Police vehicles...

Been a bit side tracked on other projects but a recent trip to a Tesco Home Plus to look at futons (!) allowed for a brief diversion to the toy aisle and the purchase of two packs of three Emergency vehicles. Each pack contained a police car, ambulance van and a police tow truck. The latter will be converted into something to be decided but I took the opportunity to repaint one of the ambulances up as a police transit.

This was a simple enough process repainting the green checks blue, darkening the middle side windows with a was of Badab Black and painting over the ambulance insignia and applying some 'Police' decals from ASB Models (who provided the useful reverse one for the bonnet).

All models were satin varnished before running some black wash in the recesses (neatly done this gives any toy car a lot of depth but you need to apply the varnish as wash runs off gloss) and then applying some weathering.

Hopefully I'll get the ambulance and remaining commercial vehicles finished soon, along with a lorry I also bought at Tesco's. ASDA have a great bendy-bus on sale (two for £8) and I have a fledgling idea for one that I'd like to see if I could pull off...

Before and after...

Zabadak asked to see what the Horroclix Freakshow figures looked like before the conversion into Brutes so here we go...

I'd like to thank everyone for their extremely kind comments regarding my blog postings, it certainly inspires me to do more.

Regarding the painting style on the zombies I must give all the credit to Army Painter for their Strong Tone dip which works wonderfully over GW's Rotting Flesh. I am literally block painting the undead and then using the dip to pleasing results.

Zombie brutes...

The army lists in Apocalypse-Z allow for the inclusion in the horde of zombies who have "for some unknown reason grown to massive proportions. These "brutes" as they have come to be known, have all the same horrifying characteristics as their smaller counterparts, yet can tear a living man limb from limb in its quest for a meal".

Clearly the Wargames Factory zombies weren't going to be up to scratch. I did track down some photos of some old Reaper Flesh Golems that looked like they would do the part but unfortunately the ones I liked were OOP. The Horrorclix Freakshow series had a couple of figures in that looked interesting but would require work to fit in the background I am using (freakshows are so un-British these days!)

First was Herculon, a great undead figure of a zombie strongman holding aloft half a victim he has just torn apart (fitting in perfectly with the brute fluff). However the figure had some chains around the torso and was only wearing a pair of tight strongman shorts.

This necessitated some conversion with the chains being cut away (carefully not clipping away the lovely guts falling out of his stomach) and adding some clothes in the form of the remnants of a torn shirt (helping covering the areas damaged removing the chains) using Green Stuff and some badly torn trousers.

Overall quite pleased with the end result after he was painted and dipped, he towers over the main horde...

The Hungry Bertha figure is truly gross and I really wasn't sure it work in the horde as I am trying to avoid comic elements. The figure is nude apart from a bib, holding a cleaver and sat on small wooden stool.

The cleaver and the stool were removed and quite a bit of Green Stuff was used to build her backside back up! I added some Green Stuff to her back to make it look like she was wearing an ill-fitting vest and around painted Liquid Green Stuff around the legs and buttocks to make it look like she is wearing those horrible lycra leggings.

I positioned her slightly leaning forward which seems to work quite well. Bearing in mind I was very unsure whether she would work at all, I am pleased with the end result, she makes a great brute.

More zombies...

I managed to finish a few more zombies for the horde today, five from the Horrorclix range, a couple of old Copplestone that have been sat on "Lead Mountain" for a while and a D&D figure.

The Horrorclix figures have all been rebased and repainted to fit in with the Wargames Factory main horde. Some of the figures are noticeably larger than the WF ones but people are all different sizes and shapes aren't they? From left to right we have the Shambling Zombie, Zombie Patient, Zombie Lawyer, Hardhat Zombie and Sorority Zombie. I'm not keen on the shambling one but the hardhat and lawyer zombies are very good.

The two old Copplestone Metals have been painted using the same block then dip method along with a D&D Strahd Zombie which is suffering from a bit of backwards bend which I haven't managed to fix despite the old hot/cold water trick. Still it is not too bad for a zombie and the fantasy costume looks rather like that of the New Age folk you see wandering around Glastonbury.

Commercial vehicles...

Along with the cars picked up from Tesco came these commercial vehicles (three in a set for a fiver) which I have dirtied up to look as though they have been in heavy use straight off a construction site (who has time to wash their car during a zombie apocalypse anyway?).

One of the lorrys came with two recycling bins which make perfect scenery for games and weathered up to resemble those seen on British high streets and supermarket car parks.

Militia...

One difference between American and British zombie backgrounds is the ease at which Americans seem to be able to amass an arsenal of small (and indeed not so small) arms. Whether this is fact or not is not important, but regardless I still wanted to have a small militia/survivors group in Undead Kingdom.

The figures here are actually a Trade Union Militia unit from my England Prevails (contemporary ECW) games, using Red Star Miniatures Chechens, but happy to see double duty shooting zombies as much as Royalist fascists!

Cars...

I've been pondering cars for a while and whilst I don't need/want too many for Undead Kingdom they can prove useful and I do need some in England Prevails so they can do double duty. Reading Shinto Kamikaze's Zed Men Walking blog I noted that Tesco was flagged as a useful source so popped in this morning to see what they had.

They had two packs of Fuel Line Dream Cars, one with the kind of thing you see on Top Gear (which I ignored) and one with a Mercedes SLS, Jaguar XKR and BMW Z4 (not uncommon on British streets) priced at just under £6 for three.

Not happy with the high gloss finish, I satin varnished them then added a bit of weathering using GW washes. The Merc looked a bit over done until I stuck my head out and looked at my neighbours silver cars and saw how dirty they had got of late.

I also picked up a couple commercial vehicle packs which are being worked on as well to look a bit realistic.

Armed police...

Having some zombies painted I decided the next thing to do was to paint someone to shoot them! Enter some of Urban Beat's armed British Police (the packs have been revised and additional figures added since I bought mine last year).

The first four are standard armed police with MP5 smgs. One figure (now in the character pack) was bareheaded and bald which I didn't like so I painted on a Liquid Green Stuff balaclava.

The second four are CO19 Counter-Terrorist Police, similar to the Armed Police but with different weaponry and wearing baseball caps instead of peaked police caps. They are similar enough to the first pack to be merged into one single unit.

For gaming purposes both will be categorised as SWAT teams in Apocalypse-Z.

More walkers...

Finished the bases on the remaining sixteen Wargames Factory zombies adding a bit of dripped blood on the tarmac...

The first dead walk...

The first seven figures are finished, with another sixteen just needing some grey paint on their bases. The zombies here are, of course, the Wargames Factory plastics. Much maligned in some quarters I agree they are not the best zombies on the market, but they are reasonable, easy to convert, are cheap and don't look too bad on the tabletop.

There are some oddities such as more right arms with short sleeves than there are torsos with shirts on but being plastic and swift scrap with a knife solves this. Detail is a little soft in places but the Army Painter dip I have used has brought out more than enough and I am happy enough with the end result, after all they are part of a horde an there will be over eighty of these shamblers alone.

Next stage is to finish of the remaining sixteen this weekend and crack on assembling pack two. I left the bases clean on these intending to add some detritus on the next batch, though I need to paint some bits of blood splatter...

And the dead will rise...

Zombies... Like many wargamers I love them but despite playing them in fantasy and Weird War Two games and had many hours fun with Twilight Creations' Zombies!!! I have never tacked zombies in a contemporary setting as a tabletop wargames project. However, with three packs of Wargames Factory 28mm zombies amongst my son's Christmas presents the time has now come!

Both Saul and I love The Walking Dead but 28 Days/Weeks Later is also very popular here and having a slight apathy towards the traditional US zombie background I have decided to set our gaming in a zombie infected UK which should also make it easier to obtain vehicles and scenic items.

There is also another reason for choosing a UK background. I have been slowly working on a contemporary UK Civil War project (England Prevails) and I realised that the soldiers, police and militia units I intend to raise for that could do double duty fighting zombies (as could scenery and some vehicles).

Rules wise whilst All Things Zombie is very popular (and we may gravitate towards them) we are going to kick off with Apocalypse Z, a zombie Battlefield Evolution supplement from Exploding Goat Games as the basic game is highly playable and I picked up copies of both off eBay for 99p each.

With other demands on my time I suspect blogging on Undead Kingdom will be in fits and starts but there is an appetite ("brainsss...") to get the risen dead on the table and start double tapping them in the head to make sure they stay down!