Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Cool. Get at it *whip crack*

Yeah just didn't have time this morning to make the update any bigger. Had to go out shopping which has been a painful time in 40.degree weather. (Thats 100 for you US guys). Still not back . No wonder I buy almost everything online these days....


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here we go!


WarZone 1st Edition Zombies:

A bit more detail on these guys, and I tried out the new GW Blood for the Blood God paints, which worked well enough. Didn't really notice much difference from Tamiya Clear Red to be honest, but I really didn't use a whole lot on them. These photos are way too dark. I'll take them again at some point. These were taken in diffused natural light and looked bright enough at the time. I think the white paper behind them threw the light balance way off on the camera...



I also took a couple of shots of the DUST Zombies this morning as well. The shots from the previous update are okay, but kind of take away from how I felt the teeth and eyes came out on them. Like I said at the time, they’re speed painted and weren’t done for awesome, but I was happy with how those details came out, so I may as well show them off.

There's a couple more pics on the external blog. I still need to photograph the other scenery that I've finished recently.

Love the DUST zombies, the jump suits are awesome. But for someone that knows nothing about the game or setting, what the hell are the giant metal balls for hands all about?

I like your paint on the warzone zombies, but I just can't reconcile zombies using guns. I mean what chance would we have if zombies can use guns?

Keep up the great work.

Yeah, I have the same kind of issue with gun-zombies myself. I guess the answer is a combination of "they were cheap" combined with some kind of pseudoscience nonsense about necrotising flesh, the plague and leprosy - and perhaps something like advanced syphillis (I saw a doco recently talking about people in renaissance Italy essentially being walking dead - decaying, exposed bone and flesh, and just generally unpleasant nastiness - also reflected in some of the art of the day.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, the metal balls are just an alternative model option for a weapon called "Panzergloves".

Some pics of recently-completed models and scenery...



These guys are some Dryads that I was either given or sold quite cheap by a friend back in the mid-90s. I’m not sure why I wanted them, so they must have been cheap or free. I think they may actually be recasts, given how malformed some of them are. Anyway, I found them in the bottom of a box of figures recently, and since I was able to finish the Bones Ent/Spirit of the Forest in a day recently, I thought I’d try and knock these up quickly as well in a similar manner, and finished them tonight. While they’re no works of art up close, they’ll look fine from across the table in KoW or in a game of Pathfinder, etc. A good example of “good enough”!






One of the real highlights of my Secret Weapon Miniatures Bag(s) ‘o’ Crap that I picked up in December – along with the Hesco and Jersey barriers shown previously was this overturned Half-track Ute (or truck) from the Secret Weapon Miniatures Scrap Yard Barricades set. I had quite a lot of fun painting this, with layers of washes and drybrushing and mediums and edging and applying effects with foam and so forth. Obviously this thing works best for Sci-Fi/40k/GorkaMorka/Post-apocalyptic stuff, but if you squint, it could also work for moderns in Afghanistan or the like.






Another nice surprise in my Bag(s) ‘o’ Crap was this turret. Part of the Secret Weapon Miniatures Scrap Yard Destroyed Tank set. A pretty nice piece, though Holy 3-d print lines, Batman! Still, for the price I paid for it, and even full RRP ($20 for a whole tank) it’s pretty nifty.


Lots more (scenery) on the blog.

Terrain looks nice, as do the dryads. I love the flock/etc on your recent nature projects. Any chance of a scale shot for the terrain pieces? They look decently sized but its a bit hard to tell.

Yep - next time I take some photos, I'll do scale shots for these and the barriers I posted recently.



In the meantime, here's the Quonset Huts from DUST


And some barrels - which are still available from Grendel.

The barrels look great! Those buildings.. what scale? They seem small for 28mm given marines aren't especially large for their scale.. but they'd be fairly enormous for 15 and I thought dust was 28 anyway. They look nice in any case.

The Quonset huts are 28mm scale. Dust is a little closer to truescale, and the Marine is rather chunky. They "suffer" (if you like) from the usual aspect of almost all 28mm buildings terrain in that the buildings are a bit small to realistically be used for purpose. Then again, a 6x4 table is about the size of a supermarket car park if scaled down to the figures, so they're actually completely fine for things to fight around - and you can easily "stack" them end to end to make longer huts.

Ahh, I kind of had a feeling it was something like that. They look nice, and should provide plenty of cover to boot.

The Barrels are great, I love the little details on top of them.
I like the discoloration on the middle Quonset building on the outside corner.
I second the liking the use of flock on your forest creature models, really effective and can help get them to the tabletop that much quicker.

Keep it coming.

Thanks! Yeah I wanted them to look worn, weathered and reasonably realistic, which means some staining, uneven patches, and discolouration over the top of the sprayed base coat and camo aspects.

The flock actually makes them take a little longer than if I'd left them with bare paint, but stops them from looking too plain (and painting the sculpted foliage just tends to look average at best.) It certainly makes it easier to call them "good enough", though!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I was originally going to post this reply over in Grimdork's thread, but since it's mostly talking about myself, I decided to chop it and drop it here instead.

 GrimDork wrote:

I haven't gotten to play :( Kind of waiting until I have a painted set of terrain and two painted strike teams before I try to strong arm any friends/family into playing. Really want that A.I. deck and solo rules expansion As to your MA quandary...

I would say if you have the disposable income, get the 1-click and buy dz scenery too. The terrain is really neat. If you don't use glue, you'll want extra connectors, but I don't know that those are offered on the MA pledge (maybe you could work something out via the message system, if they ever reply ). I think if you use as many connectors as you can to make your constructions rock-solid, you probably genuinely need twice as much as they send. If you use connectors to set the pieces in place then glue, you can get away with half as many or less (probably none, honestly, but it might be more of a pain to go in and unclip connectors than it is to just leave a few in.. especially the inside corners).

If you have someone who will play MA with you, it looks really fun and I think all of the goodies would take ages to play through and add a lot of value. Most of it is also colored plastic so you wouldn't even have to feel obligated to paint it right away.

If I had to choose, I'd pick up the scenery first, though the base MA game will probably offer a fair amount of replay value for what it costs.

Well, I finally worked out my pledge yesterday. I really didn't want to go much over my $300 pledge with $325 worth of stuff, so I decided to price out my scenery and then decide.My terrain wants - plus shipping - came to $185 over my already-paid pledge. So if I'd gone for the full MA experience, it'd have been a bill for $485. So in the end I decided I was better off to ditch the $300 1-click in the end and just go for scenery. $300 is a pretty hefty spend on an unplayed, untested boardgame based on an IP I'm not actually interested in at all (never liked MA), and with Mantic's ...uneven track record on the model side, it was too much to gamble on.

So did you burn all $325 credit on DZ battlezones then? Or uhh, 13 battlezones? I've got 12 here, with 2 more coming, and I think it should cover a 4x4' table with a reasonable amount of height. It depends on your game system and how much open space or gap you're willing to entertain. Deadzone likes to be packed, I could probably cover an 8x4' 40k table without batting an eyelash, mostly 6x9" buildings spread out with reasonable gaps and several pieces of line/cluster terrain etc blah. If you did get that many BZs.. what distribution did you go with? I have 8 core worlds, 3LP, 1 fort, and then the two ruins coming, could have done with just 2 of everything.. but I stand by getting majority CW since it's the most versatile/flexible set.

And the core MA game that came with your BotB pledge anyway will likely have quite a lot packed in anyway, there are like what ten heroes and they probably all get a scenario etc.

I went with:

Wrecked Car - $5: 2
Urban Accessories - $5: 4
Deadzone Accessory sprue - $5: 2
Ruined Scenery Deluxe Pack - $50: 2
Intact Scenery Deluxe Pack - $50: 3
Deadzone Scenery Standard Pack - $25: 2
Deadzone Fortification Standard Pack - $25: 2
Deadzone Battle Damage Standard Pack - $25: 2
Deadzone Landing Pad Standard Pack - $25: 2

So whatever that works out to be. Not sure how many battlezones it all comes to, but I decided to get two of everything, then decided to decrease the ruined brick walls to one Deluxe set and increase the intact ones to three (since the base game comes with a sprue or two), then decided to keep the ruins at two and just have three intact.

My cunning plan is to combine them both to make some large, buildings that can be centrepieces for the table - using this sort of thing as inspiration:





Using the brick walls, ruines bricks, the DZ sprues, some foam core, hardware fittings and this kit:


Plus



Adding that sort of thing - but the gantries and pipes and boilers and such on the outside of the building, rather than inside.

Pics in spoilers aren't working for me, but maybe is tablet.

Well every 25 dollar set is a battle zone. You will have more than me once that all comes in, that's a lot . If I read your numbers right its 18 bz equivalents.

I don't think the ruined sets (of either variety) will give you much height, but you should have plenty of the other kinds to get along with, and the ruined pieces could easilly go on top. Start making plans for big laser cannons, you should get four from your lp Anne fort sets.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with once this is all in hand.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Managed to view pictures, interiors like that would be excellent. First iimage tried to convince me I had a virus though... must have had to sift the dregs of the inter pipes to find it!

I never knew they had 7-Up and coke then (nice chronopia figure by the way)

 GrimDork wrote:
Pics in spoilers aren't working for me, but maybe is tablet.

Well every 25 dollar set is a battle zone. You will have more than me once that all comes in, that's a lot . If I read your numbers right its 18 bz equivalents.

I don't think the ruined sets (of either variety) will give you much height, but you should have plenty of the other kinds to get along with, and the ruined pieces could easilly go on top. Start making plans for big laser cannons, you should get four from your lp Anne fort sets.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with once this is all in hand.

Managed to view pictures, interiors like that would be excellent. First iimage tried to convince me I had a virus though... must have had to sift the dregs of the inter pipes to find it!

Yeah, I'm planning to use the ruined buildings to integrate with my old Armorcast ruined building sets that are almost all ground-floor corners for more single-storey ruins, as well as using on different levels (ground, 2nd storey, etc) in my ruined factory project(s). Big laser cannons? You mean those flat ones, don't you? Bits box for those I think, unless I make a decent multi-gun cannon out of them which should make the flatness of them look a little less toy-like.

I'm going to try and use those interior pictures as inspiration for the factory/building exteriors, though. I figure no point doing all that hard work if it can't be easily seen - and having all that crap on the outside of buildings makes them a lot more visually interesting while the little men are trying to shoot one another.


Also going to go for more generic and less overt-sci-fi so they can be used in anything from Bolt Action to 40k - so no eagles or skulls.


Thanks Jehan - it's the little things that keep me interested. Barrels are pretty boring business! I'm working on more now. Hooray for finding another few in a box! Should all be done by the weekend at least - I hope! I just realised those two Chronopia figures need some tufts, too.

While I haven't updated with pics in what feels like forever, it's only been a little more than a week in actuality. I've finished quite a lot more random bits of scenery, somewhat following-up from my last post which dealt with a similar theme (at least in the pictures). I've just got to take some photos, and hopefully tomorrow will be the day!

In the meantime, I've been rooting around in my resin bits boxes for more stuff I can knock out quickly, and found these two little beasties. I must have had them for 10 years or more, and in all that time they've done nothing but sit inside a few boxes. Time for some paint, then. I figure I'll treat them much like Bones critters and resin scenery, in that good enough will be good enough - but I'm just not sure on how to paint them yet. I figure I'll post them here, and in a day or two I'll have them based properly and can then knock them out reasonably quickly once I see what feedback and ideas people have.

Looks like these are also from Grendel - as so much of my old resin stuff is - These are two of the three critters from the Dungeon Crawlers kit. Giant Centipede and "Leech". I kinda prefer my own names though. I don't know where the third one of the trio has disappeared to. I'm sure I'll find it one day.

Feel free to reply here, or go over to the blog and click on radio buttons.



Mr.Millipede should be painted:
Black with yellow markings.
Black with a metallic sheen.
Red with yellow markings.
Red shaded down with dark cadmium red/brown.
Yellow with black markings.
Other.

Frog-kinda-thing should be painted:
Red. A shiny, shiny red.
Green. A slimy olive drab with Nurgle's Rot paint on top.
Other.

Great stuff in here man! Lots of creative projects Thanks for sharing!

BB

I make votes on blog, bumblebee and nurgle green!

I like a black metallic sheen for Mr Millipede and Frog-kinda-thing should be bright, bright red.

My two cents.

I could be swayed to the side of metallic sheen, but that frog screams green to me

For the Yellow/Black and Black/Yellow, I'm thinking of a pattern inspired by this sort of thing, with the emphasis either on the yellow or the black.




For the slimy green on Froggie, I'm thinking something like the out-of-focus bits of this pic:



The red would be more akin to:

I've been off the P&M blog section of the board since I haven't been able to take photos for several weeks, and now with a short respite from work, have been spending time trying to finish off what my friends have dubbed "The War Room". We got the former kitchen fridge going last night and filled it with healthy sugary carbonated beverages and such (at least they use sugar here instead of corn syrup). I'm planning to put up the last shelves later today, as well as the bike hooks on the wall. Electrician hopefully coming in this week to install some more lights and move the alarm sensor and such. Then it's go time, and only a floating shelf, blinds and perhaps a nice rug to finish up. So... hopefully updates soon!

Excellent, always neat things coming here so good to hear that there will be more potentially soon

It's been quiet on the blogging front for a few weeks now. While other lucky gamers around the world have been at Adepticon and Salute, I've been working on the room, which was all but complete by last Saturday, and had the electrician in again yesterday for the final touches (installing a second flouro light and some spotlights, as well as cabling the alarm and some other stuff). Now all that's really left is a bit more clean-up, some blinds, and perhaps even a split system aircon/heater (at my awesome wife's suggestion!)

So just shy of the lights being installed, some friends came over for a gaming night on Saturday. We started with a big game of KoW where I GMed/refereed the three players per side (I only remembered to take one pic, so no battle report unfortunately). Three of the six players had never played anything like this before, and so it was good to see just how easily non-wargamers could pick up the basics of the rules. They all had lots of RPG experience, so it wasn't incredibly difficult.


The grand battle begins!
A 600-pt Pan-Elven force of Blood Elves (GW High Elves) and Dark Elves (GW) using the Twilight Kin list ally with 600 pts of Basileans (hastily assembled using Rackham Confrontation Lions pre-paints) and a small 300-pt contingent of Gondor/Kingdoms of Men infantry (GW) square off against 1200pts of Ogres (old GW & Mantic) and 300pts of "nature" (GW Wolves and GW Ent using the KoW Goblin rules for a Giant and Wolfriders).

Through a combination of superior manoeuvre, the main ogre general being distracted the whole time, and some eagle-eyed sharpshooting and resilient defence from the Gondor contingent, the humand and elves carried the day in the end. The Ogre Warlord's final devastating rampage through the Elven/Human lines not being enough to carry the day before he too was pulled down under weight of numbers.

After that, we ate pizza and pasta, played a couple of games of SJG Frag!, and then finished up.



The following day, my 74-year old Mum came over for a visit. She ended up playing a game of KoW against my wife, while I once again refereed and offered advice to both sides.


The setup - Basileans vs Elves.
Allies just the previous night, the Elves and Basileans turned on one another and met across a green hilly field. My mum took the Basileans and my wife took on the Elves this time.



The armies clash!
Once again I forgot to take a lot of pictures, but the final outcome was a close one. It basically came down to a single (un?)lucky dice roll where the Elven Halberd (spear) phalanx survived a final round of shooting and magic from the Basileans, leaving the Elves with enough troops to declare the day victorious. If the Halberds had broken, it would have essentially been a drawn game. Which is not too shabby for a 74-year-old woman's first wargaming experience. Once again, both sides enjoyed the game, which is what it's all about for me.


I also got all the bits of the "box" part of a light box sorted, so now I just need to pick up a (couple of) lamps tomorrow, and I'll be good for photographing figures again - and at a higher quality (hopefully).

Your mom played KoW? She may be the coolest mom ever.

Sounds like a fun time! Also good to hear you've about got your hobby room sorted out!

Great news about the gaming room. Its awesome when you have a wife who is interested in what you do and supportive (and understanding) isn't it?

Can we have some shots of the Gaming Room once completed?

Hah, that's a great update, really makes me smile. I can only imagine how my mam would react to learning to play wargames- kudos to your mother for being so open minded!