Let's Go Camping! - Even More Vehicles for 28mm Zombie Gaming.

I was going to post another All Things Zombie Batrep this week but having fine-tuned my scale-dar, this was too good not to share.

I went camping with the family this weekend, just a few quiet days with nothing to do except stay out of the rain, catch the sun (when it dared show it's face), eat far too many baked beans and share your sleeping bag with grass and earwigs. It was a chance to completely switch off from hobbies and zombies and I didn't even take a zombie novel with me. My scale-dar had other ideas!

I was looking for a lighter (we'd forgotten ours and uncooked bacon just doesn't cut it) what I found, in the on-site 'glamping' store, was these.

VeeDub
First up was this 1962 VW Campervan from 'Welly'. It's not particularly fancy and it wasn't marked for scale although it is pretty iconic. Having picked up quite a few vehicles recently I was happy to take a chance - the second purchase was marked for scale and the two looked okay side by side. The doors don't actually line up that well but I'm fine with that. It is a toy, not a collector's model. and priced accordingly at just over £4.00.

'Welly' 1/43 VW Campervan with 28mm Studio Miniatures Zombie.

It's the freedom it gives you
The second find was the one that got me really fired up. This 1/43 scale 'Teamsterz' car and caravan set is superb and the caravan would definitely count as a building or encounter location. The generic SUV is nothing to write home about but it's a good representation. A little under £7.00 is not bad, especially as you get two models. The caravan is pretty much all plastic but the SUV is die-cast.

"Pull over!" Teamsterz car and caravan.

SUV from the car and caravan set - with opening doors and tailgate.

These two vehicles have given me a great idea for an All Things Zombie scenario, so it's likely they'll crop up in a future Batrep.

The boxed models - if you want to go internet shopping for these.

Speaking of Batreps... coming soon on The Lead Will Walk The Earth...

More Vehicles for 28mm Zombie Gaming

Finding good die-cast vehicles for a 28mm Modern Wargame isn't necessarily difficult, once you settle on a scale, most of us go for 1/43 (I certainly did), it is simply a case of trawling the interwebs, scouring ebay and visiting high street stores.

Unfortunately, it is not always so easy to pick up suitable models at a reasonable price. Some of the more desirable 1/43 models can sell from anywhere up to £200 (yeah, I was surprised too). And at the lowest end of the price scale, the cars are often not even marked so you know what scale they are.

Whilst hunting for vehicles to fill the streets of my All Things Zombie campaign's Outbreak City one tip I found useful was to keep a 28mm model (unpainted) in my pocket whenever I headed to the shops. So if I stumbled across something that looked promising, I had something to compare it against. This didn't guarantee against the perils of scale creep, but it certainly helped.

This little trick stood me in good stead this weekend when, whilst guarding the trolley against the addition of surplus items (kids do that sometimes) during our weekly food shop, I spotted these three beauties in the reduced goods aisle at Tesco.

1/43 - 28mm stone quarry tipper.

1/43 - 28mm Up-and-over skip

1/43 - 28mm refuse lorry, comes with an 1100l Eurobin

These are from their 'large industrial series' and the three models available were a refuse lorry, a truck hauling a large skip and a stone quarry delivery tipper. These are not the smaller HotWheels/Matchbox scale cars. These 1/43 equivalents are not always on the shelves for long, but they're worth it if you can find them.


£1.75 each in Tesco's reduced section. It got my attention.

The potential of the Tesco models was first highlighted to me over at Colin's Down Among the Zed Men. I've always kept an eye out since. Each one of these models was sold for the princely sum of £1.75. Falling prey to the 'addition of surplus items' demon, I almost bought the lot, but settled on one of each instead.

I think they're actually might be just a little bit bigger than 1/43. But they match very closely in scale to the delivery trucks I picked up - the Tesco Load and Go sets, which I updated with BioFlex livery.

Comparison - same scale, more detail, lower price.

In comparison these vehicles are of a far better standard than the previous ones, with crisper lines and additional detailing. They all have moving parts - great for us gamers who like to move bits on models to represent different scenarios on the tabletop and the inclusion of the 1100 litre Eurobin (sometimes referred to as a Taylor bin) is a bonus.

A little large for 28mm but it works well enough.

However, as the name suggests, I'm not sure they have Eurobins in the states, where my Outbreak City All Things Zombie campaign is set. I think I'll use it all the same.

Pedal to the Metal!

Epic post for an epic week. Far too much hobby giddiness ensued this week, always a good thing, except for the bank balance.

Jim and Matt from Too Much Unpainted Lead and I attended Salute at the Excel Centre in London this Saturday. Even though I’ve been a war-gamer for more years than I care to recall I’d never been to Salute. Shame on me. It was far bigger than I imagined, not necessarily in scale, but in the huge variety of traders, products and display games that were crammed into the show. After an embarrassing detour we finally arrived at around 11:00 and after our first circuit, where we only looked at traders, it had already gone 14:00. Far too many cool things to mention in just one post, maybe next time.

As we had a few games planned for the Salute weekend I was busy trying to get enough stuff ready to play the scenarios we were running. Two zombie games were planned as well as any other board games we could fit it. A trial of No More Room in Hell from Iron Ivan Games and All Things Zombie from THW filled the miniatures slots and Incursion and Pandemic made up the board game quota.

Outbreak City: 'Midnight Munchies Run' teaser.

I have played Incursion from Grindhouse Games a few times now and it is a pretty darn good game. It has had similar comparisons but describing it as Space-Hulk-Nazi-zombie-diesel-punk fits the bill! Incursion components made up the majority of my show purchases and, inspired by the awesome work of Herrodadog, a full 3D board and play-set is in the works.

Incursion from Grindhouse Games

Pandemic is a fantastic cooperative board game from Z-Man Games where the players do everything they can to stop the spread of deadly contagions and stem the outbreaks as they engulf the world. Although it is not a zombie game, it fit the theme of the weekend superbly. We played twice and lost both times, but only just, perfect.

Pandemic from Z-Man Games

As we were set to play ‘The Road’ scenario for No More Room In Hell I picked up a quite a few new 1/43 scale vehicles. I picked up a few from Sainsburys and recognised a few from Colin’s blog. I also popped into a local collector’s store and found a number of old cars for just £1.99 each. As I’d stated in a previous post, I needed some more generic saloons (most of what I have is fire engines and working vehicles). I have no idea what a Lancia Lybra is, but these 1/43 models from Majorette fit the bill perfectly. To avoid the ‘I wish I had bought those’ problem, I bought one in each colour they had.

It's the doors, you just have to!

Widowmaker.

Blingin'

Wilkinsons Bus: 1/50 but it works for me.

Soft-Top

Genuine 'apocalyptic' reason for sale

"May I present the Lancia...erm, what is it again?"

Once the collection of cars was amassed I quickly made a classic gamer-gaff. Come on, we all do it. 4 days before the weekend, whilst happily finish off my zombies, I confidently decided that I needed to make a new road specifically for the scenario too. The game calls for a road spanning the length of a 4’ by 4’ table...hmmm...idea, sketch, realisation...quick!!!! Expect more on that in a future post.

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