Final Zombtober Entry (and more than a little late)

Up today is my fourth and final post in the Zomtober Challenge.  The goal was to  post on Sunday, but I obviously didn't make it.  I tried last night to come in at least on Halloween, but taking the kids trick or treating got in the way.  Long story short the post slipped to November (cue the sad trombone music).

Looking back, painting and basing six survivors in an already busy week was probably overly ambitious, but I did finally get them done and photographed.  Here are the six survivors that come in the Zombicide: Prison Outbreak stand alone board game.  Thankfully they are also backwards compatible with the original Zombicide as well as the Toxic City Mall expansion.

Grindlock, The Headbanger

A nice figure, but Grindlock was also a chance to try something new.  The concept art showed his arms full of tattoos.  I hadn't done anything like that before.  I'm not very good at free hand painting things like this, so I looked at some of the tattoo decals available but didn't really like any of them.   I finally decided to ink the tattoos (pun intended).  I used a black 0.05" Sakura brand felt tip ink pen and drew the tattoos on the arms.  It was difficult the first time and I ended up painting back over them and trying it twice.  I ended up doing it on a day that I didn't have any caffeine which seemed to help.  The end result is passable if a little blobby.

Joshua The Protector

Not to be confused with Josh The Thug from the core box, Joshua is a little more heavy set and a little taller.  The figure is well executed and I think it came out well.  I really need to find a Red Sox decal for his shirt to match the concept art but so far I've struck out finding one small enough and I'm not good enough to free hand the logo.  Overall I think he's my favorite figure of the bunch.

Kim, Pokerface

Not much to say here.  Decent sculpt with a standard paint job.

Parkour Belle

Belle's a bit of a nod to the French designers a presume (David Belle Wiki).  She was the last figure of the bunch I painted late one night so the stripes of the uniform are a bit off and I probably should have spent more time on her face but oh well.

Shannon The Soldier

Shannon was a bit of a disappointment for me.  The figure is generally well sculpted with the exception of the face.  It is a bit soft on the detail, which really isn't helped by my painting style.  I know that sculpting softer details helps set the female figures apart from the from the male figures but I think Shannon's sculptor went a little too far in that direction.  She also suffered a bit in my general rush to get things done.  I don't have the time now, but I may go back in the future and try to paint and blend some better facial details.

Watts The Family Man

Another nice figure with good character sculpted on.  

Overall a nice set of figures and a great addition to my survivor collection.

Zombtober Week II - Zombicide Toxic City Mall Survivors

For my second week of the Zombtober challenge (Eclectic Gentleman Tabletop Gamer) I'm continuing with the new Zombicide Season II release.  This time it is from the Toxic City Mall (TCM) expansion for the original Zombicide board game.

I decided to tackle the four new survivors from the box.  Out of the box the figures are generally well sculpted and as with the Prison Outbreak zombies from last week, they are cast with the same semi-rigid PVC plastic that holds decent detail while not being too flexible.  Flash was non existent on the models and while there were a couple of mold lines they were light and easy to remove.  The biggest difference between the zombies and the survivors is that the zombies are all monochrome casts while the survivors come in a rainbow of different colors.  The multicolored survivors are an advantage for identifying figures on the board, but the florescent colors used for TCM  really obscure some nice detail on the figures.

Again like the zombies I've clipped the figures from their  intragral bases and put them on some 30mm resin replacements.  I did the same thing to my original Zombicide survivors and the bigger bases did not cause any problems with crowding unless all six survivors try to cram into the same room.

Neema The Executive

Neema is a nice figure with a torn shirt an Uzi and a big honkin' revolver.  I'm never a fan of figures toting two hand guns, but at least she's only aiming with one of them.  The only down side is that the realistically proportioned heels are small and tough to pin to the base.

Raoul The Contractor

Finally we have a figure in this game that looks like they are ready to face the apocalypse.  Sculpted with a molle vest, an M-14 and machete, Raoul is looking bad ass.

Elsa The Cat-Burglar

Elsa was a bit of a disappointment and points to some of the limits of the single part casts.  The arm sculpted across the body and the revolver are a little soft and the face looking right is split across the mold line so is also too soft in my opinion.  My painting technique of solid colors with washes doesn't help to bring out what color there is on the figure either.

Derek the locator

Derek's another cool figure with his surveyor's vest and bag of lath slung over his shoulder.  I think he is nicely sculpted in a good pose.

Overall so far I'm very pleased with the components of the expanded Zombicide items.  I haven't had time to play any games with the new rules, but the figures are top notch in board game terms.

Zombicide Season II Prison Outbreak Zombie Review

 

Today I’ve got my first post ready to join the “Zombtober” challenge posted by (ZOMTOBER Challenge!).  The rules are pretty simple in that you complete and display at least one zombie or apocalypse survivor every Sunday in October.  With thirty three bloggers participating the results should be interesting.  I don’t fly the flag of the ZBA (zombie bloggers association), but zombies are a big part of my building and painting these days so I thought I would give the challenge a shot.

This week, I’ve focused on the zombies from the second season of the Zombicide board game franchise.  The kickstarter delivery has been a bit fragmented and disorganized, so some backers received the entire first wave delivery a month ago, while others still haven’t received anything.  I’m somewhere in the middle.  Two weeks ago I received the two big ticket items with Zombicide: Toxic City Mall and Zombicide:  Prison Outbreak.  Hopefully the first wave of Kickstarter extras will ship in the next month or so.  In the meantime I’ve been having a great time rooting through the two boxes.

Prison Outbreak is a standalone game in its own right but it is backwards compatible with both the core Zombicide game and the Toxic City Mall supplement.  It has six new survivors and zombivors (zombie versions of the survivors), introduces “berserker” zombies and best of all, it includes almost 50 traditional zombies from the core game with all new sculpts.

 I’ve spent the week rebasing and painting up one of each of the unique sculpts for the traditional zombies in the Prison Outbreak box.   The original zombies from the first season of Zombicide were decent sculpts from the perspective of typical “board game” quality, but were a little short of traditional tabletop figures.  The arms were a bit thin and amorphous and the details (especially the male zombie faces) were quite soft and mushy.  From my perspective, the cost versus quality equation still came out as a good value, but they weren’t much to write home about.

Fast forward to this year and we get nine new sculpts that in most cases raise the bar on quality.

First up are the walkers.  In the Prison Outbreak box you get six copies of five unique sculpts of good old fashioned “shufflers”.   These models are much nicer than the first season.  The arms and legs have been sculpted thicker, which should help the large flex that the first season figures had.  Flex isn’t a problem if you are using the figures straight out of the box, but for painting, too much flex in the thin arms can lead to paint cracking and falling off.   Also, the new figures have much greater detail, especially in the faces.  For someone that paints in the style I do, using washes to gain definition, deeper cuts on the details is much appreciated.  Like the original figures, the hands may tend to look like webbed flippers, but I think that’s a function of the medium, which would not support well sculpted fingers. 

 

Next up are the two runner zombies and the only real stinker in the whole box.  The female runner on the left is in a very awkward pose and has the oddly oversized gorilla arms reaching out.  Worse, out of the box she comes with a large peg attaching her back leg to the base. 

Not a great figure in my opinion especially compared to her concept art (PO Runner Concept).  On the plus side at least we get a little diversity to the runner ranks now.  The male runner on the right looks nice, although why he’s pulling a superman and ripping off his shirt is a mystery to me.

 

Now we come to the “fatty” zombie.  She’s a big lady in curlers and a too small dress.  I think the figure is a little over the top, but I think it matches up ok with the first season fatty pretty well.  Nice detailing compared to some of the softer features of the original fatty as well.  Unfortunately I messed up on the basing.   I thought she would look good shambling over some rubble on the base, but I don’t think it came out as well as it could have.  At some point I think I’ll pull her off and rebase her.

 

The last figure is the Abomination Zombie.  In game terms, he’s a walking tank that can only be killed by rare weapons, and if he appears early in a game you end up spending most of the game running away until you search through the deck to find something powerful enough to take him down.  While this guy’s the same height as the original abomination, his “hulking out” pose with arms raised makes him look that much more intimidating.  All in all another good figure.

CONCLUSION

For single part board gaming figures these are good sculpts that I think exceed the quality of the originals.  I plan on mixing them up with the original set to give games of original Zombicide a greater variety.  Now it’s on to the survivors.