Seeing as it’s Halloween, with most of the group bedridden it seemed appropriate that the 3 remaining members should get a suitably spooky scenario, so I decided to play the scenario ‘From Dusk until Dawn’ from the Seasons book. While out hunting for medicine, the group have holed up for the night in a lockup with a pair of survivors that they just met (I rolled up random equipment for a pair of generic survivors to take the total levels up to 20 to match the scenario suggested levels), which looked something like this:
Tuesday 31 October 2023
Last Days Seasons campaign: October
Sunday 29 October 2023
Zomtober 2023 Week 5
And so Zomtober 2023 comes to a close, this week with two zombies:
33 vs 112 = -79
I did originally have plans for a bigger finish than just ‘two zombies’, but I kept getting outbid on minotaurs on eBay, and spending most of last week in Germany didn’t leave me enough time to work on the zombie wyvern conversion that I’ve had planned since starting this project…
After two Zomtobers, my zombie regiment so far looks like this:
8 more and it’s a legal unit! Although you always need more zombies…
Sunday 22 October 2023
Zomtober 2023 Week 4
Here’s the partner to last week’s submission for Zomtober Week 4:
His snapped off hand then got replaced with a zombie hand holding a small length of rope (I think it originally held a skin covered gong that had previously been taken for a chaos space marine conversion), which I covered up the rope texture of with green stuff to make it look like another length of viscera.
This weeks submission brings the Tally to:
31 vs 112 = -81
Also, it’s still Sunday in Germany (where I currently am), so I technically didn’t miss the posting deadline!
Sunday 15 October 2023
Zomtober 2023 Week 3
Another week, and another Beastman zombie inspired by my recent re-read of the Gotrek and Felix novel Zombieslayer:
My original Mordheim zombies, that must have been painted when I was 19 at most. I’m torn between stripping them to repaint, or just trying to paint over the top to match them to my current painting style. Well, that or just quietly putting them back in the Mordheim box, as they’re very much sculpts of their time aren’t they…
Sunday 8 October 2023
Zomtober 2023 Week 2
Another week, another deadline met! This week’s submission is pretty much a proof-of-concept for this year’s theme, or ‘can I transform salvaged beastmen minis into suitable zombies in the style of the novel Zombieslayer’. And I think the answer to that is yes:
It’s a gor body with the head and hand snipped off and replaced with a beastmen skull and a zombie hand (from the standard topper in the old zombie regiment kit) respectively. The skull bit was originally from the dryad kit I believe, and was covered in vines that needed carefully snipping and filing off. A little green stuff and voila, gaps filled!
While I had the green stuff out I decided to hack a slice out of his gut and model on some tiny insides spilling out from under a flap of skin, as it feels like every good Gotrek and Felix novel has at least one enemy taking a wound to their abdomen and their intestines are described as ‘looping out’.
Brief aside - zombies go on 20mm bases while gors usually live on 25s. I wasn’t sure the body would fit on the smaller base size, but I think with some careful positioning he should rank up alongside his fellows.
Then it was time for a fairly straightforward paint job, although I couldn’t resist adding some texture to his loincloth to add a little visual interest. My original plan was to have the skull entirely drenched in blood (as I always feel like zombies having any fully skeletal bits feels a little odd and out of place), but in all honesty I quite likes how the bone and horn came out so I ended up only mostly dousing him in blood. It looks so fresh and shiny in the pictures because it’s literally still wet in the pictures…
So, as you might have extrapolated from this and other posts, I managed to acquire a box of scrappy secondhand beastmen from eBay:
29 vs 112 = -83
While the last two weeks have largely been a last-minute scramble to get things finished and photographed on the Sunday, I’m hoping that won’t be the case all month as I have the next two conversions already pretty much done. But then again, I’m now out of black spray. And going to Germany in a couple of weeks. Last minute scrambles it is then…
Tuesday 3 October 2023
Last Days Seasons campaign: September
So, I just managed to squeeze in this month’s game on the very last day of the month. I decided to play the Fall special scenario ‘The Reaping’ - news that another group of survivors has succumbed to the zombie menace reaches our group, who pragmatically set out to liberate them of the supplies they no longer need!
I set up a wilderness board, that looked something like this:
Most of the survivors make short work of the opposition, but Devon’s opponent gets a lucky blow on him - thankfully due to all of his Endurance increases at previous level ups he’s so tough that he simply shrugs it off with no ill effects! He’s not so lucky the next turn though, when he finds himself outnumbered and and a zombie bites down on his shirt-clad arm. Flannel protects a little bit from the teeth, but it’s certainly going to leave a bruise!
5 more zombies appear on the opposite edge of the board to our survivors, 3 of whom are carrying supplies, but at this point it’s unlikely this will be be anywhere near the survivors by the time they’d made their escape. At this point it’s about 11pm and my best friend messages me to tell me that he’s about to enter a back to back screening of every Evil Dead Movie. If I’d remembered that was today I could have dug out my not-Ash min!
Back to the game- the fireman finally takes out the zombie that struggling with all game. Determined to make up for this poor showing, he then sprints over to team guns blazing to give them a hand extricating supplies from mangled corpses. As he did so, Cece managed to take out the last zombie that was close enough to be any danger, and then it was just a case of getting everyone off the board with supplies and then making their way home!
Post-game, plenty of experience gained means lots of advancements:
Fireman gains a level, and hopes for a point of CQC (as with his fire axe and general lack of fighting skills, he’s just about equal to a zombie at the moment). Unfortunately he doesn’t have enough extra XP banked to turn the point of firearms skill he rolls into CQC, so it looks like he’s going to have to start trying to shoot things at some point in the future!
Cece learns the gunsmith skill - she’s less fussed about the actual skill itself, but more interested in the fact that learning that means she’ll be able to utilise the military sniper rifle that’s currently sitting in the group’s stash…
Kev learns the stalker skill, so is even better suited to just running up and starting to mirser zombies from the word go.
Dionne learns the master shooting skill never misses, making her officially the deadliest survivor on the planet.
Jess also gains an additional point of firearms skill - we just need to find her a quieter gun to try and make best use of it!
Lynn learns the master skill street surgeon - while supply seeker might have been the more optimal choice, street surgeon was the more thematically appropriate choice for the group’s medic!
Devon learnt the master shooting skill overwatch. I was tempted to take never misses on him too, given how often he… well, misses, but on the other hand a free Locked&Loaded token every turn is definitely something he can use (and also frees up a few AP every turn so he could potentially reload both of his pistols at once rather than having to cycle through them in rotation!)
Then it came time to see what we’d found in all of the supply tokens - and at this point I realised that I’d accidentally cheated on getting 8 supply tokens off the board with only 7 survivors, as it turns out survivors can only carry a single supply token unless they have the expedition backpack equipment, so Dionne shouldn’t have been able to drag 2 off the board - something to remember for next time!
Being that winter is coming and finding a kerosene heater would be really handy, I rolled four times on the winter table, once on the summer table, and three times on the standard tables - and due to some boringly average rolls, literally only found fuel and scavenge on the seasonal tables, so it looks like all of those zombified survivors had mostly been carrying planks of wood around with them! On the standard tables I managed to roll even greater amounts of scavenge, but also turned up a firebomb and a surplus SMG, which Jess quickly took ownership of (having not fired her noisy rifle in a couple of months for fear of attracting more zombies).
Allocating jobs after the game, Devon decided against trying to recruit a new member of the group this month, and instead decided to build a wood burning stove for the farm house. I know, it would be cheaper for Lynn to build it with her engineer skill, but her time is mich better spent in the garden harvesting food! As much as I’d like to let everyone rest to try and shake the niggling sickness that’s been with the group for months now, Devon knows that the weather is turning and winter is on the way, so sets the group to building up a stockpile of supplies, with what little medicine they already have distributed to the most productive members of the group in the hopes of staving off anyone becoming bedridden… so everyone else set about harvesting medicine, fuel, or food, with Cece working the cold cellar in the hopes of being able to preserve any excess meals to help the group last through the winter. Unfortunately again the dice seemed to be against me, as while nobody went hungry, there was only enough food left over to make 2 preserved meals.
Of the three survivors that were given medicine (Jess, Dionne and Cece), only Cece started feeling any better. Unfortunately, the fireman became sick from spending time out in the field in close quarters with other sick survivors (and definitely not from getting clawed by a zombie, honest), and then Devon, Lynn, Jess and the fireman all fell bedridden! Maybe they should have all rested this month rather than pushing themselves so hard…
So, next month - looks like it’s up to just Dionne, Cece and Kev to try and find some medicine! On the other hand, that’s 18 levels worth of survivor, so a force to be reckoned with. I kind of wish I’d had Devon recruit a new member rather than building a wood burning stove in the early autumn, in hindsight…
Sunday 1 October 2023
Zomtober 2023 Week 1
Also known as ‘what do you do when you realise midway through September that the first Sunday in October is also the first day in October, and you’re pretty busy’ - that’s right, you paint half a zombie!
But why does a freshly raised zombie have blood all over him, I hear you ask? Maybe it’s old blood from his wounds opening up as he scrabbles out of the grave, maybe he bit someone’s ankles, whatever you need to sleep at night.
As previously alluded to here on the blog, my plan for this year’s Zomtober was to do themed entries around the zombie army in the Gotrek and Felix novel Zombieslayer (that I recently finished during my re-read of the entire series), which involves a horde of undead beastmen (and even the occasional zombie Minotaur!) besieging a castle. Unfortunately, my bits box is lacking in gors, but luckily I’ve just been able to win a scrap lot on eBay to cannibalise for parts - although shout out to Mik of Miksminis (not that he posts there anymore, look him up on instagram!) for offering to send me some from across the pond!
I suspect that next week’s will be as last minute as this week’s post, which involved desperately googling ‘how to get stubborn superglue out of pot’, which revealed apparently putting it in hot water is the way to go. And thus:
So, at the end of Zomtober week 1, the Tally looks like:
28 vs 100 = -72
Luckily that Heresy order still hasn’t turned up, otherwise the Tally would look even worse. He says, having previously admitted to having ordered more miniatures for Zomtober…
(And for anyone wondering where the next instalment of my monthly Last Days game is, fear not, I played it last night, but haven’t had a chance to write it up yet, having been busy getting this post up!)