Vampifan's Views 29 - Monthly Musings 14

Vampirella by Greg Horn

This has been a busy month for me. Playtesting on the ATZ Final Fade Out rules has come to a stop, and like everyone else, I am now just waiting for the rules to be published. In my last Monthly Musings I said that I wanted to give my old ATZ Better Dead Than Zed campaign a proper send off. Well I have, and oh boy, what an ending! I played the final scenario of the campaign, called "Sunny's Revenge," last week and it was one of the shortest games of ATZ that I have ever played. It was all over in four turns! I'm saying no more about it (yeah, I know, tease!) but I will post the batrep very soon, probably next Wednesday.
The new Final Fade Out campaign will take place in an alternate universe to the BDTZ campaign. Some characters will have the same name and use the same figure as appeared in the old campaign but they will differ in many other ways. Providing that FFO is released in the next few weeks, I'd like to start my new campaign in November but we'll just have to wait and see what happens. Once I do get the rulebook there will be a lot of prep work to do.

Work continues slowly on my Stoelzel's Structures Warehouse model. On the painting front I finished painting the latest zombies and survivors from Studio Miniatures, the new zombie nurses from Grekwood Miniatures and the Victory Force armed office workers that Ernie Huff sent me a couple of months ago. I am currently painting my third batch of 25 zombies from the first Victory Force Zombie Horde. Coming up with colour schemes is the hardest part of painting civilians and zombies. Clothes catalogues and Google image searches are a big help. Just recently I made my final choice of figures for the Studio Miniatures/Indiegogo plastic zombies deal (I pledged $100) and for the Reaper/Kickstarter deal (I initially pledged $300 but ended up spending $378!). God alone knows when I'll find the time to paint that lot!

I have recently read a couple of excellent novels by Rhiannon Frater, who wrote the As The World Dies trilogy, which I rated very highly. The Last Bastion of the Living is another zombie apocalypse novel but this time set about a century in the future. This stand-alone novel is part horror, part sci-fi and part love story. I liked it a lot and I may do a full review soon. The second of her novels that I read was Pretty When She Dies, the first part of a vampire trilogy that was just superb. I can't wait for parts two (out later this year) and part three (out next year) but I'm going to have to. I am currently working my way through the Rizzoli and Isles series of crime novels by Tess Gerritsen. There are ten in the series and I'm up to volume 4. The first TV series featuring the homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and Medical Examiner Maura Isles is released on DVD towards the end of this month. I will be buying it. The stories are in a similar vein to Bones, of which I am a big fan.

I've had another good month at the cinema, with four films seen. In order of viewing they were Brave, a very funny Pixar animated comedy. Billy Connolly was in it and for me, that's usually good enough reason for me wanting to watch it. The man is a comedy genius. Zombies vs Cockneys was exactly what it says it is. There are a lot of very funny scenes in this comedy/horror that had me laughing out loud. I'll certainly be buying the DVD version when it is released. Sticking with the Cockney theme, I then saw The Sweeney and I was pleased to see that it was as good as the TV series, which I adored. My film of the year was Dredd 3D, which more than made up for the turkey that was Judge Dredd from 1996. I have been collecting the 2000AD comic since issue 1 (it is now up to issue 1802!) and Judge Dredd is one of my favourite strips and character. This film more than lived up to my expectations, which I must admit, were very high. Judge Dredd and PSI Judge Anderson were just superb, played respectively by Karl Urban and Olivia Thirlby. It was action-packed, brutal, violent and everything that a Dredd movie should be. I do hope this is the start of a major movie franchise. Tomorrow, I'm planning on going to see Resident Evil: Retribution. All praise St. Milla!

That's all for this month. Do look out for my final ATZ-BDTZ batrep in my next post. It may just surprise you!