Red Box Games Zombies

One of my followers advised me to check out a bunch of zombie figures on the Red Box Games (RBG) webstore. I hadn't seen them before. All I knew about RBG is that they made high quality sculpts of fantasy figures. As soon as I saw their Lesser Undead set of 9 zombies I was smitten. I sent away for them and here they are, along with a fantasy female that I liked the look of. All 10 figures can be found in the Infernals range on RBG's website.

The female chaos warrior/demoness is called Zyvara Helsmaiden and I was attracted to her by her similarity to one of my comic book heroines, Lady Death. I wanted to paint her up as Lady Death until I saw her in the flesh (no pun intended) and realised that her breasts were too small (Lady Death has quite a spectacular rack!) and that her hair would need some remodelling. I know nothing about the universe these figures are meant to populate, hence my uncertainty about whether she is a chaos warrior or a demoness. Her horns could be natural or they could be part of her crown. Her flesh tones are Foundry Tan 14, which contrasts well with her dark blue costume. I tried to paint her sword with a lightning effect pattern, to show it is a magical sword. I'm not sure if I was wholly successful but it works for me. She is superbly sculpted and is the first true fantasy figure I have painted in many years.

The four zombies accompanying Zyvara have a really emaciated look to them. All are bald-headed and appear to be male. What struck me when I saw these zombies is that they look to be in agony, as if being undead is a painful curse. These are no ordinary-looking zombies.
The zombie in the beige gown has been bitten in the right arm. I suppose he could be a she - it's hard to tell. His/her head is bent far back and leans to the left.
Next in line, this zombie has lost a boot. He also has his head thrown back as he looks skywards. He has bite wounds to his right wrist and both legs. The blood around his mouth and neck has come from a victim he has fed upon.
Moving on, the zombie second from the left is in a similar pose but his legs are spread wider and his back is arched even further to allow his head to stretch even further back. You can only imagine the pain he must be in.
Last in line, this zombie looks like his neck has been snapped as his head has dropped to an unnatural angle upon his right shoulder. Was he strangled or has he been hung? His knees are bloody.

I decided to paint the zombie at the far left of this group in hospital clothing, with a gown and pyjama trousers. His left hand is pressed into a deep wound in his stomach.
To his left is a zombie staggering along whilst bent over in agony. The bones of his spine are very prominent.
I'm guessing that the zombie in the centre of the group is female, purely because she is wearing a long skirt. She has a boot on her right foot but nothing on her left foot. Her pose is very similar to the previous zombie. She has a cut to the side of her head and a few other minor-looking wounds.

Fourth in line is a zombie leaning forward as he advances. He has had a big chunk of flesh bitten off his left cheek.
Finally, is a zombie in a near identical pose to the last one. What really differentiates this one is that his right eyeball is dangling down the side of his face from its socket. Gross but cool!
These really are exquisitely sculpted by Tre Manor. They may have been produced with the fantasy gamer in mind but they will work equally well in a contemporary setting. I should note that the figures come supplied with 20mm diameter slottabases. I replaced them with my standard 25mm diameter slottabases that use on the vast majority of my figures. Another point that I'd like to make regards their size. These are true 28mm scale figures. This means that some figure ranges will dwarf them (Citadel, Horrorclix, RAFM, etc.) but they will fit in well with most 28mm scale figure lines.
The Lesser Undead set costs $17.99 for the nine figures, roughly $2.00 per figure. If you are interested in purchasing the Zyvara Helsmaiden figure (and I doubt if many will) she is a lot more expensive, costing a whopping $8.99. I highly recommend the zombie figures.

Armorcast Road Kill Animals

When I posted July's Monthly Musings post I mentioned that I was painting some figures whose identity I wanted to keep a secret. Well, the secret can now be revealed. These six unique figures are from the Armorcast 28mm scale ACM001 Road Kill set.

As soon as I saw these on the Armorcast webstore, I knew I had to have them. They just appeal to my sick nature! I have arranged them alphabetically, so from left to right are an armadillo, a coyote, a jack rabbit, a raccoon, a rattlesnake and a skunk. When it came to painting them I could have easily copied the colour schemes from the Armorcast webstore. However, I was bit suspicious of the accuracy of their paint schemes when I saw the rattlesnake painted green. So I did some research using Google Images and all of my colour schemes are based on real life photos of the various animals and are thus accurate representations. I am very happy with how they have turned out.
As for using them in games, these are like any other piece of street furniture or corpses. They aren't an essential purchase but they will undoubtedly add to the ambience of your gaming board. I would not recommend using all six on the same gaming board. One, or at most two, will work best. But you can ring the changes from game to game. I am often complimented on the corpses that litter my game boards when I run my batreps. Now I can (and will) add a bit of variety to the human corpses.
My only criticism of them is that they are rather limited for use in the USA. It is, I must admit, a very minor criticism. If you wanted to use them here in the UK, the coyote could be repainted as an Alsatian dog, the jackrabbit as a hare, the rattlesnake as an adder if you cut off its rattle, and the skunk as a squirrel. You could only justify the inclusion of the armadillo and the raccoon if they had escaped from a local zoo.
I'd like to see a second set made up of domestic pets - a cat, three dogs (small, medium and large), a hamster and a rabbit.
As I said, these are not an essential purchase, but my god, they are a lot of fun! I can guarantee that if you do use them in one of your games, they will be a talking point if anyone sees them. This set costs a very reasonable $6.00.

Vampifan's Bouncers and Bodyguards

Forgive me for this vanity post but I thought you'd like to see some more of my sculpted figures and for this review I have chosen the theme of bodyguards and bouncers.

The first two figures in line are based upon a pair of 40mm scale figures from Monolith's Dystopia range. They're nice figures that were sculpted by Jim Bowen but at that size were far too big to use with 28mm scale figures. So, I made 28mm scale copies of them, although my sculpts ended up being 32mm tall. Bouncers are often taller than average so I didn't mind them being a bit overscale. They both look rather thuggish and I'm very happy with how their faces have turned out. Their brightly coloured waistcoats make them stand out from the crowd.
The flamboyant-looking gent in the middle is based on a NPC from the GURPS Supporting Cast supplement. This is Tony Zbediak, nicknamed, "The Zee." He may look small but in actuall fact he is true 28mm scale. It's the four other figures who are perhaps too big. Tony has a low IQ but a high strength, ideal qualifications for a nightclub bouncer.

The two figures at the far right of the photos are bodyguards, although they could just as easily double as bouncers. Many years ago I saw a photograph of this pair in the Daily Mirror bodyguarding some huge breasted (patently fake) blonde bimbo. I cut the photo out purely because I liked the look of the bodyguards and I knew I had to sculpt them. They are deliberately overscale because I wanted them to look intimidating and imposing. I designed the guy at the far left as a GURPS NPC and named him Sean Crawshaw. He ended up being a 300 points character, which made him more than a match for most starting characters in GURPS. They tend to be in the 100-200 points range.

I'll leave you with a photo of the Monolith Bouncers and three of my illustrations so that you can compare the figures with the photo and the portraits. By the way, who else thinks that my portrait of Sean Crawshaw looks remarkably similar to my fellow blogger, Fran aka the Angry Lurker?

Monolith 40mm scale Bouncers

Portraits done by me to use on my GURPS Character Record Sheets

Tooth and Nail by Craig DiLouie

Okay, so Tooth and Nail came out in 2010, so this is hardly an up to date review but I only recently bought it and read it. I enjoyed it so much that I thought it was worthy of a full review rather than just a mention in my Monthly Musings. What makes this zombie apocalypse novel different (but not unique) from many other books in this genre is that the heroes are all military men. Having never served in the military myself, I cannot vouch for how accurate Craig DiLouie's novel is from a purely military perspective, but it all sounds plausible and authentic to me.
The story focuses on Lieutenant Todd Bowman and his men in Charlie Company's Second Platoon. The U.S. Army had suddenly withdrawn tens of thousands of troops from the Middle East to defend their homeland against an internal threat. A plague, similar to rabies, had run out of control and infected millions. The infected became rabid and violent and soon ran amok as they spread slaughter and disease in their path. The U.S. Army were tasked with safeguarding hospitals and other vital buildings.
The story opens with Second Platoon defending the perimeter of a hospital in the city of New York. There is much confusion about why they are there, and especially about who they are defending the hospital from. All around them they can hear the sound of gunfire and screams. When the soldiers are attacked by a few of the infected some are reluctant to shoot American civilians. After all, aren't they supposed to protect their fellow countrymen?
When Bowman receives order to relocate to a school that is being used as a overspill facility to relieve the hospitals and clinics, which are rapidly becoming over full with casualties, a short journey of a few blocks becomes a dangerous trek. More and more of the infected attack the group as they make their way to their destination on foot. Once they reach the school they have to clear it of the infected to make the building safe and secure.
Elsewhere in a research facility, Dr. Valeriya Petrova is one of a small group of scientists searching for a cure to the disease. Unfortunately, the disease spreads to the building and disaster strikes.
Lieutenant Bowman discovers that the U.S. Army are suffering catastrophic losses. Contact with higher command becomes increasingly difficult due to the loss of so many personnel. Eventually, he receives new orders - travel to the research facility occupied by Dr. Petrova and lead her safely to Central Park for a helicopter evacuation. I shall say no more about the mission but by now the infected outnumber the healthy in New York.
On the whole, I thoroughly enjoyed this tense and action-packed thriller. I do have reservations about calling it a zombie novel. Some of the soldiers in the novel do call the infected "zombies" but most of them call them "Mad Dogs" or "Maddies". These "zombies" are more akin to the infected seen in the films 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later. They are all fast runners, they pass on the infection by biting and they can be killed very easily. Any wound that would be fatal to a normal human will be fatal to them. So, no head shots only in here. I must admit that this did partially dilute my enjoyment of the novel as I am not a fan of this type of "zombie". In ATZ terms, the infected would be Ragers, although a lot easier to kill - on a par with normal zombies.
What is abundantly clear is that without a clearly defined strategy for dealing with the infected, chaos rules. Thus the virus spreads far too quickly and society collapses into panic and anarchy. The breakdown in communications between Second Platoon and the rest of its Company has the feel of authenticity when no one is sure of just what is happening. Despite my concerns about this being a true zombie novel, I enjoyed it enough to give it an 8 out of 10 rating. It's worth hunting down if you haven't already bought it.

Assorted Media Figures 01

The media have a tough time reporting the news at the best of times, but in a zombie apocalypse their job becomes a whole lot harder. I thought I'd showcase my media figures in this post. In ATZ, there are three media types that you can meet - the Anchor, the Reporter and the Cameraman. All three are reperesented below.

The woman at the far left of my photo above and below has appeared twice before on my blog. The first time was when I reviewed my Frothers UK set of zombie hunters way back in February 2010. The second time was when Team Vampifan met her in an ATZ scenario called, appropriately enough, Meeting the Media. She was called Jenny Tyrell and she was a Rep:3 Reporter. I really like this figure but sadly, she is no longer available for sale. You can tell from her size when compared with the other figures in the line up just how small she is. That's not a bad thing in my opinion, as females tend to be shorter than males.
The rest of the figures shown above could also be Reporters but I think they work better as Anchors, given how smartly dressed they are. The woman in the grey dress and jacket is from EM4 Miniatures. She was originally a Grenadier figure sculpted by Mark Copplestone, but when Grenadier folded, EM4 acquired a lot of Mark's sculpts. Her beautifully coiffeured hair is outstanding.
Mark rescupted a lot of his old Grenadier figures for his Copplestone Castings' Future Wars range and you can see many similarities between the third figure in line and the second. The heads are the obvious differences. To accentuate the difference even further, I decided to paint her as an African/American. Both figures are much bigger than 28mm.

The fourth figure in line was a Ral Partha Shadowrun adventurer. I say was, because she is now long out of production. Originally, she was holding a flashlight in her left hand but I cut the head off it and with a piece of modelling putty, I converted it into a microphone. Now I use her as Lucille Carter, anchor woman for Channel 5 News.
At the far right of the group is a unique figure. Yes, she is one of my sculpts. She is based on a reporter found in the Cyber Rogues supplement of the Cyber Space RPG. I never played Cyber Space, but I did use it to cadge ideas from for my Cyberpunk 2020 campaign that I ran in the early 1990s. I liked Tanith, but a few of my players positively hated her, due to her cropping up at the most inappropriate of moments - usually at the end of a gunfight that my players had been involved in! Tanith is definitely a Reporter. In my Cyberpunk 2020 campaign she was fitted with state of the art recording implants in her eyes and ears. Nowadays, she'd just be a gutsy woman relying on her wits and street smarts. What I like most about my sculpt are her hair and her smile. What I least like about her is she is too wide. She should be slimmer.

Moving on, we come to the Cameramen and women. Once again, we start of with an OOP Frothers cameraman. He appeared alongside Jenny Tyrell in my Meeting the Media scenario for my ATZ campaign and he was a Rep:4 Cameraman called Simon McQuarrie. It is such a shame that no one has picked up the moulds for Simon and Jenny as they truly deserve to be appreciated by a wider audience.
Next to Simon is an EM4 Miniatures' Handycam Operator. He is another ex-Grenadier figure sculpted by Mark Copplestone. The logo on his back shows that he works for Channel 54.
Looking very similar to him is a Copplestone Castings' News Team member. It is basically the same figure but with a different head. Note his spectacular quiff! He works for WNS - World News Service.

The female, fourth from the left, is a RAFM figure - Paige Fox, reporter of note. Although she holds a compact camera in her hands, RAFM have got it right, she is a reporter not a camera-woman. She is the tallest figure in this group and makes a mockery of RAFM's claim that she is a 28mm scale miniature. Even so, she is nicely sculpted and I quite like her.
To the left of Paige is a figure that I converted from a Horrorclix Runaway from the basic set. I cut off her right arm holding a severed head, the knife in her left hand and her beanie hat. I resculpted her right arm and added a camera, which is slung around her neck. I also resculpted her hair. She is called Sarah Barstow and she is based on an NPC from the GURPS Illuminati supplement. She is a freelance camera-woman.
Last in line is another unique Vampifan sculpt. Meet Andy Halloran, an NPC who appeared in the GURPS Autoduel Characters supplement. He is just one of many characters that I made from that supplement. He is also a freelancer. I think he should be slightly slimmer, but other than that, I'm happy with how he's turned out, especially his video camera.
I should point out that anyone who wants to use a media team in ATZ should check out the ATZ Supplement, Haven on pages 28 and 29 for full rules on how to play them. You can even play them as part of your team, although their conditions for advancing their Rep differs from the main rules. For them, getting interviews and video footage is more important than killing zombies.
It is rather sad that out of these 11 figures only 5 are currently available for sale. You'll find the Copplestone Castings Anchor woman and Camera-man in the Future Wars set FW3 News Team and Minders, which contains five figures in total for £8.50. The EM4 pair, 0036 Female Reporter and 0037 Handycam Operator, are available separately for just £1.50 each. Finally, RAF02819 Paige Fox costs $4.95 from the RAFM webstore.