Zomtober 2025 week 2: roamin’ remains

 Roaming, like Roman, right?

Another themed offering for Zomtober, this time some zombified romans:

I know, technically they’re meant to be skeletal Romans, but this is what I’ve got.

Like last week’s Vikings, they’re a mashup between some Warlord veteran sprues (handily, they come with campaign worn and battered equipment) and a mix of bits from the Wargames Atlantic zombie sprue and the Frostgrave Cultists. Some parts are straight swaps, while others got spliced to attach zombie arms to Roman shoulder pads. Yes, I know, the Centurion’s sword isn’t historical, but I figured that it would help him stand out a bit more on the table. 

I’d planned to do a few more figures with shields, but didn’t get round to it, which is probably for the best as putting the aged transfer onto the one I had was a nightmare last night. I’m not sure if it was an old transfer, a bad transfer, or just the fact that I only know where my Micro Set is (the Sol is probably somewhere in a bad in the garage), but it wasn’t plain sailing. There were white edges, clear bits that weren’t looking very clear, and one side that kept lifting, but with some cunning repainting, judicious application of varnish to try and stick it together, and them some hefty (perhaps too hefty) weathering, it looks just about palatable, which is the low bar that I shoot for. Speaking of a low bar, don’t look too closely at their glowing eyes, they’re a lot better looking at arms length I promise.

Here’s the back too! Just about visible is the one Roman where I cut off a leg and twisted it to give that classic dragging leg zombie look (which I think was a tip in a Peachy Tips video), but for ease and speed I skipped it on the rest, and I think they look just fine.

Painting these brings the Tally to:

25 vs 247 = -222

Now, if I was a smart guy, I’d have rationed these out and posted one a week to hit the Zomtober target of weekly posts, but that’s not how I roll - and to be frank, I’m also quite enjoying that I’m well on the way to doubling my total painted for the year so far in just one month… Next: more zombies, I hope!

Zomtober 2025 week 1: historical edition

Well, to a certain degree of historical!

With the release of the latest Silver Bayonet expansion featuring the rise of undead from Britain’s history, I figured that was the perfect prompt for a themed Zomtober this year, so I present my first offering, some zombie vikings:

They’re made from a mashup of Gripping Beast vikings, Wargames Atlantic zombies and Frostgrave  cultist parts (an idea shamelessly stolen from someone else on a Facebook group, as I’d forgotten that they had some nice undead bits). Some feature straight part swaps, others have had parts spliced from two sprues to make it look like there’s a zombie arm wearing armour, for example. If I were to do it again, I’d probably splice all of the arms, as the ones without chainmail on one arm look a little uneven, but it’s not so jarring that I wouldn’t use them in a game. 

Looking at these pictures as I write this post, I realise you can’t really see the shield, which is probably for the best - I went a little overboard weathering it (and the sword, for that matter), and so had to go back and freshen them up a little first thing this morning before everyone else in the house got up. 

With regards to the Silver Bayonet, these guys are likely to stand in for quite a few enemy types in the new book (Danish, Norwegian, and even Scott potentially), as I received my book after I placed an order for some sprues, and if I’d had it before I would have probably ordered up some generic dark ages types to zombiefy! On the other hand, I already have those nice generic zombies that Gripping Beast sell painted up, so I can probably cover most bases between them all. I even used the same glowing eye colour on these ones too, so I could pretend that I’d planned that all along!

Painting these (as well as bringing an end to my months long painting drought) brings the Tally to:

19 vs 247 = -228

Next: more zombies, hopefully!

I aten’t dead 2: electric boogaloo

So, it’s been three months since my last post. Not long after Salute, we got an eviction notice through the door letting us know that we needed to find somewhere new to live on a deadline. To cut a long and unfun story short, we did in fact find somewhere new to live, but it did mean putting a pause on hobby activity while we packed everything up.

The new house has a garage, which is a handy amount of storage considering the last two houses we’ve lived in have had basements. Unfortunately, despite moving day being needlessly hot, the weekend after had heavy rain, and the garage turned out to be less waterproof than we had been led to believe:

Honestly, we got very lucky, with minimal actual damage to our stuff. One box of terrain at the bottom of a pile unluckily turned out to have a crack in it though, and so I ended up with this:

An amount of time with a hairdryer and sitting on a cookie rack in the bedroom has managed to salvage everything though, so it could have been much worse! Which reminds me, the roof for the clock tower has fallen behind my chest of drawers, must remember to dig that back out…

So, despite hobby activities being on hold, the lead mountain has in fact grown. First of all, it was Father’s Day since my last post, and as I’ve been watching some old school Doctor Who my presents included a Crooked Dice Temporal Traveller that looks uncannily like Jon Pertwee:

I also grabbed a mini of the month from GW, as I figured he’d make a nice unit champion or Wight if I slapped him on a square base:

I got a message from one of the buyers at work asking if I wanted her spare advanced copy of the upcoming 40K Character encyclopaedia, and who am I to turn down a free limited edition mini:

Which has also tempted me to maybe paint up a little Kill Team or something - GW released a mini game based on the video game where Titus and 3 other marines battle a handful of Tyranids, that’s a small and doable project right? For the other three marines, I figured I would probably want to have them be quite distinctive looking, and so grabbed another mini of the month, this time a Space wolf:

I’m not sure if I’ll leave him as is or try to convert him into a Deathwatch marine, only time will tell…

I also grabbed a magazine that had this sprue as a free gift on the front, because who doesn’t need more hero minis for D&D?

It was also my birthday at the end of August, and among my presents were this baggie of Foundry harpies, because I’m quite excited for the next Joseph McCullough game Warriors of Athena (it was previously released in Spellcaster magazine, and so was going to be my next project, but googling around to see if anyone else online had made war bands I stumbled on a product page saying that it was getting a full book release next year, but more on this in another post):

It also came with a free archer, hooray!

Which brings the Tally to… no, wait, in the time since I started writing this post I’ve ordered more minis. So, to continue:

Sprues! Some skeletons, for Warriors of Athena purposes, some Greek chaps, for Warriors of Athena purposes, and some Wargames Atlantic zombies, for… well, because that is a goodly amount of zombie heads, and between this and the release of the newest Silver Bayonet book inspired me to convert up some historical zombies for Zomtober:

Speaking of Silver Bayonet, I also grabbed a bunch of limited edition minis and… a sprue for Warriors of Athena, because that’s what I’m all about at the moment:

So, all in, the Tally now stands at:

15 vs 247 = -232

Hopefully I can get some minis painted in the next few months and try and chip away at that deficit a little!

A rather grumpy looking Doctor…

So, it used to be the case that I’d watch YouTube while doing the washing up or cooking dinner, but instead I’ve started watching classic Doctor Who - I watched a bunch of Pertwee stories (as he’s I think my favourite Doctor from childhood), and even discovered a newfound appreciation for Patrick Troughton after enjoying the War Games enough that I went back and watched some of his serials too! Enjoying these so much (especially Inferno, with it’s parallel universe eyepatch wearing Brigadier shenanigans), I was enthused to cajole my children into continuing watching modern Who, and also to set about prepping and painting some Whoniverse miniatures.

On the painting front, I finished this miniature of the Doctor’s twelfth incarnation:

He’s been sat undercoated for far too long, so I’m happy to finally have him done! He’s a slightly odd choice for me to have painted though, as I think we only got two episodes into Capaldi’s run before falling off watching the series, and are now working our way back to that point, but that’s neither here nor there.

According to Wikipedia his jacket and trousers should actually be dark blue rather than black, which probably would have been easier to paint - I used a Chris Peach inspired method for painting the blacks, which has come out a little shiny, but I think that’s mostly due to me being a bit heavy handed with using a dark wash to knock back the highlights.

Speaking of highlights, I was having a play with my phone while taking these pictures, and tried some using macro mode:

I think it looks much the same as the original, admittedly. The picture of the back of him had I think a truer representation of the colours, but was also sadly out of focus when I came to include it in this post so I’m going to omit it.

Finishing him brings the Tally to:

15 vs 206 = -191

Long term, I’ve had an idea what I want to do with my various miniatures of Doctors - down in the basement, I have this Tardis display case that was released for the Micro Universe figures:

Inside there are 32 spaces for miniatures, so I figure I could do Doctors down the left, companions on the right:

Here’s a sneak preview of what I’ve been prepping too:

Anyone who says that a Dalek isn’t poseable just isn’t trying hard enough…

On the non-Who front, we’ve been decorating our clipboards for the family D&D game:

Including my daughter teaching me how to make DIY stickers, so that I could make a custom sticker of her brother’s character for his clipboard:

And the cultists and treasure seen in my last post also go a run out today - the cultists fared much worse than the dragon (dubbed Drago Malloy in my head so that I could keep his voice and character fixed in mind):

What’s next? Nothing, in theory, as I really should be packing everything up to move, but what has actually happened is I’ve dug out a load of other Who minis in various states of bare metal and undercoated, (as well as heavily hinting to my daughter and wife that a miniature that looks an awful lot like Pertwee would make an excellent Father’s Day gift) so watch this space…

Do you have time…

…to talk about our Lord and Saviour Tiamat?

So, I was off last week for Half Term, and so powered through painting some bits that I need for the next encounter in the family D&D game, some cultists of Tiamat:

In my canon, low level cultists wear rough spun plain brown robes, of a sackclothish material, but they decorate the hoods with triangles representing the different colour of chromatic dragon, with the positioning of the coloured triangles representing which type of dragon they hold in highest esteem, which you can probably just make out if you really zoom in.

This was also handy, as them being dressed in plain robes made for a pretty quick paint job! 

The more eagle eyed of you may well notice that the chap on the far right is armed with a very distinctive weapon - this is sadly the result of a picture frame falling on my desk and snapping off the scimitar (of which there are a sadly limited number per box, and I’m hoping future models from h to is box will all have), and so disheartened I decided to leave it as is looking like some sort of diminutive handaxe rather than trying to either fix it or replace it entirely.

As the next encounter is attacking a dragon in their lair while they are being courted by members of the Cult of the Dragon, I also needed some piles of treasure:

Apologies for the awful picture, it was very sunny when I took it and I assure you the piles of coins look to have more depth in hand than they do in this picture!

Which leads me to my last picture, pretty much what the party are going to see when they rush into the ruined tower - plus a green dragon languidly looking down on them…

After all that rushing to get them done, we didn’t end up having time to play D&D all week, but at least they are ready to go whenever we are now!

Painting these cultists brings the Tally to:

14 vs 206 = -192

What’s next? Well, I’ve been watching a lot of (classic) Doctor Who recently, but on the other hand we need to pack up and move house again, so if you don’t see me post for a while that will be why… 

May the Fourth be with a really big gun

As is traditional, May the Fourth means I’ve painted something Star Wars themed, and this year it’s ‘Mandalorian with large weapon, Paz Vizla’:

I have a bunch of Star Wars minis in the backlog, but this one got chosen because it looked cool in the cabinet while we were chatting with Tim Prow at the Diehard Miniatures stand at Salute, so he got bought and accelerated up the painting queue. I also tried painting heat stained metal for the first time (inspired by the studio paint job), which came out… fine. Something to work on in the future perhaps (as every tutorial I saw said use an ink and dry brush, but whenever I went to dry off my brush all the pigment leached off completely, so I tried to glaze with washes instead which could have benefitted from slower going, but a deadline is a deadline).

While the miniature isn’t completely identical to his inspiration, I did use stills from the Mandalorian to work out which bits of armour should be which colour, as his colour scheme is pleasingly slightly asymmetrical.

Then it was a case of adding a little weathering to make him look suitably battle worn, and job’s a good’un!

He also is the first recipient of one of the grass tufts that I picked up at Salute, which are a lot bigger on a mini than they look on the paper!

Fun fact - Most of these base coats were applied in a Holiday Inn in Basildon:

Speaking of things looking bigger, this mini is actually surprisingly small - I was prepping him at the same time as some Tangent minis, which I thought were giant, but they actually looked larger next to this chap. Here he is next to a Warlord mini, to give you an idea of scale:

Which is interesting, as I remember the Mando that I got from Diehard being on the larger side. Alas, he’s boxed up, otherwise I’d dig him out and compare the two…

As well as painting this mini, I’ve also received a couple. The sample mini from Gringo 40s arrived:

As did a Made to Order Warhammer Empire Battle Standard bearer that I preordered a while ago:

So all in the Tally now looks like:

9 vs 206 = -197

What’s next? I’ve still got some Superheroes in various states of completion, and I really want to crack on with some Alamo project miniatures, but on the other hand I also watched the entirety of the Third Doctor serial ‘Spearhead from Space’ today while cooking a roast, so who knows…

Ice Ice Baby

 So, another X-Man joints the roster:

If I’m being frank, I actually prefer an Iceman that’s made of… well, ice. I don’t have one of those though (and the last time I stocked up on Heroclix, the store I was buying from didn’t have any either), so here we are. On the other hand, I actually quite enjoyed the series of comics where the original X-Men are brought through time to the modern day (which I really didn’t think I was going to), so maybe this is that time transplanted Iceman, and I can still paint another one at some point in the future…

Also, he’s done before the rest of the team because… well, there wasn’t a lot to paint once I’d gotten his snowy body to a point I was happy with, then his boots were pretty quick to layer up to done!

8 vs 204 = -196

(although I just discovered that the box of Dragoons I bought at Salute is actually missing a couple of sprues, so it’s actually currently 4 different to that)

What’s next? I’m away for work next week, so am planning to take my usual hotel painting kit along with some more X-Men (as their shared colour scheme means I can take fewer paints), so here’s to hoping I’m not so exhausted by the evening that I can’t get any painting done!