WWG Kennels

You could say that my last post was a load of rubbish and that this time I've gone to the dogs! LOL! As I continue my reviews of WWG 30mm scale street scenery I'm going to show you something that I've never used before in a batrep, even though I made them last year. They are a pair of kennels. The design of them is identical, only the colour scheme is different.

To give some sort of scale I've included a couple of miniatures of dogs in the photos. The black and white border collie came from the Studio Miniatures' set - Dorothy and her Gang and represents Dorothy's dog, Toto. The gore covered black dog is one of the cheap plastic zombie dogs made by Twilight Creations Inc. for their Zombies!!! game. The entrance to the kennels was just meant to be part of the front wall and was printed in black. That would be good enough for most people but remember my mission statement to always go the extra mile in card modelling! I printed out two sets of kennels and I cut out the front entrance of them both. If you want to copy my idea, make sure you have a sharp blade and preferably attached to a circular body. The circular body gives you greater control when cutting out rounded bits like the top of the kennel entrance.

The photo above shows the kennels from the rear and you can see that they are a very simple model to make, consisting of nothing more than four walls and a sloped roof. I deliberately left the floor off, which on the actual model is just a square of white paper that shouldn't be seen. Its purpose is to add stability to the model.

In this photo above you can see why I don't need a floor. Just look at how thick my walls (and roof) are. This is the advantage of sticking the photo paper cutout to mounting board. The interiors are just the external walls and roof but with reverse folds. Because of the thickness of the mounting board they had to be trimmed a bit to fit in but that was no major challenge. In real life kennels don't come with a floor so mine don't either.
You can find these two kennels in the old-style Mayhem Junkyard set. I'm not sure when I'll use them in my ATZ campaign but it's surely only a matter of time.

Corpses 02

And so I move on to part 2 of my look at figures of corpses to populate your board with when playing a zombie apocalypse game. Last time I looked at some of the commercially available figures, which sadly, weren't too many. This time, I'm going to show you the 10 figures that I have converted.

The first four figures on the top are very old Citadel Miatures 25mm scale zombie corpses. These came out in the early 1980s at about the same time as the two Citadel gangster corpses that I reviewed in part 1. The figure at the far left is as close to the original figure that I have. I only made one minor modification to him; after turning his head to face to the right, I sliced the top of his skull off so that it is hanging on by a slight piece of skin. The brains spilling out were sculpted by me using Millput modelling putty. To use a term from ATZ, he is Obviously Dead! No zombie could survive a head wound like that.
What I particularly liked about these figures is that they were made of soft metal (probably lead), which made them very easy to convert. Note how I have bent the left leg and left arm of the second corpse into new poses. Using Milliput again, I extended the left leg of his trousers, added socks and shoes and gave him a polo-necked jumper, to which I added a line of bullet holes, indicating he'd been shot by some kind of automatic weapon, like an SMG or assault rifle. The head has also been repositioned.
The third Citadel corpse has had a tattered shirt added, along with a pair of trainers on his feet. He was killed by a head shot to the right eye. In hindsight, I wish I had bought a lot more of these figures. They were a converter's dream!
The fourth and final Citadel corpse has had a tattered T-shirt added, as well as a sock and shoe put on his right foot. I cut his head off and glued it back on in a different position, so that it faced to his left. I also cut off most of his left arm and added Milliput to better define the stump. This corpse has had half of his face and neck chewed off.
The last figure in the top row of my photo is one that should be readily available to everyone. He is a conversion of one of the 25mm scale zombies from the Twilight Creations Inc. plastic figures from their Zombies!!! game. I cut his base and right foot off. He seemed to work best as a corpse by lying face down. So I cut off his right arm and remodelled it with modelling putty. In addition, I used Milliput to cover his torso on the front so that he lay flat without a gap appearing beneath him. Finally, I drilled a hole in his head to show how he died. It sounds like a lot of work, but it wasn't and it was a very easy conversion to do. Seeing as I have so many of this figure, I'll probably make more corpses out of them. Being made of soft plastic, it is so easy to cut bits off him to make unique corpses.
Moving on to the lower row, all five figures are conversions of Horrorclix 35mm scale figures. All are from the original set and apart from the last figure in line, all are converted zombies. At the far left is the Zombie Lawyer and he was, without doubt, harder to convert than any of the others! The problem is his basic pose is leaning forward with his arms stretched out, which makes it difficult to get him lying flat. I managed it by doing a lot of cutting and remodelling with Milliput. This is a conversion for experienced modellers only.
The Zombie Cop was much easier to convert. I cut off his head and arms and repositioned them. I also cut his back and buttocks, so that he lay flat. Any gaps in the arm and head joins were filled in with Milliput.
For the Shambling Zombie, I cut off the arm he was carrying in his right hand and removed his left foot. His head, right arm and right leg were cut off and repositioned. Once again, any gaps at the joins were filled in with Milliput. He was harder to convert than the cop but easier than the lawyer.
The Sorority Zombie was a doddle to convert. Her pose is very flat to begin with, so I didn't have to reposition any body parts. I drilled a small hole in the left side of her temple and drilled and modelled a massive exit wound on the right side of her head.
Finally, is the one Horrorclix conversion not based on a zombie figure. This figure began life as a Ghostfinder (not to be confused with Ghostbusters!). I cut a V-shaped notch at the back of his knee on his left leg and filled in the gap with Milliput. I cut off his left arm and resculpted it, so that it was tucked under his body, clutching his stomach. I removed the scanning device from his right hand. Finally, I drilled a small hole in his forehead and a large exit wound in the back of his head.
The Citadel zombies and the Twilight Creations Inc. zombie are a bit on the small size but are usable as teenagers or small adults. On the other hand, the Horrorclix figures are definitely oversized, but what the heck? They were all fun to convert and I'll certainly be converting more corpses and possibly sculpting some of my own.

Twilight Creations Inc. Zombies

Twilight Creations Inc. ought to be well known to fans of zombie games as they produced a very successful boardgame called Zombies!!! along with numerous expansion sets. I've played Zombies!!! and a few of the expansions and they are what we call "beer and pretzels" games, meaning they are fun to play if you are limited in time and don't want to stretch your brain cells too much. This is not meant to be a review of the game(s) but a look at some of the figures that are provided with the games.

First thing to note is their size. These are only 25mm tall, making them quite small when compared with 28mm scale metal figures. Readers of my blog will be well aware that I am not a scale snob. I wanted to add some of these plastic figures to my zombie horde, so I just reasoned that the four humans shown above in my photos were young teenagers, not yet fully grown. If you go with that rationale, they fit in well.

At the far left is one of the standard male zombies that you get with the starter set. He is dressed in track suit, trainers and baseball cap, which I have painted in a Burberry pattern to make him a young "chav" - an obnoxious breed of youths that infest many deprived areas and sink estates in the UK. He has a massive wound in his stomach - you can see daylight through it! His right arm and right ankle have been bitten. As far as the sculpting goes, he is very average, with surface detail notable by its absence.

Next to him is a conversion of the same figure. I've repositioned his head and left arm. Now that the left arm is hanging down by his side it appears to be longer than his right arm! I filled in the hole in his back but added a spool of intestines spilling out off his stomach. I added modelling putty to his right arm and lower right leg, but shifted the location of the two bites there slightly by moving them further up the limbs. He too is painted in the traditional colours of a "chav."

In the centre of the group is a female zombie, who also comes with the original boxed set. When Zombies!!! was first released you only got male zombies with it but now you get a mixture of male and female zeds. She is a much better sculpt than the male zombie. Her dress has been badly torn and she has bite wounds to both legs and her right arm. There is also a wound to her back that may have been caused by a bullet. She holds a severed head in her left hand, which interestingly wears glasses.
The fourth zombie human in the group comes from the expansion set called Humans!!! and he is one of the humans. However, because he is running I have painted him up as a rage zombie like those seen in 28 Days Later. I used a pin vice to drill a line of holes across his chest and back to indicate bullet wounds. I used modelling putty to create a bite wound on his right arm.
The final figure in the group comes from Zombies!!! 4: The End and is a zombie dog. Its right eye is almost popping out of its socket. Its main wounds are to either side of its body, with most of the flesh stripped away. It also has a bite wound at the top of its front right leg. I was able to fit it onto a 20mm diameter plastic slottabase. Not all games allow for zombie dogs but if they do this figure will make a welcome addition. I like it.
I should mention that you can buy a "Bag o'Zombies" which contains 100 of the male zombies and a "Bag o' Zombie Dogs" which contains 100 zombie dogs if you want the figures without having to buy the boardgame. These are not the best sculpted figures on the market; the faces in particular lack detail. The fact that they are made of soft plastic and that they are only 25mm in size will put off many a purchaser. I reinforced the limbs of most of the figures shown above with a thin strip of modelling putty to stop them bending and thus flaking the paint off. I do know that some gamers have used these as a cheap means to create a large zombie horde. I wouldn't go to that extreme but I did not mind using the few I have shown above to add to my primarily metal horde.