Vampifan's Views 56 - Monthly Musings 34

Vampirella Summoning by Michael Kaluta

It has been yet another very busy month for me and I have a lot to report, so let's get on with it. I am well on the way to finishing my painting of the last 15 of the Zombicide season 1 zombies. Yay me! These have all been converted. The conversions were simple but very effective. I'll explain just what I did when I post my review of them, which should be soon.

I have made five Stoelzel's Structures 28mm scale SUVs from Carl's Auto Park set. These are the first Stoelzel's vehicles I have ever made and they fit in well with my other card vehicles. Once again, a review of them will follow very soon.
Incidentally, fans of the Stoelzel's Structures forum will know that it has been off-line for the past couple of weeks. Carl had problems with the old host but thankfully, has now found a new host and the forum is now back on-line. Currently, Carl and I are the only two members. You can check it out here -
http://stoelzelsstructures.proboards.com/
The bad news is that all of the old stuff from the previous forum is gone but looking on the bright side, the new site should be a lot more reliable. All fans of Carl's works (of which I know there are many) should join the new forum.

Studio Miniatures have launched their Kickstarter project and I have backed it at the £30.00 level but I can see me spending much more than that when/if all the stretch goals are reached. Characters from The Walking Dead TV series are prominently featured with new sculpts for Rick, Carl, Daryl and Michonne. In addition, Glenn, Maggie, Tyreese and his sister Sasha will appear, along with a couple of notable zombies from the very first episode - zombie little girl and zombie crawler. What has got me very excited about this project is that the four heroes from George A. Romero's classic Dawn of the Dead film are planned for release. As you should know, the original Dawn of the Dead is my all time favourite zombie film and I look forward to owning miniature figures of Fran, Peter, Roger and Stephen. This will be a very popular Kickstarter project. It reached its target goal within two hours of its launch! If you haven't backed it yet there is still time to do so. Here's the link to the home page of the project -
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/687110463/z-clipz-outbreak-28mm-zombie-and-survivor-miniatur

From left to right are Studio Mini's versions of Fran, Stephen, Peter and Roger from "Dawn of the Dead"

Regular readers of my blog will know of my love for GURPS and that I plan on running a GURPS Zombies campaign. Well, a couple of weeks ago I began my prep work for this new venture. I have been working on artwork to use as portraits on my PC and NPC character record sheets. I have done quite a few survivors and different types of zombies. Most of the zombies in my campaign will be of the clumsy, slow-moving, stupid variety - your standard zombie walkers. However, I will be adding some other types, but they will be both rare and few in numbers. I have worked out the stats for a standard male and female zombie walker and both cost -326 points. It's a good start but I still have loads of prep work to do so don't expect to see any action soon. This is very much a long term project but one that I am very enthusiastic about. I do love ATZ but I want more detail and more of a role-playing element from my campaign so eventually I will switch over to GURPS. Fortunately, it won't be too difficult to convert my ATZ material over to GURPS. I will certainly be using ATZ for many of my campaign ideas and scenarios.

Speaking of ATZ, there are more supplements in the pipeline. I received a preview copy of the latest supplement, "Tales of Dread" from Ed because of an idea I suggested when I reviewed "Hospital 911." I mentioned that a good idea to use this supplement without restarting an existing campaign would be to slot in some or all of the encounters as flashbacks. "Tales of Dread" can be played as either one off adventures, as part of a campaign or as flashbacks. It consists of 13 new scenarios along with new rules, which include lots more zombie types and even has an option for playing zombies as player characters. Zombie stars are just one frightening option. I haven't read all the scenarios yet but one stood out for me - Bloody Big Top. Yes, the circus is in town and not only does that mean clowns but zombie clowns and zombie circus folk. Giggles the Clown is especially mean! This supplement hasn't been released yet but it should be available soon.
I mentioned that there are more ATZ supplements due. Note the word "supplements" - plural. Ed and I have been chatting about an ATZ supplement set two to three years after the initial outbreak. According to Ed, it won't be like ATH. I can tell you that it will be called "Brand New World." Once again, Ed has sent me a preview copy of the supplement but I've been sworn to secrecy about its contents. I'll pass on more info about this product when it's due to published. Funnily enough, Ed and I share very similar views on how the zombie apocalypse will develop. Feel free to share your own views on how a zombie apocalypse may pan out. I'd love to hear your ideas.