hasslefree Hazmat Squad, with a few extra 25mm bases to replace the studio miniatures ones. I don’t have a problem with the studio miniatures bases (they are actually rather good) it is simply that a wider base makes it harder to fit miniatures into a small building and by the time you’ve filled a small room with set-dressing, a few mm can make all the difference.

Who you gonna call? Zombusters

All I need to do now is actually focus on any one of these mini projects and perhaps I’ll actually finish something.

All hail paracetamol!

Zombtropolis

Pulling together less than half a dozen buildings wasn’t exactly going to provide a highly flexible gaming environment representing Outbreak City for my All Things Zombie games. I knew that to create something more than just the small town feel that I was going to have to get my hobby face on.

I continued with what I had, among others I added another WWG flat from Downtown Mayhem, this time adding a removable roof so that I could add an interior in the future and I also progressed on to more buildings from the Mircotactix range and even doubled up on one, changing the signs to represent a hairdressers (inspired by Dead Rising Case Zero).

Downtown Mayhem - with removable roof

Microtactix - Re-signed Deli

With inspiration from Vampifan’s interiors I decided to try my hand at removing the windows and replacing with the coloured plastic filing sleeves. Quite a challenge, especially with foam core. As per Vampifan’s comment on a previous post, this took considerably longer than just skinning a foam core box. I made a few simple changes to the build process, such as printing the edges of the foracore in dark grey, so that I could either leave it bare or it would mask mistakes more easily if I was skinning the tops of walls.

Mayhem Biege Brick - This will have the first interior

A little more on MircoTactix stuff - The Twilight Street Basic Urban Environment set is available for $20 and the Urban Buildings Expansion for $15, if card buildings are your chosen route and you are looking for some interesting variety and have access to an A3 printer, they are well worth taking a look. Following on from my previous post, if you don’t have access to an A3 printer, they also produce a Twilight Street Heroic Scale range. Further note to my last post, their free download of Horseman’s Deli is in Heroic Scale and therefore prints onto A4 with no need for scaling.

Their Strip Club and Pawn Shops were fun and the second was a larger building than some of the previous ones. However, I noticed that as the buildings got taller it was going to be more problematic to fit and play in interiors on the ground (1^st in USA) floor.

Microtactix Voodoo Jake's - Opens at 11:00am

Microtactics Pawn Shop

In response to this problem I moved into a MicroTactix apartment and sliced the top floor off, building it as a separate unit so it would be easy to build and use the interior.

Microtactix Apartment

Microtactix - Apartment dismantled

My favourite Microtactix build so far is the Twilight Street Expansion Set Theatre, the largest footprint of my buildings so far, it was a fun build and the addition of the all zombie movie posters was an obvious cliché too good to miss. I am looking forward to the interior of this one.

Microtactix Theatre

Slowly and surely the set was coming together and there was now enough for me to play my first game of All Things Zombie in a few years, a quick brush up on the rules to get me back into the feel of things. There was however something missing. The streets seemed remarkably clean and uncluttered and I felt it was time for some street furniture and other urban terrain to give the place a more lived-in (or died-in) feel.

Things didn't look good for Shaun, cheesefeast aside.

Marconi Plays The Mamba

Mullets and moustaches are no place to hide from the raging hordes of the undead and my internet research revealed that most zombie gaming terrain was, unsurprisingly, not built on Rock and Roll but was based on printable card terrain, plastic railway buildings or scratch-built masterpieces. After finding the incredible ZombieTown initially thought I was going to go down that route but the discovery of Vampifan’s Blog revealed the wonders of printable terrain and I figured I would be able to put a play set together a lot quicker that way.

It probably goes without saying that Worldworks Games produce some of the finest printable terrain suitable for modern settings. I decided to tackle a basic ‘flat’ first, something that would look good on a table but wasn’t going to require too much time to create. I settled on the Mayhem Downtown set and with a ludicrously plentiful supply of foamcore at my disposal I decided to make shells and simply print to paper and ‘skin’ the buildings. To keep cost down I settled on Tesco’s Glue Sticks for the large areas and Power Pritt for the edges and details. I printed and cut out the ‘skins’ first and measured and cut foamcore from those. The shells were glued with PVA and I used a little sellotape to keep them in place whilst drying.

Mayhem Downtown - Beige Brick

The first building worked out ok and only took a couple of hours to build and does the trick although I thought I could do better. For my second building I chose to add a parapet wall and simply cut up some test prints to skin the inside of the parapet wall. Note: I did 'miss' skinning the corners, as in the pics below, but I do plan to go back and fill them in.

Parapet Wall

It is worth noting that most of the Twilight Street range is designed for 20mm scale (although they do produce a ‘Heroic’ scale range), great if that’s your chosen scale but a simple trick for me, wanting 28mm compatibility, was to print to A3 and select ‘fit to page’. A3 is 1.5 times bigger than A4, therefore 20mm x 1.5 = 30mm; it worked out fine and what’s a couple of mm between friends? They are a little on the small size, so I ‘sealed’ the roof of Drakes (a bit too tiny for a full interior), but they add some superb character to the terrain set.  I couldn’t wait to move onto other buildings in both of these retailer’s ranges.

Microtactix Free Download - Drake's

Matt over at ‘Too Much Unpainted Lead’ pointed me in the direction of the Microtactix Twilight Street ranges available through RPG Now. Their superbly evocative models have a more cartoony style that Worldworks but I felt they suited the theme perfectly and would bring some welcome variety to the table. Three Buildings, Drake’s TV and Video, Horseman’s Deli and Stinky’s Pizza, are also all available for free download, result!

Microtactix Free Download - Stinky's Pizza, Yum