Azazel's Bitz Box.

It feels like a good while since I’ve completed any Zombicide models, so as part of Monster MayHem ’23, I’ve finally gotten this pair of models that have been sitting on the desk, part-painted for quite a few months now completed and so off the desk!

Unlike many of the other Second Edition Abominations I’ve painted so far, these two aren’t based on folklore cryptids.

Both of these are pretty obviously based on pop culture IP/characters, as CMON loves to skirt legality with their *cough* homage models.

I mean, I enjoy them myself, but I’m also very aware of what they actually are…

First up we have the third of my Piggy-trilogy of miniatures (that I’m sure a certain Guru has been enjoying) the Manbearpig. I mean Bearmanboar. Totes different, right?

I went for the overall “cleaner” version of Manbearpig over the very bloody version, since I wanted to preserve my skin tones.

The second of these totally-original creations I’m sharing today is the Actual Cannibal.

Also known as Actual Cannibal Shia LaBeouf.

Which is an actual thing.

For some reason.

Unfortunately, Shia’s skin tone has come out a bit flat in the photos, but I’ll rest easy enough knowing it looks fine in hand. He’s actually a bit bigger than you’d expect, which you’ll see in the image with Berkeley below…

While Zombicide 2nd Edition does have several “traditional” Abominations in the set – that is to say – giant muscular and nasty looking zombies – I do like the way that they leaned into various cryptids for a bit of a different flavour to these stretch goals. It certainly gives you more of an interesting variety of models to paint.

And they’ll be easy enough to showhorn into our 1st Edition games as well once we get back to the Zombicide campaign… I guess in June I probably need to get back to the zombies… 😮

Another Zombicide model today – this time a Kickstarter exclusive model from the original Zombicide Black Plague campaign. The Abominalpha. This one is an interesting design, with a mix of several animals sort of smooshed together. We have some elements of (obviously) Human along with Wolf and Rat, Goat horns, and… Badger claws?

As wacky as that design description sounds, the artist actually pulled it off pretty well. Wrapped the whole thing in flayed skin and added a necklace of decapitated heads for extra drip. Unfortunately – the sculpt is one that I can at best describe – with maximum kindness – as wildly uneven. The overall head, body and musculature are pretty decent. The claws and bone spines are a bit too long and nearly as good looking as the artwork, the tail-spine looks like a decoration and the necklace of heads looks like blobs of undetailed, undefined chewing gum.

The result of all this was that I started painting this thing a couple of years ago with the best of intentions (I usually enjoy painting monsters – and they can often be quick and enjoyable), but it’s taken literally years and I’ve basically just hated the model the entire time.

The only way I got through it was by forcing myself to do a whole bunch of work on it last year for one of the Monster painting challenges, and then ran out of steam – only to harness this year’s Monster MayHem ’23 painting challenge for enough willpower to finally get it done.

Well, regardless of how I’ve felt about the model over the long course of getting it painted, I’m hopeful that I can now forget about all of that and just let it become more or less the same as many of those D&D models I’ve gotten painted over the years – nothing special as a sculpt or paintjob, but certainly more enjoyable to look at and use on the table than unpainted grey PVC.

One more Monster to come for the month’s challenge – see you in 2 days!

Azazel's Bitz Box.

Painting, Modelling, Miniatures, 1:6, Games… Whatever else I find interesting.

Zombicide 2nd Edition Abominations: Bearmanboar (Manbearpig) & Actual Cannibal (Shia LaBeouf)

Zombicide Black Plague: Abominalpha