The Close To Zomtober 2018 - I Guess You Can Never Have Enough Walkers

Another year and another Zomtober in the books. This year was pretty good as far as totals were concerned - 46 models were completed and based for the month. Here's my obligatory splash photo with every walker I've done so far, with a couple of select survivors putting up a last defense.

This week had me finish 20 figures. I think that I only have a total of five unpainted Mantic walkers left to do, which is pretty amazing honestly. There were no new poses in this group except for the Shane walker, so I didn't think there was any need for close ups this time around.  I really like the look of the horde bases, so I did two more on the right.

One thing I really wanted to do this month was get some of the prone figures done. But with the switch to the thin clear base that meant I had to cut them off their resin bases.

Oh my days, what a chore that was! I had to use my jewelers saw as the Xacto knife wasn't going to cut it - the jokes just write themselves folks :)  I broke like three blades, but finally did get them all done.

A zoomed in photo of some of the prone figures in action. And Negan being Negan to the poor lad kneeling on the left.

I moved to another corner of the unfinished board for this final week, as I felt the loading dock of the factory would look way too similar for photos two weeks in a row.

Even though I have 73 walkers it wasn't nearly enough to fill up the intersection. I guess I need to buy more undead figures :)

I'm extremely lucky to have an entire room dedicated to nothing but my hobbies, but it is frustrating that the ceilings are so low (about 6'1").

That means that the lights are literally right on top of the tables and it creates shadows all over them, as you can see above. Definitely a bit frustrating.

So a pretty successful Zomtober 2018. Thanks to everyone who participated this year, there was a lot to be inspired by and I got to follow a few new blogs along the way. I also want to take a second and say "thank you" to some new followers of to the blog as well :) - myincubliss, Steve Hamner, and Doctor Merkury. Appreciate you following along!

I'm ready to go back to my favorite genre of gaming next, pulp. I've started working on a one off Jonny Quest adventure featuring that temple I worked on earlier in the year, with some of the new Kickstarter dungeon tiles that arrived from Germany a few weeks ago. It's been almost two years since the Quest gang was out on the table. That is way too long, and it's definitely time to see them again.

As always, thanks for looking!

Cheers!
Ivor

Zombtober Week Three - More Survivors

I felt I really needed to move out of that corner of the board where I've been taking group photos of the zombie apocalypse over the past year. Every time I would add more figures I would just throw them in that same corner and move a few things around. Pretty boring really, so apologies! But honestly, because this board is no where near finished, I still feel odd trying to set up these staged photos even though I do think they look better than just the light box photos. Anyway, over to the trackside factory I went with the resulting zoomed in splash photo above.

I imagine that this was a supply run into the factory that has gone horribly horribly wrong!! This is the original photo - where clearly the author of this blog shouldn't have included it because it actually shows in full color detail just how much work still needs done lol

Ten more survivors were based this week, with a large number of walkers started for next weeks grand finale. Here are the first five - three Mantic figures and two from Studio Miniatures.

The first is Herschel Greene from Studio Miniatures. Obviously this version is from the television show and not the comic. Having only ever finished the first volume of the comic book series, I'm only familiar with Herschel as portrayed on the show and I quite liked that character a lot. When I saw this figure I had to grab him.

Next is Darrel Dixon, again from Studio Miniatures and another television show only figure.  Darrell is definitely a favorite of mine on the show, and just like with Herschel, when I saw him I absolutely had to get him into the shopping cart too.

Darrell's vest has some fantastic detail on the back with the wings. Overall the details on the SM figures are just amazing. The only thing is, as you can see in the group photo, they are a bit smaller than the Mantic figures. For me though it's nothing that isn't going to prevent me from mixing them in with the Mantic line of figures.

Patrick. Baseball bats seem all the rage with early figure sculpts.

Arnold.

And last in this group is Glenn.

This next group of five has Michonne, Tyrese, Andrea, Negan, and Chris - all from Mantic Games.

I know Tyrese is supposed to have been a former football player, but this particular sculpt has always bothered me - his shoulders just seem a bit too big, though in this particular angle he looks ok, the group photo not so much.

Chris.

Michonne.

Negan.

And last, Andrea.

Until next time, when we'll close out this Zomtober with a boatload of walkers, thanks for looking!

Ivor

Zomtober Week Two - Atlanta Survivors

This week I decided to stay away from the undead and get some survivors completed.

Five survivors from the early days of Atlanta got put onto their new bases an immediately placed on Main Street :)

And a close up of the horde about to overrun them!

Here is Lori, Morgan, Jim, Carol, and Liam.

Jim is my favorite figure of the lot. The sculpt really captures the terror of being in a zombie apocalypse.

The Liam sculpt is another favorite. I like figures that aren't armed to the teeth so a majority of this group falls under that heading. What I really like is that this particular sculpt captures a moment when Liam was clearly caught off guard.

Carol.

Morgan.

And last, Lori.

I also worked on one of the trucks from the All Out War scenery set. It's a great set and highly recommended if you don't have it.

I decided to think way outside the box and went with red as my color choice for the truck.

I think the weathering turned out ok, definitely need more practice with it though. And I didn't realize the lights on the roof looked that bad until I started to put this post together. Oh well, I have another truck to hopefully improve on.

And to wrap this post up, I was able to snag last years event exclusive set from Mantic off Ebay for the bargain basement price of $27.00 - which included the shipping! Can't wait to start on this one :)

Until next time, thanks for looking!

Ivor

Two More Kickstarter Arrivals

The Kickstarter's are arriving fast and furious lately. Two more arrived over the last few weeks.

The first was from Cigar Box Battle Mats. I have a couple of their older mats (and actually sold about four I think as well) and I do like them for throwing something down quickly.

I decided to back this project because they have improved their mats by leaps and bounds in my opinion. This is the new Grasslands mat.

And an up close photo. It's amazing how good it looks, the photos don't do any of the mats justice.

The Barren Lands mat. Perfect for a desert like setting.

This new version just blows away the older Open Desert version.

The third mat I decided on was the Tundra mat. I've got a couple ideas swirling around inside the 'ol bean about some adventures in the snow and cold weather.

Unfortunately this photo is pretty bad in attempting to show the detail of the mat, but again, I'm incredibly impresses by it.

The last one I picked up was the Caribbean Waters mat. This one I really liked because of the lighter blue and white tones. This will be perfect for Blood & Plunder, Age of Sail, or any other water based game.

Again, detail wise this one is top notch.

This KS funded on July 16th and had an estimated delivery of September. So an A+ to Cigar Box Battle Mats, delivery was as promised and the quality is beyond what I had hoped for. Highly recommended if you are looking for something to throw down on the table quickly and still give yourself a great looking table. One other really nice selling point is these things literally fold right up to about the size of a folded towel, so storage and transport is really easy. They measure in at approximately 60"x80", so plenty of overlay for a 6x4 table.

The other KS that arrived was from Sally 4th. This was the Classic Movie Miniature Episode 2. Episode 1 featured figures from some of my favorite movies of all time - The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca! There were a total of  36 figures in my pledge and below are some of my favorites.

I missed the first KS and what was great about Episode 2 was that there was a pledge level that you were able to go all in on - catching up on the first one, as well as getting everything from the new one. Here are a few of the Casablanca figures from the first KS.

Episode 1 also had figures from an old television show called 'Tales of the Gold Monkey'. It was really piggybacking the popularity of Indiana Jones at the time, but it did have some fun aspects to it - for me it the awesome airplane, a white and red Grumman Goose (if I can find one of those in 28mm Ivor would be one happy boy!), and Jack the dog, who wore an eye patch. Jack had a fake eye which was an opal, and why he wore the eyepatch. Jake lost the eye in a poker game and a running joke through the series was how Jack never lets Jake forget that. Anyway, good pulpy fun, and someplace to find some gaming ideas, despite the show really not holding up to time all that well lol.

The Maltese Falcon set. Just brilliant! And even better is that I now have multiple figures of Humphrey Bogart, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre. That's just the coolest thing ever for a classic movie guy like myself.

One of the new sets from Episode 2 is a take on the old Miss Marple film Murder at the Gallop. I absolutely love this series of old Marple movies as well. I think a lot of it is because Margaret Rutherford reminds me a bit of my grandmother with that white hair.

But here is the piece de resistance of the set - the Howling Commandos from the first Captain America movie. What was crazy about this set is that it was made at my suggestion. Madness really lol! Chris Abbey, who owns Sally 4th, has all the backers of the Kickstarter vote on what the next set of figures will be. It occurred to me that no one to date has done a Howling Commandos set - and it was the one major thing I was missing from last year's Agent Carter game that I took down to Historicon.

It was super frustrating because I was changing the narrative of my story because I didn't have the right figures for what I wanted to do. Well, I suggested the commandos and they won the vote by a landslide! So now I have a Dum Dum Dugan figure and I couldn't be more chuffed!!!

As well as the first version of Captain America, with the original badge shield. I can't wait to get some paint on these guys. But more importantly, I'm hoping that now having these figures in hand that this can be the push I need to get our favorite SSR agent back onto the tabletop and fighting the evil forces of Hydra :)

I was already paying for shipping across the pond so I figured I may as pick a bunch of the really neat Sally 4th accessory pieces. I've had my eye on these for quite a while now and jumped at the chance to grab them at a KS discounted price. This is the museum set, with all kinds of great bits and bobs to throw around inside a building.

And the market place set. I can't wait to get these painted up.

The Museum of Antiquities set has a bunch of these awesome glass cases that should really look the business when built up. I got several other little accessories as well that should make the table a whole lot more interesting to look at too.

This KS funded on July 30th, with an estimated delivery date of December of this year. Well, Chris and everyone at Sally 4th absolutely knocked this Kickstarter out of the park!! I had my full pledge in my hands at the end of September - and what makes that even more amazing is that the entire Howling Commandos set was sculpted from scratch after it won the vote on July 30th!?!? Mark Fuller - Tin Shed Gamer on the LAF - did an absolutely amazing job on these figures, and he deserves a huge shout out for the effort. I've heard on LAF that he's already started work on four more Howling Commandos (I'm sure Bucky will make it in that set) for Chris' next movie KS :)

But because of this Kickstarter, now the wheels are turning in Ivor's little head - I'll be jumping in on the next one and 100% putting up Jonny Quest as the vote in set of figures! The hurdle will be that the Quest gang just isn't known in England, which is an absolute shame because it's a cartoon that easily hold up almost 60 years later - giving you everything you could ever want in a spy-fi pulpy globe trotting adventure series. Quest is easily my favorite cartoon of all time, and if you've never heard of Jonny Quest I can't recommend looking it up enough. I absolutely guarantee that you will not be disappointed if you like the kind of stuff I described above - just make sure to watch the original from the 1960's. And if this does actually happen by some miracle, it will mean I can get rid of my proxy Quest team. Please oh please oh please let this happen!!! And then after that I can suggest a Goonies set of figures lol!!

I'll leave you with what could be the most important photo I've ever put up on the blog. This is work being done across the street to FINALLY get Internet access to the farm. It's just mad to think we've been without Internet/wifi access since moving out to the farm five years ago. Everything I do on the blog is either on my phone (which is easily the most frustrating thing ever) or piggybacking off my wife's portable Jetpack from Verizon, which is supposed to be used for work, so it's worthless. It has absolutely sucked to say the least. So here's to Ivor getting back into the 21st Century :)

I also want to send a quick shout out and thanks to Michal K. and Phil C. for following along with the blog, cheers guys!

Until next time, thanks for looking!

Ivor