Zombie Gallery

You probably didn't know this but May is Zombie Awareness month.  Are you aware of zombies?  Well you should be.  And it's probably about time to get aware of just how many zombie models I have.  I love zombie movies and I love zombie games.  Zombies are a great scenario in miniature wargaming, hordes of difficult to kill units who take no morale tests and who's numbers increase as the kill the living.  In fact, just about any game is more fun with zombies in it.  Typically zombies are not much of a threat on their own or in small numbers.  Just about any yahoo with their wits about them can dispatch a few zombies with a baseball bat, even cut through swaths of them with a chainsaw.  However when in large numbers, zombies really become a serious threat.  So naturally I needed lots of zombies, and in my collection of zombies I've tried to get a zombie for just about every walk of life, just like in the movies.  I pretty much have zombies in several different genres.

Fantasy - Your typical D&D Monster Manual Zombie.  These are zombies are Celtos zombies from Brigade Models.

Weird War II - What's Weird War II withouth Nazi Zombies?  Well, that would be AE-WWII but I digress.  However I do use these for Incursion and Secrets of the Third Reich.  Many of these are West Wind figures for SotTR and Incursion, some of the others are from Reaper's Reich of the Dead line.

Weird West - Yep, the typical Walkin' Dead and Harrowed types seen in the Deadlands RPG series.  These particulary undead gunfighters are from Foundry Miniatures.

Pirates - Got to have undead pirates.  That would be like Pirates of the Carribean without Cap'n Jack Sparrow.  Sadly, I do not have any completed undead pirates to post up yet.  I'll have to post up the Booty n/ Brains craving zombies up in a later article.

Sci Fi - Gun toting undead cyborgs.  These particular nasties are members of the Undead Legion from Warzone.

Contemporary Zombies - Your modern to near future zombies that inhabit most of the sci-fi horror movies you see these days.  Today, I'm going to focus mostly on these zombies.

At my last count I had completed painting over 100 contemporary zombies.  Enough to flood the streets of any 28mm 4'x4' gaming table and send survivors running to the nearest S-Mart for shotguns and chainsaws.

I just finished up some more contemporary zombies recently.  These are from Victory Force Miniatures line of zombies, B-Ball Zombie and the Chicken and Dinosaur Mascot Zombies.  In fact right now Victory Force is running a Zombie Awareness Month Sale with some new zombie mascot releases too!

Studio Miniatures makes some excellent contemporary zombies.  I picked up these two sets.  Both are hospital related, because just like in the movies zombie plagues seem to start there.  In fact the Zombie Survival Guide recommends that you stay well away from these places during a zombie outbreak.

I particularly like the Body Bag Zombies.  I was able to find some biohazard decals from Hasslefree Miniatures which worked really well here.









I've been picking up an eclectic collection of zombies from all sorts of manufacturers.  Reaper Miniatures came out with these not too long ago.  Some just have some rather tongue-in-cheek humor sculpted into them.

Zombie Strippers, probably inspired from the movie.  I love how the one has a severed hand with cash in her hand, and no I have not seen this movie....yet.

RAFM Miniatures makes some neat minis.  The Zombie Crossing Guard and Zombie Schoolkid,

as well as Zombie Plus-Sized Lingerie Model munching on someone's foot and Zombie Stephen King Look-A-Like (which sort of reminded me of that scene from the Dawn of the Dead remake where they were sniping celebrity look-a-like zombies).

Hasslefree Miniatures makes some great zombies and even has some zombiefied versions of their Zombie Hunter line.

One of my favorites is Ashlee Campbell (a sort of female version of Ash from Army of Darkness, played by Bruce Campbell.  Get it??).  I really like how Kev White modelled the pistol dangling in her hand with the slide retracted like she just ran out of bullets before getting overrun by zombies.

Another being a zombiefied version of Simon Pegg's cricket bat toting character from the most hilarious movie Shawn of the Dead.

To build up the bulk of my zombie horde, I've even resorted to some cheap sources of zombies.  Wizkids Horrorclix line has many zombie figures that are quite useful and although OOP can be still found fairly cheap.  If you're not familar with Horrorclix, or Heroclix for that matter, they are randomly packed prepainted miniatures.  I find the prepaints poor quality and in most cases not worth the price they're asking for, especially when they're some super rare figure with super powered stats on the base for the game.  However, I'm only interested in the figure for other uses, I was never impressed with Heroclix or Horrorclix.  Some of the more common figures I've been able to get as low as $0.15 a figure online.  These I simply pop off the clix base and remount on a standard 25 mm base.  In some cases I have even bent or cut off and repositioned the limbs or head to vary them a bit.

Zombie Patients, to go well with my whole hospital overrun with zomibes theme.  I've accumulated a horde of these things.  I had fun varying the blood splatter from the severed hand.

Zombie Construction Worker - This guy lost an arm, but really doesn't care.

Zombie Ventriloquist - Well, part of my 'a zombie for all walks of life' project. 

Zombie Cheerleader - Of course, got to have a zombie cheerleader.  Those aren't pom poms in her hands, those are human entrails! 

The there's the Attack of the Zombie Laywers!!!!

And of course the Zombie Cops!  These I was able to vary the poses quite a bit to keep my horde from looking too 'cloned'.

Any fan of the Resident Evil movies, has to have some Zombie Dogs!  These Frothweilers had some spines sprouting out of the back.  I removed them and repainted them to look like the RE Zombie Dobermans.

Anyways, if you wish to see more of my zombie collection check out my Picassa Gallery of Zombies here.

Weird War II - European Theater

These are some earlier conversion work I had made.

After the AE-WWII Occult Expansion book came out, it introduced some new occult related factions and some whole new creepy units.  Some of these units are required, called 'un-locking' units, that you need in order to field some other more powerful weird units in your detachment.  Two of these units necessary to field the weird occult units of the Waffen SS are the Schutzkommando SS, the Krieghexen, and the Vril Engineer.  Unfortunately, there are no official Darkson Designs models to represent these, so this posed an opportunity to get creative.

The Schutzkommando is sort of an evil tomb raider who collects all sorts of magic artifacts from around the world.  He's sort of a customizable unit that you can gear-up for each game.  He's also the main unlocking unit to all the weird stuff in a Waffen SS detachment.  You need this guy in order to field the Vril Engineer or Kreighexen, when those will unlock things like Hell Hounds, Vampires, Werewolves, Dragr, etc.

Taking advantage of Victory Force 40% off sale I snagged up some nice looking SS figures to build a nice Occult detachment and an excellent figure to make a Schutzkommando SS.Based on the Darkson Designs concept art and the model description, he's an officer armed with an MP40 submachine gun and has a choice of multiple magic items. I found this figure in the Victory Force catalog. Like many of the VFM figures this comes with optional hands, so I ordered an MP40 in the left hand and a hand grenade in the right (figuring I can snip off the grenade and put a staff or rod in his hand). The parts arrived within 4 days and I mounted him on a  ruined temple base from Micro Arts Studios .  The tech/runic stone look of the bases sort of fit in with theme I wanted for my SS Occultists.

For the occult bitz I looked to my bitz bin and found a pole to a GW Dwarven Standard to use as my magic staff. The dwarven runes on it are perfect for some germanic runes. To top it off I snipped off the headpiece of a Space Marine Sergeant's "Hit me, I'm a Squad Leader with a Flag on my back to make sure you know it!" backpack standard. For some added flair I added a plastic cape from a GW Chaos Warrior. Nothing says gothic fascism like a GW product.

Of course I still need to clean up that nasty mold line down the pole before I prime this guy. Also I'm still on the fence about the size of dwarven hand. His left had seems quite big as well and I might be able to get by with painting it to look like a glove.  One suggestion I received was to make it sort of a Hell-Boy type of glove which I might go with.


The Krieghexen, War Witch, is the SS spell caster.  It's also an unlocking unit that allows you to field things like Werewolves, Vampires and Dragrs.

For my SS Krieghexen I took a different path from the Darkson Designs concept art.  Sort of going more pulpy I made a female Krieghexen from a RAFM goth chick cultist called Jil l Lucas, Cult Leader.

The hat is from a 1/48 Tamiya plastic German Officer. I had to carefully cut the head out from under it. Then clip off the top of her hair and after gluing the hat on, patch up the hair around it with green stuff.  I wanted it to sort of sit casually on top and most of all I wanted those horns just popping through.

I then added the Luger holster and dagger also from the same Tamiya German Soldiers set. She had some sort of coffin shaped backpack on. So I clipped it off and made a more military looking one from some pouches from the same Tamiya set.

I painted her outfit using some experimental techniques in painting sheer cloth. Ironically I just finished her just before leaving for Gen Con, where I had a class on the same subject. Nice thing was some most of those techniques were the same ones I had been experimenting on myself. 

The KISS Army boots probably don't look very 1940s, but are probably more practical than stilleto heels when you're stomping around old pagan temple sites and more stylish than standard army boots.

The eyes were done normally with a black outline then a white center, but rather than finishing the eyes with an iris and pupil, I used some thin flourescent orange to give it the glowing effect. Her tattoos were added with a 0.05mm felt pen. She's also mounted on a Micro Arts Studios Temple Ruins base, which I sort of wanted a theme going on. I've been experimenting with doing a marble effect using layers of glazes.

The Vril Engineer is another unlocking unit.  He works with some mystical metal called Vril to enhance weapons and gear in his detachment.  Based on the Darkson Designs concept art, he's got all sorts of cybernetic enhancements, germanic runes, and tools on hand.

I started with the Darkson Designs Mad Doktor torso, and removed the bone saw from the back. I figured the smock he's wearing could just as easily be a grease stained technician's smock rather than a bloody mad scientist's smock. Since he's armed with a StG-44, I used the arm from one of the Trenchcoated Wehrmacht soldiers.  I used the right arm of the Mad Docktor with the syringe, figuring it to be sort of a tool like a screw driver and positioned it to look like he's making some Vril modifications on his rifle.

I used an Abgerzsoldat head, and trimmed the top and back off to allow a plastic helmet from a 1/48th scale Tamiya figure set on top. Also added was a headset, for some added techy look to him. I then added a pistol holster, pouches, and a tool bag from a Tamiya German Field Maintenance figure set. I then even found a tool box from that field maintenance set and added that to the base. The backpack is a GW Commo pack with the antenna removed.

I painted him using SS Autumn Oakleaf camouflage pattern to match the rest of my SS detachment.  Doing some Google-Fu, I found some Vril runes to paint on his helmet.  Keeping with the looks of the concept art, I made some glowing eyes in the goggles using flourescent Orange and Yellow paint. 

 

I was able to get these models done enough to use just in time for Gen Con.  Here you can see my Vril Engineer in action, preparing to upgrade an MG-42 Team and my semi-finished Schutzkommando making a successful tank assault on an American T-4 Tumbleweed Tank (just before the Buffalo Powered Armor Suit zaps him with his Telsa Gun).

I added some germanic runes to his helmet similar to the SS Conscript pic in the Occult Expansion rulebook. Then I added some flourescent orange paint to the goggles to give him sort of an eerie magical glow.

Starfleet Conversions - Part II

I finished up the collection of Marines that I've had in storage for some time now. I've accumulated them a long time ago. They're official Starfleet Marines from Task Force games, I assume to support the original Prime Directive RPG. They were made by Harlequin Miniatures and sculpted by Kev White.

When I first got them, I never really considered them much for Star Trek as the weapons looked a bit too contemporary and not too keen on some of the poster'ish SMG in each hand poses. However the rest of them started to really grow on me and I dove into the Starfleet lore in some Captain's Log magazines. Some of the most exciting parts I like to read about are the marine actions that occur in the game.  Generally the entire action is resolved in a single die roll, but the fluff makes it so much more exciting and I've always wanted to do a skirmish game that really details these actions. 

So I pulled them out of storage and painted them along with my Victory Force Miniatures stuff. To try to keep some sort of cohesion, I painted the clothing under the armor plates the same as the standard red shirts (black pants and red shirt). The dark blue grey armor was picked as it reminded me of the wartime uniforms during DS9 and TNG era and the colors just seemed to work.


These are the finished Starfleet Marines in Light Environment Suits. These are from Victory Force Miniatures Spacefarers line.

Trying to keep a connection to the classic Star Trek I used colors from the old classic Starfleet space suits (as seen in The Tholian Web). Also sort of combining that with the TNG ear suits seen in First Contact. I even used some metallic red and blue for the details on the hard spots on the suit. The soft part of the suit was done in Reaper Misty Grey with Vallejo Metallic Medium over it as I didn't want the suit to look too silvery.  I also painted an Enterprise Arrow (the Starfleet insignia in the Starfleet Universe) on the left shoulder of each mini.

However keeping with the department colors I painted the upper parts of the suit to match the department.

The visors were done with Reaper Gunmetal Blue Metallic over black with several coats of black glaze over that. They look pretty dark except under bright light.






These are the finished MegaMinis Starship Crew. Since they come with integral bases I had to cover them up with turf. Not really impressed with the turf I used, looks sort of cheap (like it came off of an old Star Trek set I guess).

These are the MegaMinis Starship Crew that come seated. They make a great Bridge Crew.  Sticking with the Starfleet theme, I painted some of the crew in races seen in the Prime Directive RPG such as Rigellians and Cygnians.

And of course I had to finish this off with my distraught Starfleet Admiral from Victory Force Miniatures. He's part of their humorous Red Shirt Follies line.  His uniform matches much closer to the canon Star Trek movie era uniforms and not the Starfleet Universe ones, but what the hell.  Clearly things did not go as well as planned. I guess he hasn't figured out how to beat the no-win scenario yet.

Khaaaaannnnnn!!!!!!

What's next? I got an Orion Slave Girl and a bunch of Kzinti Marines on my workbench right now.