Setting a Scene

Happy Easter all!!!

Due to the long weekend, we took the opportunity to catch up with friends and family so I was unable to post an update on Sunday as I had hoped.

Still, I hope better late than never.

I'm hoping to do a big post next weekend to show off the zombies I've got painted up so far as I wasn't able to do it this weekend, so I thought instead I'd quickly set up a little scene and show off some pictures as a bit of a teaser...

Caught unawares whilst out scavenging for supplies, our three heroes quickly find themselves up against a group of hungry zombies. They prepare themselves by hunkering down behind some makeshift barricades and hope that they can get out of this one alive...

Maybe our survivors were too focused on the assorted coloured eggs in the distance to notice they had company...

Most models are Zombicide Season 3 miniatures, with a few Season 1 Zeds for good measure, set up among the already introduced Mars Attacks terrain I have.

More next weekend.

Until then, enjoy!!!

Mars Attacks Ruins

A little while ago, I was able to get an online deal on Mantics' Mars Attacks game - the game itself and the Scenery Upgrade pack for less than the cost of what the game alone usual retails for.

Whilst having no real interest in the game itself, the fact that it came with a large amount of usable terrain, as well as some extra miniatures meant I was happy enough to pick it up with the view of using the contents within our own games.

As well as offering a large amount of ruins, it also provided a fair amount of street debris - benches, bins, postboxes, fences and barricades which offer a nice, realistic touch to the tabletop, and allows us to really have a 'lived in' feel to our tabletop. 

The ruins set up on the paper mat that comes with the game

Anyways, the ruins themselves are painted, and I've gone for painting them a slightly 'over the top' red colour in order to make them stand out. 

They are nice and simple to paint, and I've really enjoyed getting them to this point. Currently they are not based, and that is something that I want to do, with rubble and debris piled up to add that last piece of character to them but they are certainly usable as they currently are. 

 Examples of the street debris - these aren't quite finished as of yet.

Take a walk down Crease Street...

Obligatory Fallout poster. 

What I like about them is that they are generic enough in design to use in a variety of different style games - from Zombie games, 40K, WW2 games through to post apocalyptic Fallout type games.

Whilst these ruins don't really offer enough to count as full buildings, they do a good job providing cover and blocking line of sight, and there is enough to fill a 2x2 foot table here quite comfortably. Add some intact buildings, and they definitely add a little something to the battlefield.

Hope you like them.

A Bag of Goodies (Part 2)

Sorry all, been pretty slack with my follow up post. 

Like anybody would, I went through the bag as soon as I got it home, but it took a while to find time to take the pictures for this post so apologies for that.

As I mentioned in my last post, I paid NZ$10 for a large bag of what looked like an airport themed play set of some kind, but even though the bag was big and see through, it wasn't entirely clear just what was usable.

Sifting through it, I've discarded about a quarter of the contents - mainly vehicles which are the wrong scale or items that have no practical use for a zombie game.

But without further ado, here are some pictures of what is usable...

This is about half of what is probably usable within the bag.

Here are some barricades, with a Zombicide zombie as a reference. Useful for street clutter if nothing else. I got about 20 of the grey ones and 10 of the yellow and black ones. We've come up with some rules for barricades in our game, so these will be perfect to try out for that purpose.

Hmm... Shiny. If I give these a repaint I think they can be useable as searchlights. I'm thinking an army outpost with these, sand bags and such coming under attack from a swarm of undead. Maybe some kind of night time mission where the undead are attracted to the lights and the survivors need to kill the switch... possibilities.

All manner of street debris - signs, lights and oil drums - some are perhaps a bit too big but I'm sure they are still usable. I'll take the stickers off the larger signs and use them for billboards and such, the satellite dishes could be used for objectives and digital sky dishes on the side of buildings etc. 

Some possibilities there I think.

These are obviously part of some kind of kit in which you can build an airport hanger. The scale is slightly off - but the plan is to remove the stickers and use them as some sort of small office spaces or add them to other buildings. No concrete plans as of yet, but there is some potential there I think.

All in all, for $10 I don't think I can really complain. No doubt most of this stuff will be absorbed into our scenery and I'll show you what I do with the various parts in the future.

As mentioned in my previous post - whilst the selection of 'modern' terrain is growing all the time, it is still quite expensive and it can never hurt to look in second hand shops to see what they are selling. It may need a bit of work, a repaint or cutting or filing, but toys and parts are more than usable for the purpose.

A Bag of Goodies (Part 1)

As most of us who are into post apocalypse gaming can attest to - getting terrain and street furniture can often be quite expensive. Whilst there is more choice now than ever before, I've found that it is still quite expensive to purchase modern scenery for our games.

Now I subscribe to the mantra that one mans trash is another mans treasure, and so a great source of potential bits and pieces can come from what others discard and throw away.

Like many places, here in Hamilton, there are a few second hand shops with toys for sale that others have donated, and our local rubbish tip also does something similar - they go through what has been thrown out, and have an area where they sell the things that are... well, sell-able...

It was whilst dumping a load of rubbish off at the tip this weekend that I had a look around and found this big bag of 'stuff' for $10...

Now this bag is big, and I instantly saw that there was at least some things inside that can be usable. It seems to all have an airport theme to the contents, and whilst some of the things, vehicles especially, don't seem to fit the 28mm scale we game with, I felt confident enough that there was something in the bag that was usable to make it worthwhile picking up for a tenner...

To give you an idea of the size of the bag, that is a Zombicide zombie placed next to it!!!

So, I'll open it up, sort through it and post up what I've found...

What's all this then?

Welcome to my blog - hopefully this post is the first of many!!!

What is the plan for this blog then?

It is a showcase, hopefully about gaming around a zombie apocalypse. 

I'm a long time gamer, and a long time fan of the zombie genre, so am keen to put them both together. Whilst there are rules that are out there, nothing quite hits the mark for myself or my gaming group. As it is a genre we are all keen to roll dice in, we thought we would make our own rules up and see how it goes. 

This blog is dedicated to everything zombie gaming related - from showing off miniatures and terrain, to discussing the rules that we have come up with, to hopefully some AARs as well.

I guess first off a little about myself. I'm an English lad, currently living in New Zealand. I've been gaming for over 15 years - mostly GW stuff - I have a fondness for the original Necromunda rules in particular, but also enjoyed Warhammer. I game in a group of around 10 players, and we've been beating the snot out of each other on the gaming table for my years over many different games.

I have a large Vampire Counts army which I may showcase on this blog at some point (it is Undead after all) but seemingly like many I've fallen out of love with GW after the End Times and Age of Sigmar, and the hassle of carting huge amounts of models around means that my enjoyment of large scale gaming has diminished over the past 12 months or so.

So it is back to skirmish level games for me - our home grown rules for the Zombie itch, Frostgrave for the fantasy itch and Necromunda for the old school itch.

This blog is for the zombie side of things.

So, shotguns loaded, ensure the chainsaw is gassed up, coz here we go...