Sunday 6 December 2009

Twilight Creations Inc. Zombies


Twilight Creations Inc. ought to be well known to fans of zombie games as they produced a very successful boardgame called Zombies!!! along with numerous expansion sets. I've played Zombies!!! and a few of the expansions and they are what we call "beer and pretzels" games, meaning they are fun to play if you are limited in time and don't want to stretch your brain cells too much. This is not meant to be a review of the game(s) but a look at some of the figures that are provided with the games.
First thing to note is their size. These are only 25mm tall, making them quite small when compared with 28mm scale metal figures. Readers of my blog will be well aware that I am not a scale snob. I wanted to add some of these plastic figures to my zombie horde, so I just reasoned that the four humans shown above in my photos were young teenagers, not yet fully grown. If you go with that rationale, they fit in well.
At the far left is one of the standard male zombies that you get with the starter set. He is dressed in track suit, trainers and baseball cap, which I have painted in a Burberry pattern to make him a young "chav" - an obnoxious breed of youths that infest many deprived areas and sink estates in the UK. He has a massive wound in his stomach - you can see daylight through it! His right arm and right ankle have been bitten. As far as the sculpting goes, he is very average, with surface detail notable by its absence.
Next to him is a conversion of the same figure. I've repositioned his head and left arm. Now that the left arm is hanging down by his side it appears to be longer than his right arm! I filled in the hole in his back but added a spool of intestines spilling out off his stomach. I added modelling putty to his right arm and lower right leg, but shifted the location of the two bites there slightly by moving them further up the limbs. He too is painted in the traditional colours of a "chav."
In the centre of the group is a female zombie, who also comes with the original boxed set. When Zombies!!! was first released you only got male zombies with it but now you get a mixture of male and female zeds. She is a much better sculpt than the male zombie. Her dress has been badly torn and she has bite wounds to both legs and her right arm. There is also a wound to her back that may have been caused by a bullet. She holds a severed head in her left hand, which interestingly wears glasses.
The fourth zombie human in the group comes from the expansion set called Humans!!! and he is one of the humans. However, because he is running I have painted him up as a rage zombie like those seen in 28 Days Later. I used a pin vice to drill a line of holes across his chest and back to indicate bullet wounds. I used modelling putty to create a bite wound on his right arm.
The final figure in the group comes from Zombies!!! 4: The End and is a zombie dog. Its right eye is almost popping out of its socket. Its main wounds are to either side of its body, with most of the flesh stripped away. It also has a bite wound at the top of its front right leg. I was able to fit it onto a 20mm diameter plastic slottabase. Not all games allow for zombie dogs but if they do this figure will make a welcome addition. I like it.
I should mention that you can buy a "Bag o'Zombies" which contains 100 of the male zombies and a "Bag o' Zombie Dogs" which contains 100 zombie dogs if you want the figures without having to buy the boardgame. These are not the best sculpted figures on the market; the faces in particular lack detail. The fact that they are made of soft plastic and that they are only 25mm in size will put off many a purchaser. I reinforced the limbs of most of the figures shown above with a thin strip of modelling putty to stop them bending and thus flaking the paint off. I do know that some gamers have used these as a cheap means to create a large zombie horde. I wouldn't go to that extreme but I did not mind using the few I have shown above to add to my primarily metal horde.

6 comments:

  1. Hi Vamp,
    I am thinking about starting a Hospital project next. I know I want it to be big, and since I managed the warehouse ok, I'm getting brave. I'm thinking of something with a ground floor footprint of about 12 squares and before starting I'd like your input. My thought was to try to bash it from the WWG Police Station as the basis and just grab bits and pieces from anything else I can find that seems to fit. Do you have any thoughts as to what buildings/kits would make a good foundation for a hospital?

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  2. The police station is an excellent starting point because of its modularity. It is certainly the building I'd choose for such a project. A lot of the office furniture in the Mayhem Police set will work just as well in your hospital. The problem comes when you want to furnish wards and operating theatres. Shellendrak Manor has some useful "torture" furniture that you can see if you check out my semi-detached houses review. I'm not overly familiar with some of the WWG sci-fi spaceship models like First Light or Celestus Prime, for example. They might well have med-bays from which you could scrounge some useful furniture items. I would also recommend looking at the Ebbles Cryostasis Pod set from the Ambient Elements sets. Even if you don't use the cryostasis chambers, which may look a bit too futuristic there are some really nice medical cupboards and monitors that you get with that set. I've got all four Ambient Elements sets and they do fit in well with WWG's stuff. Both companies support each other a lot, so don't feel guilty about using their stuff.
    The Mayhem Police set tiles are either 6" by 6" or 6" by 3" or 3" by 3". This means they don't fit in with the 7" by 7" footprints of many of the older sets. I presume when you said your hospital was going to have a 12 square footprint it was the standard 7" by 7" squares you were talking about? Either way, this is going to be a massive project. I'm kind of jealous of you but I admire your ambition!
    One thing that I would definitely recommend you do before printing anything out is to plan out your building beforehand. It doesn't have to be to professional architect's standards - a simple plan on a piece of graph paper showing where the walls and doors will go and what each room represents will suffice.
    I hope that helps for now and feel free to ask me for any more advice if you need it. I wish you all the best with your project. It is something I hope to follow with keen interest.

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  3. Thanks Vamp. You surmised everything perfectly.
    I'm going to have a trip over to Ebbles and take a look see and then do as you suggested about making a floor plan. Maybe I will print some sections and see how the rooms "feel" with the supplied sizes and then I can decide if I want to patch em for custom lengths. On my warehouse I cut a couple of strips of exterior and interior walls and glued them over the mating seams of walls end to end and they made a very strong long wall section. I may try this trick again. I like the large buildings, you can pretty much have an entire encounter in one building.

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  4. This looks awesome! Bryan, Can you email me at sales@rebelminis.com when you get a sec? I have a question.

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  5. E-mail sent, Mike.
    Willy, if you want to e-mail me you can contact me at vampifan@talktalk.net

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  6. Thanks Vamp, I'll be buggin ya soon. I'm gonna disappear for a couple of days because of the Con we have in town but I should have some great Batreps for you starting Sunday!

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