I’ve been waiting ages to use that awful pun. I just had to finish the last of the six Zombicide dogs first.
The American Bulldogs were the first dogs I got finished. I attempted to pretty much match the dogs up to their appropriate artwork, but also did their collars and leads in slightly different colours so that players could have a secondary colour thing to latch into visually. Also, six black collars and leads would have been boring.
After finishing the Bulldogs, the others sat on my desk for literally months until I managed to force myself to paint the German Shepherds. Martens is easily my favourite paintjob of the bunch.
And finally, I finished the last of the Blue Heelers. I didn’t mind doing Cherry, the ginger-brown one, but Lucian was annoying as all hell to do.
Despite the fact that they all came up pretty decently, I really didn’t enjoy painting the dogs. I’m not sure why, but I kinda just lost interest in them after the Bulldogs were done, and at that point they became a chore. It might have been the smaller size, or perhaps trying to match the colours closely to the figures’ cards. I’m really not sure.
I’ve seen people clip the stands off the dog models and glue them directly to their bases, but my group tends to play Zombicide a lot, and as a result, all of the models get a lot of handling. This means they need to be and stay especially robust – no flimsy models wanted here, and if I did the clipping I’d be concerned that their leaping poses with few contact points simply wouldn’t hold up to the amount of play that we do.
They provide a very powerful buff in the game. Our group no longer really bothers to give the Dogs much in the way of commands or orders except for occasionally early on in the game if someone lacks a decent melee weapon. We also use them for the extra search action, but mostly we use them for the bonus dice to melee attacks. We’re about to finish the Season 2 campaign done vanilla-style, excepting the addition of a few extra survivors so the 4 of us can play with 2 characters each, but once that’s done, we’ll be combining everything together and there’ll be some really nasty melee-centric characters. 2x Claw Hammers with 2x American Pitbulls and the Gas Mask? 14 dice melee per action that can take out any number of Vanilla, Toxic or Berserker Walkers, Runners or Zombie Dogs and the Pitbulls’ damage of 2 as backup for Fatty duties? Ouch!
Got to love that German Shepard (or similar), however, the blonde one seems to be as peaceful as they make them!. Good job on the dogs, shall they feed on rotten flesh!
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Thanks! I’m sure she’s just enjoying a bit of respite, and maybe some of the Canned Food that we’re constantly discarding. 😉
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They look great! Shame they were a chore mate 😕
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Not too much of a problem. Lots of models end up a bit of a chore. Just gotta push through and get them done – then they’re all good.
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Cute puppies. 🙂 I was going to ask about the scale compared to 40K, but you already answered that with the picture of one next to a space marine. Thanks!
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No problem, Ann. With a bit of a base-lift they could work well as Imperial Guard Dogs or domestic/civilian animals I think. Not *every* dog needs to be a cyber-mastiff, after all!
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That is very true. Fenrisian wolves don’t seem like much when played in 40K, but if you put them next to a 28mm historical miniature one is reminded that in fact they are about the same size as a polar bear!
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