Vampifan's Views 35 - Monthly Musings 19

Vampirella by Mike Deodato. Snakes don't bother her!

February has been a very busy month for me, especially with all of the card modelling I have done. I have been churning out new ground tiles to use in my ATZ-FFO campaign from Stoelzel's Undeveloped Real Estate set, which I told you about in my last Monthly Musings. I am going to do a full review of what I have made so far in the next couple of weeks. Suffice to say, I am very happy with my new ground tiles and I can't wait to use them in a batrep. Carl's new ground tiles are the best on the market and I highly recommend them.
Speaking of bat-reps, you will be pleased to hear that I will be continuing my ATZ-FFO campaign in March as Team Vampifan ventures out on its first foray into the suburb of Springvale since the outbreak began. Vampifan will be leading Angie, Big Sil and Gap for the first time in my new campaign. Expect a batrep around about the middle of the month.
In other news, Ryan, who was one of the very first followers of my blog, kindly informed me that there was a copy of the Zombicide board-game going for sale on e-Bay for just £60.00 and that all of the figures were painted. Seeing as the seller resided in the UK, I placed the first bid. I never expected to win the auction even though it still had one day to run. Sure enough, I didn't. Five other bidders popped up and it eventually sold for £85.00, which was way too much for me. To be honest, I wasn't bothered at losing out for two reasons. First up, the figures were not well painted and I'd have had to do a lot of work on them to bring them up to my standard.

At last I have a copy. It's been a long wait.

Secondly, Ryan also told me that Amazon UK were selling it. They were asking £68.99 for it, which I didn't think was too bad. They had a lot in stock so I placed an order last Friday and three days later, it arrived. Zombicide is a game that I have wanted to own ever since I first saw it promoted on Kickstarter last year. I deliberately held off from making a pledge for it as I didn't want to get hammered by the thieving bastards at the UK's Customs and Excises. I've been ripped off by them before and it leaves a nasty taste in the mouth, knowing you have to pay up. So I have bided my time until a UK retailer turned up. Thank you, Amazon! So I now have a brand new copy and I have another 71 figures (65 zombies and 6 survivors) to add to my unpainted plastic figures mountain. They are very nicely sculpted and seeing as they are made of hard plastic, they will paint up very well. What I most like about the game is that it caters for the solo gamer. Yay! Hopefully, I'll be able to find the time to play a few games this month, just to get the hang of the rules. Mind you, having read the rulebook, it does seem very easy to play. If you want to see what some of the zombies look like painted up check out Lord Siwoc's blog Brains and Guts here - http://lordsiwoc.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/zombies-dumpster-diving-and-good-deal.html Johnny, I'll be copying your colour schemes for some of my zombies!
Earlier this month, I bought the 16 new supermarket zombies from Grekwood Miniatures, along with a pack of 25 deciduous trees. I have decided that I want more trees in my zombie campaign and more variety of trees. So Carl at Grekwood can expect more orders for trees from me, as he carries a nice variety of them and they are reasonably priced. Having used some of my old Games Workshop trees (now withdrawn from sale - why am I not surprised?!) in previous bat-reps I found that the biggest problem with using them was that they fell over far too easily. I got round this by using Blu-tac on their bases but this was a solution I was never happy with as there was always a risk that the Blu-tac would tear the ground tile when I tried to remove it. In fact, this happened on a few occasions. The Grekwood trees are on even smaller bases than the GW ones. My new solution is to stick them permanently to circular bases. To this end, I ordered a selection of varying diameter MDF bases from East Riding Miniatures. These range from 30mm to 80mm diameter. Next month I will glue all of my trees to these bases. I am hoping the large bases will prevent the trees from falling over if I even cough on them! Well, it'll make a change from painting miniature figures.
It looks like March is going to be a busy month for me!