(A pair of) Mantic Zombies

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Mantic Games Zombies

braaaiiiiins….

A couple of weekends ago, I was doing a little bit of procrastinating at my paint desk, trying to figure out what to work on. I spotted a pair of Mantic’s plastic Zombies, primed and based that have been floating around for bloody ages. I’m not sure when or why I initially assembled them, especially just as a pair. I haven’t been able to find any more of them either, though I have plenty on sprues. So this time, instead of shoving them to the side, I decided to speedpaint them.

Mantic Games Zombies

They wander here, they wander there…

It took just a couple of hours to get these painted. It helped a hell of a lot that they were already fully prepped, but still. Very easy to paint. I used some mixes of the usual wash colours to subtly influence the stain on the flesh tones, and then blended up the highlights post-wash. I kept the palette very simple, because Zombies. I went with dark grey rags to keep them in theme with Marouda’s Undead army scheme (dark grey standing in for black on these filthy creatures). Citadel’s Blood for the Blood God paint over Tamiya Clear Red, since BFTBG is easier to clean up.

Mantic Games Zombies

The only side of the zombies that you want to see…

Due to my (poor) photography skills, you can’t see the individual teeth that are picked out. I need to either get a better cheap camera or learn how to use my good camera properly. It’s taken me ages to actually paint any, but really I have to reiterate how good these HIPS Zombies from Mantic really are. These came up really well for so little time and effort. Now I want to paint up more of them. Gotta finish clearing the desk though, first.

These will obviously get used in Kings of War eventually, when I paint about a million of their mates. Obviously they’re useful for any Fantasy RPG. Age of Sigmar? Why not? (If I ever play it!). They might even provide some Walker action for Zombicide at some stage.

17 thoughts on “(A pair of) Mantic Zombies”

      • That’s a very good question. I bought a whole bunch of Mantic’s Zombie and Ghoul sprues when they had their first KoW KS army deals. I also bought a bunch of their compatible space zombie sprues with the DZ KS, so we’d be looking at at least 50, and maybe 100 or more. It’ll depend on how many I cross-build with the Sci-fi zombies as well. I think we’ll safely see at least 24 of these in the next few months to make a KoW-sized horde unit on 25mm bases (when I have time to build more), with many more to follow.

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  3. The Zombies adn Ghouls are outstanding models. Your paintjob adds the gore and repulsiveness these models deserve and need. I might get some, too, for Dungeon Crawlign activities. I would like to see them with a more rotten skintone. so if you paint up some more, that would be interesting to see them in sahdes of grey, green and brown.

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    • You’re not the only one who’s made such a suggestion. I’m really happy with how this pair came up, so I think I’ll (probably) keep the first decent-sized batch of either 12 or 24 the same pallid white flesh, and then start to vary them after that, as I usually do with my other zombies. There’s no shortage of them, in any case! – Turns out I have a 15 litre tub filled with Mantic’s Zombie and Ghoul sprues..

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  4. By coincidence I’ve got 3 of these Mantic Zombies built and undercoated on the paint shelf for my ongoing Frostgrave project I’m hopefully painting up later tonight. I bought a sprue because I realised they’re very similar to the Mantic Ghouls which are also great. One thing I noticed is they’re bigger than 28mm – something like 32mm from base of foot to eye level which surprised me slightly. Good to see they paint up well, nice work. I hope mine come up half as good as yours!

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    • Aside from the usual “people come in different sizes” thing that I usually say when people point out variations in figure height, you are actually correct here. Those zombies would be huge if they actually stood up straight.
      There’s also the fact that Mantic seem incapable of picking a scale and style for even individual lines of their figures and then sticking with it. They’re a company who really needs a proper art director with some power.
      Like me.
      They should hire me.

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  5. Nice. Incidentally, I’ve painted quite a lot of Mantic zombies and ghouls recently. Mostly for people playing Frostgrave (and one for me, as a proxy for Malifaux). I agree, easy to paint and with some nice detail. Too bad parts combinations is quite limited (but love the crawling one ^^).

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    • I know what you mean in regard to limited posing, especially for HIPS models. I wonder how they’d go with some parts from the old Citadel Zombies for a bit more variation? You should post your Zombies and Ghouls up!

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      • Uhm, I should have a couple of Citadel Zombies sprues somewhere, but I think they’re more bulky.
        On posting my zombies, they were painted to a very basic tabletop standard. Not worthy ^^
        Well, maybe just one, if I’ll ever write a post about a couple of proxies I’m painting for Malifaux’ Neverborn 🙂

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      • Yeah, I think you’re correct there. As they were made to be cross-compatible with the old Skeleton Horde/Skeleton Army boxed sets. I might still have a look through at some stage. Maybe an arm here or a head there might work? In the meantime, I’ve got plenty more to do first! I’m looking forward to seeing your Malifaux-themed zombies, now..

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