Zombicide: Black Plague more heroes

And so, more heroes it is, and this time it's Beauregard, Cul'nar, Gurbak, Dravog, Brickborn, and Hildir. One hour each ... yes, the witch and goat count as one.

Less of a plan specifically, but more of a play with picking out an item of interest on each model and spending time on that to sell the effect at tabletop. I think a few of those elements are clear, with Dravog and Brickborn on the front row being the most obvious, whereas the other sculpts it wasn't as easy to find that one detail to jump out. However, another six down and more options for us on the table over Christmas when the games come out.

 

A small lapse in posting over the last few weeks, as I've been head down on projects for secret santas and found myself with no pretty things to post and share. Hopefully normal service should resume again!

Zombicide: Black Plague heroes ride again

 Oh yes, we're back with more. Sorry. From left to right it's Redcap Rodney, Antha, Lady Grimm, Ariane and Persephone.

Antha, Rodney and Grimm are from the Marc Simonetti range, and Ariane is just a generic character from the Wolfsburg expansion. Persephone is from the Carl Critchlow range. 

Everything here is a one hour speedpaint, apart from the axe on Redcap Rodney which was me trying to create an effective NMM that can be used quickly. You can see the lessons learned from that on Persephone on the right hand side as I've tried to be high contrast without any technique.

 

Are they well painted? No, I'd say it's a reasonable tabletop quality which is fine when working through a large set of models that just need to look fine on the table. I have tried to focus on features that will make them interesting to look at. So weapons and armour on the front three, and upper clothing on the back two. Everything else is very, very quickly painted. Making these decisions at the beginning helps to speed up the process, and I'm being more effective.

A footnote. I forget on a regular basis which platforms I've posted pictures to. These models were finished a fortnight ago, and I posted them on Bluesky and didn't do it here or Instagram, or other platforms. I'm not a daft chap, but it's the pleasure of the painting that has me in the hobby, not the need to post online for clicks. I just enjoy sharing my work ... when I remember! 

Zombicide: Black Plague heroes redux

So what's been painted over the last year? Quite a few things. I remain mediocre at photographs, but here's a little group shot of the Zombicide heroes painted to-date. There's been an accidental focus on a lot of blues of late. Unintentional, but what I happened to have on the palette at the time.

  

A few of them were done as speed paints for a one-hour challenge on a painting Discord I'm part of. It's great to concentrate the mind in frantic action. I found that painting a couple in the same evening helped to get a feel for the colours on the palette and what areas to focus on.

 

 

 

 In addition, I've spent a little longer trying to produce an effective-at-scale NMM for tabletop. I don't want to spend too long on these, because it's literally for gaming and throwing around a table with the kids, and it's going to take a beating. But it's fun to see what works.

 

Milo, Xuya, Klom & Bob

Over Christmas we played a lot of Zombicide: Black Plague. It's beeen a favourite of mine for years, but the kids are old enough to play and enjoy it now too. Through the year I'm aiming to paint the heroes we play to a tabletop level. Nothing fancy or too precise, but just better than bare plastic - so a couple of hours at most on each piece, and approximating the card art.

Wolves, wolves, wolves - final groupshots

Well here we are - all the wolves from Zombicide: Black Plague, Conan, Blood Rage and 40k finished up! Phew. Here are the full group shots of everything.

That's a total of 40 wolves, and I feel vindicated in my decision to paint them in two large batches using the same techniques but different colours. It adds enough variety to not feel monotonous, and that's just what I wanted - so this has been a great success. They've also served a purpose as a useful palette cleanser between other, more complex pieces too. Would definitely take this approach again, as there's enormous satisfaction to see more figures leave the pile of grey and join the painted ranks.

Wolves, wolves, wolves pt.2

The second large tabletop-quality batch of wolves - covering Zombicide: Black Plague and Conan.

Again, there's nothing complex here, just block painted to get them in our games soon as possible. I make no apologies for the liberal use of blood - thanks to various mixes of Tamiya X-27 Clear Red and purple ink.

More figures that can move from the "to do" to the "completed" list and adding that little more character to our Tuesday night gaming sessions. Marvellous.

Wolves, wolves, wolves

Crossing a couple of games here, but it would feel a little repetitive making multiple posts on the same topic.

I'm painting wolves. Lots of wolves. Many wolves.

Doing inventory over Christmas on what needed painting and realised I had wolves from several different games - Zombicide: Black Plague, Conan, Warhammer 40,000 and Blood Rage. It occurred to me that if I painted them in two groups - grey and brown, it could give nice variation on the game boards. This is the first batch of the greys for Zombicide and Conan.

It's not a complex formula. Undercoated black, airbrushed grey, then a lighter grey, then heavy washes, then pick out a few details and add eyes. Done! Been a while since I just bashed out tabletop quality units, and after the brain melting complexity of the Hasslefree figures, it was a welcome change of pace - throwing the painting into automatic and just getting something wrapped up.

Zombicide: Black Plague - Runners

Continuing my plan of having a fully painted tabletop game, here are the Runners from Zombicide painted up, all fourteen of them.

Runners are fantastic pieces in the game and by the simple virtue of having two actions instead of one, they make you rethink a number of cunning plans as they can be on you considerably quicker than expected if they gain an extra activation from the card.

Despite them being great on the table, I didn't enjoy painting these and think it shows. Not happy with them, but want them gone. Couldn't tell you the reason why I didn't, as the sculpts are perfectly fine, but I've literally dashed through them and feel glad they're off the desk and on to the board.

The original plan was to have different base colouring for each monster type, but after a little thinking I've opted to paint the base rims red, same as the Fatties. I realised it's easy to distinguish between Runners and Fatties, and as there'll inevitably be expansion boxes, having the monsters from the core game with the same base colour probably makes more sense, so if they release a box of toxics they'll get green and so on. The vanilla Zombie Walkers, Necromancers and Abominations will get boring black bases. Mmm, vanilla.

What's next? Well, I'm finally biting the bullet and finishing up my last two Fishermen for Guild Ball - about a year after starting the project. After painting a lot of tabletop quality recently, I'm looking forward to doing something a little more complex!

Zombicide: Black Plague - Fatties

A more productive January than I thought it would be, so here come the Fatties!

They're not all in perfect focus, but I'm sure you get the gist :) One of the figures, poor grey chap in the middle row, suffered from me varnishing him in low temperatures this morning before adding blood for the photos yet the others weren't affected.

Alas, my magnifying lens and light on an extendable arm fell apart this morning so I need to fix it or source a replacement in order for me to pick out tiny details. It was instrumental in finding teeth, stitching and eyes on these figures.

Colours blocked in, lots of shading and washes, purple shading on the skin as they didn't look ill enough, then couple of details picked out with highlights (ropes, eyes, teeth, ropes etc.) and much blood applied - so these are quick and dirty paintjobs, literally! I want to keep them grimy in contrast to the upcoming hero figures who'll be a little brighter. The flowers are there because ... who doesn't love flowers?

I'll start on the Runners next with the goal of having those completed in February.

Zombicide: Black Plague - painting begins

I've started into the Zombicide: Black Plague figures this week. Nothing finished yet, but here's the first WIP of tabletop level paintjobs.

If you haven't played Zombicide yet, it's a co-operative boardgame where it's you versus the board in various missions with relentless waves of zombies joining the battle each round, and you have to find the balance between completion the missions and re-killing the undead. Marvellous fun, 2-3 hours for longer games and a real hoot - glad I backed this version, and there'll be quite a few additions over the coming months. Pressure is on for getting the rank and file back on the table, as we've been playing this quite a bit since mid-December arrival so they need to be ready quicksharp for the next round of games incoming.

These represent the Runners (14 of 'em), Fatties (another 14), an Abomination and a Necromancer from the base box. The Walkers will follow later, as there's 30-40 of those buggers and even I'm not daft enough to take on that many figures simultaneously - a lesson learned from my Gretchin mob last year! When gaming, weight of numbers on the table becomes a problem and it's hard to distinguish who's what - so I'll be painting the base edges red for Fatties, and orange for Runners. Everything else should be evident enough not to require it.

I'm batch painting the Fatties and going for reasonably boring colours, so mid-range blues, reds, greys and greens. By working on a small group it means I can move reasonably quickly while adding a little variety in where the colours are used. There's more coming in a few months, so I'll repeat the trick with slightly different colours, but the hordes will be dull but legion. The bases have a little texture added using some Vallejo Sandy Paste - my experience of it so far? It's like a resin-based version of Polyfilla.

Shading down on the first fellow. Detail and highlights next, and possibly even followed by proper pictures! Few of the details are crisply modelled but not obvious to my eye on the first pass, so shadows before highlights gives me a chance of spotting them and painting them correctly. There won't be gore added to the zombies until the very last stage as they'll all be matt varnished on completion and I don't want that beautiful glossy blood effect dampening. It will also be my shameless opportunity to cover up any glaring errors with blood and calling it "characterful", in the same way I call my awful cooking "rustic" ;)

Zombicide: Abominations

Had an offline request to run through a process of quickly painting tabletop quality characters, so I adapted my plan to paint up the two Abominations properly and now we're trying to see how fast they could be wrapped up. More importantly, with one eye on my recent Kickstarter backing of Zombicide: Black Plague ... I've had the realisation there's a lot of figures coming my way 2016 (no-one believes CMON's 2015 delivery date) and I'll go round the bend trying to paint them all in the traditional fashion.

This means corners need to be cut. It's time to try out Army Painter dip! I bought a jar of this a few years back with the express purpose of doing a Skaven Warhammer Fantasy army, but that idea never got off the ground, and the tin hasn't been given a thorough workout. One thing putting me off the idea was the literal dipping of the figure, but turns out modern wisdom recommends painting it on. After a few YouTubetorials on the subject, basically I'm now an expert on the whole thing (right?) ... so off we go.

Figures basecoated. Common colours kept for skin, bones beginning to poke through the skin and toolkit around the belt, then different colour clothing for a little variety. Exactly how I normally paint so far. Watching people raise one area of the figure to perfection before moving to the next is an anathema to me.

Army Painter Strong Tone applied in liberal amounts. At this point, this looks bad. BAD. You also have to move quickly to ensure it doesn't pool up as it slides down the figure.

24 hours pass, and the varnish has dried. I'm unimpressed at this point, they look a mess.

But then, something strange happens. Matte varnish changes everything. The calming effect it has not only on the shine but also the colour, is quite interesting. We're no longer looking at near black delineation, it's more a nut brown colour in the recesses and a little more natural. Or as natural as painting plastic zombies with woodstain can be.

Few quick touch ups, some blood and goggles added, then a quick touch up of the skin colour where areas pooled ... and hey presto! Tabletop quality figures? I think so. Long way from "great" but certainly "it'll do" which is just dandy on the playing surface.

Better quality shots with a camera ...

Things learned here ...

• Few years back, I'd probably have called this cheating. Now? Not sure. This isn't a painting technique designed to replace proper painting, but it is a technique designed to get figures onto the tabletop, and quickly.
• If you don't watch the application of this stuff, it'll pool and become sticky very quickly, making a real hash of the figure.
• There was far more detail on these figures than I expected, and my attention to detail is poor. Evidenced by missing the goggles entirely on the basecoating phase of painting.
• If basecoating en masse, I'd use a colour primer to speed up the process. For two figures, painting the skin by hand was no hardship.
• Did I mention quick? Around two hours of actual time spent over a 25 hour period. This was an hour per figure, being generous.
• You could probably use this as a base for deep shading and then picking out detail by painting up normally for highlights. I may try this in the future.

Taa-daa. Thoughts on this?

Bit of painting downtime for a week or so as we do final prep and hunkering down before our son arrives. Little bugger is now a week overdue, so he'll be joining us soon enough. Once I'm back into the swing, it's Siren for my Fisherman's Guild team to crack on with. Good times ahead!

Zombicide: Abominations & Scenery (WIP)

As a brief interlude from painting the Fisherman's Guild, I've started work on a few Zombicide pieces for a friend. Thankfully not the whole box of them ...

He bought a fully painted Zombicide Season 1 set, but it came with two Abominations unpainted, so I offered to complete them as we're both a wee bit obsessive about things left unfinished, and this will scratch that itch.

In addition to the Abominations, the Zombicide Season 3 set came with a couple of very nice 3D barricade pieces to replace the 2D tokens usually in place on the board. From a gaming perspective, I'm a fan of this approach and they're doing more of it on the new Zombicide: Black Plague set. Touch of the Heroquest about having doors and room objects scattered through your encounters.

(how they started life, as reference)

Quite literally a quick paintjob, with maybe 2-3 hours for the pair at a guess. There are a few noob errors, but they'll remain as is as they're back with their owner for packing and transport while he moves home. You may be spotting that I'm loving the rust-in-a-bottle!

Curiously, I couldn't find painted versions of these online as reference material - odd considering how many people play Zombicide, and would have gotten these in their Season 3 box.

So for the hard of SEO, there you go - painted Zombicide barricades from the 3D plastic door pack.