Copplestone Castings Zombies 01

I've got nothing new to review this week, so it's time for another blast from the past as I look at one of the earliest packs of 28mm scale zombies that I bought - Copplestone Castings' Future Wars pack FW4 Plague Zombies. These five figures have been on the market for many a year but still look good today. With these being such old figures of mine I was not too happy with how I'd painted them. The flesh tones and gore effects in particular were not up to scratch. So, I recently repainted them and I'm far happier at how they have turned out.

Let's take a closer look at them and starting at the far left of the two photos above is a near naked zombie wearing nothing more than a pair of Y-fronted underpants. With his long, straggly hair, bulging eyes and tongue sticking out of his mouth there is something disturbing about how he looks. He has been shot a few times in the back and right thigh, and has bite wounds to his left thigh and right arm. I have painted blood dribbling out of his mouth and smeared his left hand in the red stuff.
Next up is another near naked zombie, wearing shorts and training shoes. I decided to paint him in boxer shorts with lots of red hearts on them. They could just as easily be painted as normal shorts. You decide. This guy is a lot fatter, although I'd describe him as being overweight rather than fat or obese, and he is bald. He sports some serious injuries, the worst being a gunshot to the stomach with a large exit wound in his back. There are two smaller bullet wounds to his left chest, cuts to his right arm and back of his left leg and a massive bite wound on his lower left arm.
Centre stage is what I assume to be a former biker, dressed in tall boots, jeans and a sleeveless shirt. He waves a bloody thigh bone in his right hand. A bite has been taken out of his left check and left arm. His left knee shows through a ragged hole in his jeans. He is the most aggressive looking zombie in this set and if rage zombies exist in your game, he is just what you're looking for.
I painted the fourth zombie in line as a homage to Stephen (Scott H. Reiniger) from Romero's Dawn of the Dead, just after the zombies catch him in the mall lift. The zeds made a right mess of Stephen and they've made a right mess of this guy. That face bite is gruesome! His left eye hangs out of its socket and the left side of his face has been chewed off. He has also been bitten in the right upper arm, the right lower leg and most unusually, in the left buttock. I can't ever remember seeing any other zombie suffering from a backside bite but it does make sense. After all, there is plenty of soft flesh there, more so on some people than others! For that wound alone, he gets a big thumbs up from me!
The final figure of the group is an undead businessman, dressed in shirt, tie and two-piece suit. With his sunken cheeks and protruding tongue this zombie oozes hunger... hunger for flesh! His left sock and shoe have gone missing, no doubt lost when he was attacked and overcome by the flesh-eaters. His throat has been ripped out and blood stains the front of his shirt. There is a small tear in his right upper sleeve and his right knee is all bloody.
The heads of these zombies are grossly exaggerated, but that is not a bad thing. I've been a fan of Mark Copplestone's work ever since he began and I fondly remember receiving his packs of figures in little matchbox sized black boxes. The majority of his Future Wars figures come with integral metal bases not slottabases, but like Foundry's figures they can often be too small. When I repainted these five zombies I rebased them on 25mm diameter plastic slottabases so that they blended in well with the rest of my ever-growing zombie horde. I'd recommend rebasing them if you decide to buy them. The price for this pack of five figures is £8.00 on the Copplestone website. If you don't already have this set I can highly recommend them.