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