Zomtober week 4 - this joke’s getting laaaaaame

 Week 4 of Zomtober 2026 brings the final pair of jazzed up Mordheim zombies:

More outstretched arms meaning they’re difficult to rank up in actual Warhammer, and one guy holding a big bone I think because there are only a limited number of those selfsame outstretched arms.

Finishing this pair means that I’ve actually got enough for a unit in Eighth Edition Warhammer, when you add them to previous years Zomtober submissions:

‘Enough’ admittedly being quite subjective when it comes to units of zombies, as more is presumably preferred when they’re basically just ablative armour for a Necromancer rather than a credible threat.

As previously alluded to, I was hoping to do more than just my Mordheim zombies this Zomtober - and just squeaked in ahead of the deadline, finishing of this pair of converted walking corpses for Warriors of Athena:

You can tell that these were finished at a different time to the Mordheim zombies, as the natural light is very much storm-tinged as opposed to the actual sunshine used to take the Mordheim pictures! 

These were a pair of Greek slingers that got made undead via the careful application of some heads and arms from the Wargames Atlantic zombie sprue - I love this sprue for conversions, even though I’ve still yet to build a complete miniature from it. I have some slight regrets about using the body on the left for this conversion though, as look at his little booties! They would have been perfect for a companion for my Hero, but that’s just how it goes sometimes.

These were mostly painted in a Premier Inn in Bexleyheath, as staying away overnight for work seems to be the best way to get myself focused to do some painting (and only having brought a limited number of things with me helps with that too). On the other hand, more would have been done if I’d remembered to bring my medium sized workhorse brush, but I was able to make do with what I had with me.

Finishing these brings the Tally to:

62 vs 312 = -250

Also, absolutely ages ago I painted a tiny burned out campfire (that I think originally came with the Renedra tents set) that I haven’t gotten around to taking a picture of until now, so here that is too:

Stupid zombies, not realising that the fire has gone out. Annoyingly, last week we picked up our family D&D game again, where the party got ambushed while they slept, and I could not for the life of me remember where I’d put this… ah well, I’m sure they’ll get ambushed again sooner or later…

Zomtober 2026 week 3 - the name of the gaaaaaaaaame

 Another Sunday means another pair of zombies for Zomtober:

Not much to add that hasn’t already been said in previous posts, these were built and painted for Mordheim by my teenage self, and have now finally been finished and had their eyes painted in.

Finishing this pair brings the Tally up to:

58 vs 296 = -238

Or it would have done, if I hadn’t split a set of Victrix foot knights with a pal, so actually finished the week at:

58 vs 312 = -254

Unfortunately, my plans to do something additional this Zomtober have stalled a little - I did the conversions, primed them and base coated the flesh, but between being busy, tired, and generally distracted by converting miniatures for a Black Death City warband that’s all I’ve managed and now we’re only a week away from the final deadline!

Zomtober 2026 week 2 - more of the saaaaaaame

Another Sunday in Zomtober, another pair of Mordheim zombies spruced up after twenty-something years:

I know, I know, removing the head kills the zombie in most fictions, but to reiterate I built these when I was but a teen, and the idea of a zombie fumbling around looking for it’s missing head was (and still is) funny to me.

These sculpts are a bit of an odd duck - there’s some lovely details on there, like the back and ribs of the chap on the right, but they’re also kind of clunky (as was the style at the time) and the arms connect via a tiny ball and socket joint, which looks a little odd. Not so odd that I won’t add them to the horde though, which brings the tally to:

56 vs 296 = -240

What’s next? Well, I’m currently building a warband for Black Death City, and have something for yet another game on my painting tile, as well as the next batch of zombies, so who knows…

[question]: May I kill them now sir?

While I haven’t been chugging away painting zombies for Zomtober, I’ve also been working my way round some other odds and ends on my painting tile, the most recent of which is this sassy droid:

I mean, technically he was finished before the most recently posted zombies, but they got bumped up the posting queue due to the Zomtober Sunday deadline!

For those of you that haven’t played Knights of the Old Republic, HK-47 is hands down the best droid in all Star Wars media, a sassy assassin that refers to organics as meat bags, and so I figured an HK series droid would be perfect for some Star Wars Stargrave action. Yeah he’s technically thousands of years old by the time of the Jedi Purge, it still works.

Being a bendy WOTC mini, some of the detail was a little shallow, but some very careful panel lining made the details look a lot more defined, before I went crazy weathering him up to make him look like he’s been through the (star) wars.

Finishing him brings the Tally up to:

54 vs 296 = -242

What’s next? More zombies, hopefully!

Zomtober 2026 Week 1 - Braaaaaaains

Unbelievably, it’s October again already. As happens every year, I suddenly realised this fact right at the end of September, and so had to scrabble to get something ready for Zomtober. I was tempted by another themed month as I have occasionally done previously, but struggled to find one that I liked and was also manageable in the time I had. I’ve got over a hundred painted modern zombies already, so that wasn’t particularly inspiring for me, although very doable due to just being a case of plucking minis out of the lead mountain to paint; on the other hand my various other plans like making some flower/fungus infested zombies inspired by Hell’s Paradise for Ronin of Shadow Deep would require a lot more time consuming conversion work, and weren’t something I really wanted to rush, so they were out of the running too, as was a brief dalliance with the temptation to make some zombie Stormtroopers…

So I went digging through various drawers and boxes looking for inspiration, and in a box of bits that I used to make some Zombieslayer inspired conversions back in 2023 I found the zombies that I built and painted for Mordheim when I was 18 or so, and figured I could paint them to add to my raggedy Warhammer Fantasy zombie unit. And here are the first two:

These were built with Mordheim in mind, so I gave very little thought to whether or not they would rank up neatly or not, instead going for as many classic zombie movie arms outstretched while groaning braaaaaaaaaains poses as was humanly possible.

These were painted some twenty years ago, potentially with one thin coat of those little starter set tester pots of paint you used to get over a white basecoat, which is not in fact my style at all these days. Somewhat disappointingly though, slapping a dirty wash over the whole lot and then a light drybrush closed the gap between my painting then and painting now a lot quicker than I’d like to admit! Once that was done, some colours looked fairly good as they were (being basically an accidental slap chop paint job) and only needed a little bit more painting to tart them up, whereas others like the red shirt of the chap on the left I had to re-paint the layers of much more thoroughly to get it to where I was happy with it.

Then it was a case of adding some weathering and a fresh coat of blood, painting the eyes and they were good to go.

Speaking of the chap on the left in the red shirt, he’s had… quite a day. Here are how the minis looked last night having had some grass added to their bases while I was supposed to be writing a shopping list:

And here is how they looked this morning after breakfast, when it turns out my son knocked a tardis display case over onto them:

Most of the batch were fine, but this particular chap got the worst of it:

Some very careful superglueing and a sneaky touch up of paint to hide the joins and he was back on his feet though. 

Finishing this first pair brings the Tally To:

53 vs 296 = -243

I did say that this was chosen as that manageable option in the time that I have, so at the very least I aim to post a pair of these zombies every Sunday, but of course I also got excited and have already got something else on the go, so here’s to hoping I can finish that in time.

Speaking of getting excited, the launch of Black Death City came to my attention in our Salute trip group chat, so I’m currently musing over the idea of making a warband of knights that are hideously sick with the plague and cursed by demons but through hubris believe that they are actually protected by their faith and doing the Lord’s work, and I already have a mini that I could use for that as a starting point… no

Alien ruffians you say?

So, those of you that read what I put on the internet might have heard me proclaim that my project for the year was going to be Firefly Stargrave. In a shocking twist of fate, I have become side-tracked, and had a real hankering for Star Wars. I think it was the announcement of the video game Zero Company that did it; for a couple of years now I’ve been a bit burnt out on Star Wars, but I’ve found a new enthusiasm for it and shown the kids episodes 1-5 so far, as well as digging in to the Bad Batch series. 

When it comes to the tabletop, I’m still enthused about my Firefly plans, but realistically I need to paint a lot more before I could even get that to the table, whereas for Star Wars I’ve already got a chunk of painted miniatures ready to go - that’s not to say it’s easy though, as for any fantasy projects I might be inspired to start I already have a collection of scenery, generic monsters and whatnot that can be pressed into service, but for SF I’ll need to get building and painting…

Way back when, I painted up some generic Star Wars ruffians with a vague plan to run the Star Wars RPG - that never happened, but for this project they’ll make ideal ruffians for Stargrave. I could always do with more though, so I painted this Klatooinian Enforcer to add to their numbers.

I’ve been struggling with painting batches of minis at the moment, so figured that it would be more sensible to add a single mini at a time rather than prepping a whole load of them - and look, here I am posting a finished mini! I think I’ll carry on adding a mini here and there as a little pallete cleanser every now and then - although obviously, I’ve gotten inspired with an idea for a little narrative campaign that is going to require me to… paint batches of miniatures. The more we learn the less we learn, I guess. 

Before we get to the Tally I’ve also received some minis, as I had some birthday money burning a hole in my pocket, and so picked up this lot on eBay:

Seeing other people convert crossbowmen rather than paying top dollar for official minis made me realise that I need to break the years of subconscious GW conditioning to only use ‘official’ miniatures, so I searched for a bunch of damaged minis to kickstart my conversion inspiration. Admittedly, it didn’t hurt that this lot also included some crossbowmen, berserkers and a banner bearer, but I think my good intentions still stand. 

As well as these, I grabbed the most recent (and final) free mini of the months from GW, which brings the Tally to:

51 vs 296 = -245

Speaking of birthdays, I also got these Alamo sourcebooks as my hyperfixation has swung round that way again:

Not that you’d know it from reading this blog, as I’ve only finished painting a single test miniature for this project, but let me tell you the amount of time I spend thinking about the Alamo is way above average…

What else is going on? I’ve got some batches of minis on the painting tile for Warriors of Athena that I hope that I can force my attention on to soon - with the plastic heroes box potentially being released soon, that might be the impetus I need to get my boys day booked in (where a couple of us get together to roll up warbands, then build them while watching Jason and the Argonauts) that we’ve been trying to schedule since February; more Star Wars (although admittedly this might need to wait until the next Stargrave expansion comes out); or maybe I’ll finish the half-painted William Travis mini that’s been sat in the queue for who knows how long? 

And on the other hand, we’ve just started a new family D&D campaign with our neighbour and some of his children, so I need a mini for my fairy monk:

Happily, I’ve been able to sort minis for my entire family out of things I already own, thus justifying the boxes and boxes of minis…

The second session is scheduled for later today, so we had a quick family painting session yesterday afternoon:

This taken just before I attempted painting abs on a mini the size of my fingernail…

Look at me - look at the orc

I’ve finally knocked off one of the groups of minis that has been cluttering up my painting tile for far too long:

It’s a selection of orcs and half-orcs that I need for as and when we re-start the family D&D game. The party have fought them unpainted several times, so I figured that as they were likely going to put an end to their activities in the area I should probably get them painted so that they could hit the table finished at least once. However, I’ve been having some difficulty getting any painting done of late, so this took far longer than I had originally intended…

First of all we have the half-orcs, shape-changing leaders of the group:

They started off life as Mage Knight Orcish Builders if I recall correctly - they had a hammer in their hand, but I snipped that off and made them a bone/antler punch dagger out of some bits box odds and ends (I think potentially from Warhammer Wood Elf Dryad bits) and they look the part.

I know, I know, technically half-orcs should surely look less orcish than their fellows rather than more, but I like the feral look of them leaping forwards on their clenched fist so I’m sticking with them.

Next come the more standard orcs, who came from a pair of Oathmark orc sprues. First of all, we have a leader and shaman looking pair:

The leader is stock, while the shaman was mostly cunning use of stock pieces decorated with doodads from Frostgrave sprues to gussy him up. His (slightly wonky) staff is a cut down standard, for example, while his other arm making some sort of cruel magical symbol is actually just a repurposed archer arm.

You can hopefully just make out that the edge of his clothing is decorated with a repeated pattern of three lightning bolts, the symbol of Talos, the cruel god that these orcs worship. His sleeves got a less meaningful pattern of dots and lines, as I just wanted something there to make him look a little more fancy, much the same reason as to why I gave the leader stripy trousers.

The rest of the band is made up of regular orcs, equipped with a smattering of spears and hand weapons:

I didn’t give any of them shields, mostly just because as when I built them I wasn’t thinking about using them for LoTR as I am now. In hindsight as well, I used the same body on the two spearmen, which is a bit of an odd coincidence. 

Finishing these brings the tally to:

50 vs 245 = -195

So now it’s on to finish the other batch of miniatures on the painting tile, which would mean I had pretty much everything I would need to run the first two scenarios for Warriors of Athena and oh no what’s that it’s my birthday tomorrow where I’ll hopefully receive Star Wars Zero Company, a game the anticipation for which has reignited my excitement for Star Wars? I’ve shown my children Episodes 1-3 in the last week, and some other minis may have made their way across the cutting board…