Zomtober 2024 Week 4

 Another Sunday, another painted zombie:

The last of the TTCombat zombie halflings that I had prepped, this time wearing a fancy hat.

I did have plans for a big finish for the month, but unfortunately work and family got in the way somewhat and my extra stuff wasn’t ready by deadline day. Ah well, they’re half painted, maybe I’ll get them finished off next week…

That means that post-Zomtober, the Tally now stands at:

54 vs 192 = -138

And after a couple of years, the zombie unit looks like this:

That’s nearly a legal minimum size unit! 

Zomtober 2024 Week 3

Another week, another zombie (he types for the second time, as apparently Blogger is having a day of it and rather than publishing this post just wiped the whole thing, so I’m starting from scratch):

I decided to quickly convert another zombie beastman this week to get back on the Zombieslayer theme - he’s a fairly simple conversion, being just a reposition of the original miniature rather than adding any specific zombie parts.

The arm hanging off by a thread (that I realise you can barely see in these pictures, annoyingly) was something of a happy accident - where I was cutting the shield arm off to reposition it to look like it is dangling uselessly rather than being brandished, when I went to pin it back into place, I realised that leaving the central pin showing would look like a bone of strand of gore!

If the gore looks wet, that’s because it is - it was applied about three minutes before this picture was taken, and then I had to go out in the rain to photograph it!

I also have this chap to offer, a backup that was painted just in case I wasn’t able to convert and paint his bestial brethren in time for the Sunday deadline:

Another TTCombat zombie halfling, this time looking like a tiny zombie publican.

As well as finishing these two miniatures, the Tally has taken some swings in other directions too:

@tmcllghn_paints sent me some heads for a conversion for the Alamo project (because apparently I’m of an age where I want to convert things based on something I’ve seen in a picture in an Osprey), but there’s a whole mini left there so it counts:

I also discovered that a friend’s partner had expressed an interest in trying out miniature painting, so after picking his brains in the car after coming back from a wildlife park last week I pulled together a gift of a sprue of Vikings and a handful of LOTR minis to have a bash at.

All in, the Tally now stands at: 

53 vs 192 = -139

What’s next? At least one more zombie, hopefully!

Zomtober 2024 Week 2

 Another Sunday, another tiny dead thing - or two, this week, as they’re even tinier than the last one:

Two zombie halflings, rising from their tiny graves. The one on the left had some indeterminate facial features (I suspect what I mistook for jowls May in fact have been intended to be a moustache), but a generous dose of blood makes it all better. I know, I know, bloody zombies don’t really make sense when they’re rising from the grave (as opposed to being a fresh corpse reanimated) but as ever rule of cool wins out over science when we’re talking about our little dollies…

And the back! These are probably going to be making up the back ranks of the unit, but I put an equal amount of effort into every mini, front and back, regardless. 

Finishing these two brings the Tally to:

51 vs 205 = -154

Two weeks down, two more to go!

Zomtober 2024 Week 1 - the tiny dead…

It’s the first Sunday in October, and that can only mean one thing: Zomtober!

My original plan was to convert some more zombie beastmen to supplement the Zombieslayer inspired unit from last year, but time has conspired against me and I haven’t made any headway on that yet. However, having broken the seal on using non GW models in my Warhammer armies (Super was right) I figured that I could quickly paint some of the TTCombat zombies from the mystery box a friend and I drafted to bulk up that unit until I can make some more themed ones, the first of which looks like this:

I was originally tempted to paint them up like a Night Goblin, but figured I’d stick to neutral browns both for speed and also so they’d blend more into the finished unit.

At first glance they look like some sort of monk or priest, but then you see the chains and it raises some questions, I guess they were a naughty halfling in life…

Painting them brings the Tally to:

49 vs 205 = -156

Th king about it, if I finish Zomtober, I’ll hit my yearly challenge of averaging at least one painted mini a week, nice!

What’s next? I’ve got enough TTCombat zombies prepped that I’ll be able to hit all four weeks of Zomtober, but I still live in hope that I’ll be able to convert and paint some more thematic zombies. Now to find a 25th hour in the day, and also one of the old metal Minotaurs with a double handed weapon for a conversion that I’ve had knocking round in my head for years…

Zomtober 2023 Week 5

And so Zomtober 2023 comes to a close, this week with two zombies:

Here’s a slightly different angle of the chap on the right, as it’s a little tricky to see what he’s doing from head on:

And here they are from the back, where you can see that they are painted in the livery of the two provinces that the Empire troops come from in Zombieslayer, Talabecland and Reikland:

Annoyingly in the notes that I took during my reread of the novel, I noted down the colour schemes, but not the names of the provinces, assuming that I’d just remember, which obviously I couldn’t when I went to look up some painting references! Luckily I was able to reverse engineer ‘Talabecland’ from ‘mustard and burgundy’…

This pair of conversions came about from me having a root around my bits box and pulling out a couple of old starter set Empire spearmen (from a starter set that I never owned, but that’s not the focus of this). Looking at the armour on one, I wondered if I could bisect him across the waist, and then Frankenstein him with zombie bits to make two Empire zombies. Which started like this:

And ended like this:

As I started cutting, I realised that the spearman’s front and rear plate armour were not the same lengths, so rather than a straightforward straight cut, there was a certain amount of knife angling, and then rebuilding waistlines with green stuff, which is pleasingly unobtrusive on the finished model. I also sanded down a zombie head to fit the hat on at a jaunty angle, since just because your guts are hanging out not doesn’t mean you don’t want to feel pretty right?

Painting this pair brings the Tally to:

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…

Zomtober 2023 Week 4

Here’s the partner to last week’s submission for Zomtober Week 4:

Just a zombified Beastman enjoying a meaty snack.

This one largely came about as a result of my wondering how well glued together these minis were, and while gently seeing if there was much give to his shield arm snapped it off at the wrist. Once that was gone, I removed his weapon and repositioned the head to look like he was earring from something that was in his hand, and a little green stuff completed the look.

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!

Zomtober 2023 Week 3

Another week, and another Beastman zombie inspired by my recent re-read of the Gotrek and Felix novel Zombieslayer:

The posing of the conversion made it very difficult to get a decent photo of, but deadline day is deadline day so this is what I have. I didn’t add any injuries to the model (unless you count the repositioning of the head to give him the broken neck zombie look), so painted him to look like the cause of death was a swift axe to the neck, probably delivered by an angry chap with a bright orange crest of hair.

Pretty much stock from behind, but buried in the middle of a unit no one will notice that!

The conversion started with me seeing just how well attached the limbs were on the salvage minis I’d bought, and one of the archers arm nocking an arrow popped clean off (snapping the arrow clean in half too, which I dutifully picked out of the carpet and stashed in my bits box). This mini however I carefully nipped the hand off to replace with something a little more undead than the sword he was originally modelled with. I was originally going to give him a generic grasping zombie hand, being happy with the existing position of the bow looking like it was absent-mindlessly dangling, but then thought it would be funnier to have a zombie archer than still had an arrow ready to go, but clearly had no idea how to use it. Which led to me removing the weapons from and carefully drilling through a zombie hand and then using the salvaged parts of the previously mentioned broken arrow to practice glueing onto the tiniest of contact points:

Those of you that follow me on Instagram will have seen that I was also working on another conversion at the same time, but as we’re going to Germany in Half Term to visit my wife’s family I’m saving him as a buffer, so no more pics of them until next week! Although while writing this post, I realised that I’d forgotten to include a WIP pic of the conversion in last week’s post, so here’s that as a bonus this week:

A little bit of green stuff and a couple of part swaps can go a long way!

Painting this week’s submission brings the tally to:

30 vs 112 = -82

While digging around looking for parts for a potential future conversion today, I came across these:

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…

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:

A mix of gors and ungors, in various states of disrepair. Some of them had been converted to hold marauder weapons, which I didn’t notice in the initial listing, but not the worst thing in the world as I’m only going to rip them off anyway. 

Acquiring these and painting one of them brings the Tally to:

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…

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!

A pretty simple conversion, cutting down one of the weapon wielding arms that I’m probably never going to use to try and make it look like he’s pushing himself up out of the ground.

I don’t know how well it worked (especially as that side ended up getting mostly obscured by grass), but he’s built and painted and done and now joined his friends from last year’s Zomtober:

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!)

Zomtober 2022 week 5

And here we find ourselves back to our more traditional posting slot of almost too late for the deadline, but still squeaking in with another completed zombie:

The freebie zombie from GW actually painted up really nicely - regardless of how you feel about them having a gravestone in their back and a stake through their heart, it’s a nicely sculpted mini that takes paint exceptionally well, plus it has enough details to add a bit of visual interest without being so busy that it’s a bear to paint.

But what’s that there’s more? Not much more, admittedly:

A quick raid of my bits box and I was able to make a zombie bursting forth from their grave. Whereas the rest of the zombies got plain grey ‘city rubble’ bases, this one got some grass and moss as I wanted to really make it look like it was breaking through the ground, upending some plantlife, rather than just being a hand with some sand stuck to it as it might have looked otherwise. 

One of the reasons I wanted a very short zombie like this was that I also dug out a dreg that I converted way back when I was probably eighteen, that has his spear levelled in suck a way that he’d never rank up with other miniatures. Unless he’s behind someone like this hand, that is…

However, the dreg didn’t get finished, as Friday night became ‘desperate last minute Halloween costume making’ rather than the usual ‘painting and a cup of tea’:

See also Saturday morning, painting something a little bigger than may usual scale so that my son could be Toad from Super Mario:

He was very happy with the costume, even if his toadstool hat with all of its stuffing made him overheat somewhat (also, my wife sewed a complete Starfire costume for our daughter, which is even more impressive than this that I made).

But I digress - not content to have just a hand as my additional submissions, I pressed on Sunday evening to get this handsome chap finished:

The Mordheim Necromancer! Apologies for the terrible photos of him, he’s come out looking fairly washed out, but that’s more to do with taking pictures in the dining room on a Sunday night than anything else. Although on that note I took all of the miniature photos in this post at the same time, so I’m not sure why the Cursed City zombie came out with good looking pictures while the rest didn’t!

In hindsight, maybe I should have weathered up the Necromancer’s robes too, but on the other hand I’m assuming as an actual living chap he probably takes better care of his robes than the shambling hordes he’s bent to his will.

Skull! It has a rune carved into it, so some Carroburg Crimson smeared in and around it gave it a suitably grim and gribbly appearance.

So, in total this Zomtober we have the start of a unit of zombies:

Which if you add to the skeletons that I painted way back when means I’m probably approaching having more points of Undead painted than Skaven, so I’d best get back to painting some ratty boys!

All this Mordheim painting had me browsing eBay, and so after painting the Cursed City zombie I treated myself to the Ogre from that game:

He’s a nice sculpt, who doesn’t look particularly like he’s from AOS, so will make an excellent Ogre Bodyguard as being me I’ve obviously started thinking about a challenge where I paint up all of the Hired Sword options from Mordheim just in case I ever play it…

All in, this brings the Tally to:

73 vs 65 = +8

Zomtober 2022 week 4

Shockingly, here we are for week four in a row with another on schedule blog post - slightly later than usual as my Sunday today involved a lot more tidying up and less spooky season movies than usual, but that’s just the way of the world sometimes isn’t it?

This week’s offering is the Witch Hunter themed zombie from Mordheim (picture taken during a rain storm, unfortunately, so the natural light wasn’t as bright as it could have been):

Not as brightly coloured as some of my previous zombies, but still a characterful little sculpt regardless. I went for a lot of greys and browns for him, as is my usual approach to almost any miniature.

I experimented with painting the flaming torch in his hand as some sort of wyrdstone-tainted warp flame, but it… didn’t quite turn out as I hoped. Initially I went too heavy on the green, and so had to go over it with very thinned white to try and lighten the whole thing, and then applying black to the flames left it too dark overall, so I had to go back in with more white, then redo some of the green… after a while, you hit a point where done is as good as perfect, and that’s what you see here.

Tally:

70 vs 64 = +6

Now a sensible person would continue building up a positive buffer on their Tally, but North Star just announced that there is going to be a money off code in their next newsletter, and I’ve got my eye on a few bits for Frostgrave / Rangers of Shadow Deep / Silver Bayonet, so who knows how long I’ll last before the Tally is in the red again…

Zomtober 2022 week 3

Another week, another Mordheim zombie finished and posted at a reasonable hour, posted while watching Hocus Pocus 2:

It’s a lovely sculpt, although the facial detail was a little soft for my meagre skills to make the most of. Everything looks good with a judicious application of blood though! The blue and yellow came out looking quite nice, so it was almost a shame to cover it up with dirt and grime, but he’d have looked out of place among his peers in pristine clothes…

Nipping into GW to grab a fresh pot of Rakarth Flesh as mine had completely dried out, I also grabbed the latest Mini of the Month:

Which is fairly handy, given that I have four Mordheim zombies and there are five Sundays in October (although there are a couple of backup minis in various states of preparation just in case). 

Side note on the Rakarth Flesh - being so used to my pretty much solid pot, what was supposed to be a light drybrush became an accidental overbrush, so that’s why the yellow sleeves on this week’s zombie look so pale. 

One in and one out brings the Tally to:

69 vs 64 = +5

Zomtober 2022 week 2

Another week, another zombie, this time the Sisters of Sigmar themed one from Mordheim:

Oof, I thought natural light was supposed to be the secret to taking better pictures? Then again, not rushing to take a picture before watching Hocus Pocus with your family probably ranks up there too.

I dug out an old pot of the GW Foundation range red (Mechrite Red) for her tabard, as I fancied something a little more muted than my usual method of painting red. It came out so nice that it was almost a shame to have to dirty it up with weathering, but grubby is as grubby does and so she got a layer of dirt and blood just like her companion from last week.

Her hair and skin got some green tones too to sell that unhealthy look, doubly thematic in that I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to hit this week’s deadline due to being sick enough to be off work. Luckily I recovered enough to put in the usual midnight Saturday finish in order to be able to post today.

Finishing her brings the Tally to:

68 vs 63 = +5

Next week: more of the same, hopefully! 

Side note - while Mordheim wasn’t high up on the project list for this year, painting these zombies has led to me watching an awful lot of Mordheim battle reports on YouTube…