Vampifan's Views 23 - Monthly Musings 09

Vampirella by Boris Valejo - oh so sexy!

It's the end of the month, so that means it's time for another of my Monthly Musings. It's been a busy month for me. The highlight of this month was getting to meet Joe aka Zabadak for the first time. Meeting any of my followers and/or fellow bloggers is such a rare event that it can't go unreported! We spent a good afternoon in Newcastle city centre chatting about loads of gaming-related stuff. The weather could have been kinder and our trip to Poundland was disappointing as neither of us found anything worth buying. Still, I scored at Travelling Man Games, where I bought two GURPS supplements - Mass Combat and Tactical Shooting. With Joe and I living so close to one another and having so much in common, a meeting was inevitable and I'm very glad we finally managed it. Joe's definitely one of the good guys and despite his age (incredibly, he's older than me!) and far from perfect health, he was very enthusiastic about zombie gaming. Hopefully, we'll meet again in the near future.
My painting and modelling projects are progressing nicely. Currently on my painting desk are the first 25 of my 100 Victory Force 28mm scale zombies. I finally decided it was about time I painted them. I'll paint them in four batches of 25, but I suspect I won't get them finished before VF releases Zombie Horde II, another 100 figures. When I buy that second lot, I won't be far from my goal of 1,000 zombie miniatures.

Ainstey Wrecked School Bus. Photo from their website.

I am also painting three Ainstey Castings 28mm scale resin vehicles that I bought in their recent Easter sale. I bought two sets of tyre walls, an armoured pick-up truck, a wrecked car and a wrecked school bus. The pick of this bunch is undoubtedly the wrecked school bus. I "borrowed" this photo of it from the Ainstey website to let you see just how impressive it is. What the photo doesn't show is just how big it is. The base measures 9" by 3" so no wonder it is selling for £20.00, although I got it for £16.00 in their sale. It comes with separate boards to fit to the roof as well as wooden panels to cover some of the windows, but I'm thinking of leaving them off. They may come in useful for other projects I have in mind.
Speaking of resin cast vehicles, last month I ordered a wrecked sports car and two Scooby Doo Mystery Machine vans from Armorcast. The reason for buying two vans was to give one to Joe as a surprise present. He was really bowled over by it, especially as I painted it for him. I'll post a review of the van and the wrecked sports car soon. I'm very pleased with them both and they will see use in my ATZ campaign.

On the card modelling front, I'm still working on my WWG 28mm scale Mayhem Junkyard set. I finished making the garage, which you may have seen when I posted photos of my man cave in my last Monthly Musings. Since then, I've been working on props from the set, and I've just about finished them. There are six vehicles included in the set and I'll probably make them next. Those of you who lurk on the Board of the Living Lead forum here will have seen that I was quite excited by another of my recent purchases - the Stoelzel's Structures 28mm scale Carnie Ville card model set. Basically, it is a collection circus tents with lots of accessories. It is something I have been after for quite a few years now. I have a large range of 28mm scale circus figures, not just clowns, although my clown population is growing alarmingly fast. Followers of my ATZ campaign will be well aware of the tragedy that befell Team Vampifan when they encountered Sunny and his gang of Killer Klowns. A rematch was always on the cards but I was never sure where it would take place. Now I have the ideal location. The Killer Klowns have a place they can call home, sweet home. Yeah right, it'll be a freaking death trap! Making the circus shouldn't be too difficult and construction of it is high on my list of things to make.
The book that I'm currently reading is Assassin's Code by Jonathan Maberry. This is book 4 of the Joe Ledger series and it appears to feature vampires as the bad guys. I've enjoyed the previous three books in this series and I'm thoroughly enjoying this one. Other books I've read recently was the novel, Outpost by Adam Baker. It was quite good but I'd describe it more of a sci-fi novel than a horror novel as the zombies featured within appear to originate from nanobots, as they become a fusion of flesh and metal. It's not your traditional zombie novel, although the setting in the Arctic circle is very interesting. I recently bought THW's 5150: New Beginnings sci-fi rulebook and was rather disappointed with it. It does have some good ideas in it but not enough for my liking. A shame, as I usually like anything that THW produce. Another book that I've read recently is War Against The Walking Dead by Sean T. Page. I don't want to say much about it here as I'll be posting a full review of it on Wednesday. However, it did get me thinking. Let me leave you with a question, which is related to Sean's book - how do you expect your zombie apocalypse campaign to end? It doesn't matter what rules you're using as this applies universally. I'll be discussing this question in greater detail in my next post.