Warhammer Zombies!

Well another week gone and I'm a day late posting, but hopefully this was worth the wait!  I've added some new gadgets to the sidebar - there's an RSS feed which was a specific request - so enjoy.  I've also picked up a few new followers the last few weeks, welcome all - that's doubled my followers to 6!  

I've not played a huge amount of Warhammer for a while, but a couple of my friends decided we should fix this for 2013 with a slow (continental drift slow) grow "tale of 3 gamers".  My friends have limited time for painting, so the plan is to play 500 point games of Warhammer, once a month.  Each month we will increase the army size by 20 points and everything must be painted to be fielded.

I've had a largely painted set of Warhammer armies for some time, Wood Elves, Skaven and Vampire Counts.  What I haven't done is spruce these up for years, all of them are really inconsistently based and in need of a fix-me-up.  I can't seem to shake my undead fixation, so dispite some misgivings about using them at 500 points I chose them.  For reference my friends are using Goblins and Lizardmen, I'll see if they let me take some shots.

So after the first month, I found that my zombie summoning power was seriously dented by the fact I only had 27 painted.  Here's the shot of them in all their shambolic ruin.  Not based, not finished, this motley crue has been in this state for something like 7 years, from 2 army books previous when zombies were reasonably worth taking.

Operation: Pimp my zombies was kicked off.  I've been sitting on 60 odd GW zombies for ages but recently got some of Mantic's excellent minis (30 to start with) in hope that I'd be inspired to paint a more suitably sized mob.  For the GW mob, some rebasing and choice painting was all that was needed to get them  ready for the table.  My key discovery recently here is the wonder shade Anthonian Camoshade - seriously douse any figure that needs to be a bit drab over a base coat and your rank and file are done (works with skaven and all manner of swamp folk fantastically).  So here we see a GW spruced up and a comedy half zombie from the Mantic sprue - useful where some of my zombies are overreaching themselves a bit!

As there's so many of the damned things I was keen to try some regimental basing for the zombies.  My goblin using friend had a few spare, so here are the results of these experiments.  I've added a gravestone to a couple of them for fun.

I really like the Mantic zombies, so much more dynamic than GW's and a very good price too.

I did add a few more GW zombies to the unit as well as few solo Mantic shamblers.  All of the new additions were base coated in a strong (but unpleasant) skin tone, light greens, greys, light browns and a yellowish variant.  Next loincloths and other assorted clothes were added in darker colours, greens and browns typically.  A fairly liberal coating of dark red was added to assorted viscera and wounds and the teeth picked out.  This is all hit with camoshade and we're largely done.  I've added some brighter red blood to the more dangerous zombies where they've managed to find a meal and made everyone's eyes glow a selection of unpleasant colours using Tausept Ochre as a base, then a bright yellow plus optionally a shade if I wanted a really odd colour, blue or something.

So here's the entire unit of 48 ranked up - the standard and musician are frankly ancient lead GW figures, which while nice, fall over all the time so I need to sort those out.  I could use a banner too.

Here's them again without the flash - not sure there's much new to see but some of the colours show up differently.  The bases are simply sand stuck on with PVA (under and overcoated to stop it coming off) painted dark brown then drybrushed with medium brown.  Finally some some more PVA to glue random clumps of flock were added - I like the idea my undead are attacking over broken earthlands.

To finish, here's a complete army shot of the forces I've previously posted on this blog - essentially my most recent undead additions to my army and all consistently based.   Use the labels on the right to see the detailed posts about my Wight Lord, Skeletons and Ghouls.

The idea is to add to this growing horde by updating my existing collection to a fresher state or paint some of the hordes I have collecting dust (including the other 42 zombies) - or more likely completely new stuff as the evil retailers out there realise that undead are clearly the coolest figures.

Unexpected Agendas Tournament

After an exciting and fun filled day, here's my write up of the Unexpected Agendas tournament that ran on 02/03/2013 at the 7th Heaven Games Shop.

The tournament was based on encounter driven multi player games, which mean each table had a strong theme.  So on a busy Friday night of roleplaying, I snuck into the shop to set up the tables the night before with Rob's help.

Seamus's evil plans are on display for all to see on the Badlands table - here the Irish madman is going on a killing spree near the dead zone while the Von Schill crew toy with the other half of Sonnia's embattled crew.

From top to bottom, left to right we have the graveyard, the Badlands (actually from a game in progress- thanks to Bryan for his scenery here), the street of Malifaux and the bayou (with some excellent trees made by Will) .  

With the tables all set, I thought I was all ready for a busy day of running the tournament.  What I had forgotten was the Rob was getting all the agendas (much like schemes in a normal game) printed and I would need to get this cut out before the players arrived.  As our first contenders arrived I presented them with sheets of card and scissors and everyone got involved with the Blue Peter spirit!  This meant I didn't get photos of everyone's crews, which I apologise for.

Eventually we had 13 players with all the cards they needed and 4 great looking tables to battle over.

Here's an in progress shot from the first round battling over the graveyard.  The gremlins have found the real Necronomicon and are running away from Kaeris on the warpath with her pet bipedal stream train!  Lucius wants in on the action too so is frantically ordering his special forces into the mix.

Here's a Ronin reinforcement that Matthew hired into his Seamus crew during a game where he was the underdog.  Its a turtle fantasy football figure from Greebo's upcoming Nippo Goblin range (I got it early from an Indiegogo project).  Next to Leonardo is Bryan's hand from late in the second round - it looked like his Viktorias were about to unleash hell with cards like that!

Here's a battle unfolding on the Mailfaux table, with the Ortegas attempting to sneak into the creepy haunted house early before anyone notices!  Big demons have descended upon Ramos while the Viktorias are eyeing up the shape of the fighting and waiting for the right moment to break cover.

 

A couple of Andy's new recruits to his guild crew.  The Austringer is a homage to Richard O'Brian I'm told.  The cards and spell picture next to them is Leviticus casting unnatural wasting on Lillith for a staggering duel total of 30 - she was down 5 wounds after this, only to be punched in the face by Rusty Alice - who would have thought?

A furious rumble in the bayou is unfolding - the Silurids enjoying the watery scenery.  Leviticus is spreading out looking for scrap in ponds while Kaeris lines up some devastating fire-power.

 

I managed to snap a few crews on the day - here's Will's Kaeris in situ on the bayou board.  They are all mounted on metal grills over furnace like bases.

Here's Dan's Lillith crew.  Great use of Heresy's demon here as an alternative mature Nephilim.  Dan won the Sportsmanship award on the day, so well done!

Here's Karl's Ramos crew which won the best painting award.  My photo really doesn't do them justice - combination of bad lighting and a bit too much reflection.  There's some lovely subtle colours and highlighting on these figures and the crew look great together on the table.  There were some really nice crews in play on the day (see Bryan's here on his own blog) so Karl did well to come top.

So who won in the end?

3rd Place went to Louis with his Marcus crew - you can see him in action on the Bayou board above using his dratted frog men to great effect.

2nd Place went to Matthew with his Seamus crew.  Clearly his evil plans worked pretty well.

1st Place went to Mark with his Kaeris crew, which I really must get a shot of!  Mark was great fun to play against, scoring well in the sportsmanship award and he was certainly a contender for painting too.  However it was with an eye on the prize that Mark ruthlessly hunted down his agendas (note the Steam Golem bashing  his way though gremlins in the graveyard shot above) - to the point of even shooting Kaeris in the back with one of his own models to ensure he spent all of his soulstones in one turn to achieve a personal agenda item - that saw him ultimately victorious.  He didn't quite demolish the entire creepy structure in round 2, but it was close and he did manage to land mine about 50% of the figures on the table in one turn as well.

So that's all done and dusted for this month, but I am pleased to report many players were very keen for more, so I'll be planning something for April.  Any excuse to wear a cowboy hat and carry a nerf gun around all day...