It’s been a little while since my last post. As predicted, October has been a pretty brutally busy time at work – as it is every year. As a result, my grand plans to paint Orcs/Orks and Tanks and a few Dreadnoughts for painting challenges have fallen by ther wayside. Not helped of course by hurting my wrist last weekend moving bikes around, so not much painting there either. It also means less time for reading blogs, but c’est la vie.
I have finally managed to complete the last batch of Berserkers from the Zombicide 1st Edition Season 2, Prison Outbreak standalone expansion. These ones being the Prison Warders – or the Prison Guards, or the Screws – so that’s a nice thing. I looked up various Prison Guard uniform types on the Google machine, and found that the various Australian ones look too similar to Police (blue uniforms), the British ones look like nothing in particular (they could be public transport workers!) with dark pants and white shirts and so I went with a made-up grey/green-grey scheme with a yellow pants stripe. It’s a bit “U.S. Sherriff-y”, but it gets the whole Uniform look across without looking too much like Zombie Cops. I also painted in a little shield-shaped patch to their shoulders and caps.
As with all of my other Berserkers, I’ve painted the carapace growths with a spotted “lobster red” look rather than the pale, off-white from the artwork. This, along with the yellow line marking stripes on the ground are to help them stand out as Berserkers in-game, and to unify these Warders with the Prisoners in their bright orange jumpsuits. We’re currently replaying our way through the campaign and still have about 4 scenarios left to play, so we’ll actually be completing the run with all of the berserkers painted. I should do a photoshoot with all of the painted Berserkers, probably. Unfortunately, there’s still a million regular walkers (somewhere around 60) to paint, and so a fully-painted table is still something that will elude us for some time.
As always, I leant hard into using multiple skin tones for these models to give variation. It’s especially important if you want them to look slightly less like clones when you have 14 models with only two sculpts. I mean, they atill all basically look the same on the table, but that little bit of variety makes them look a little more varied, even unconsciously. The next models I’m trying to get through are… yes! – More zombies. I know they’re not everyone’s cup of tea, but we’re actually actively playing Zombicide right now, so they’re going to see use on the table much more quickly (and often) than Space Marines or Orks or Sigmarites or whatever.
They do still make another entry for Dave Stone’s Apocalypse Me painting challenge running in October!
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Wonderful work on the zombies, I can appreciate all the extra work you’ve put in to give variation to the groups, and I think it’s paid off. Can understand the trouble finding a good prison uniform, as they vary so much, and can be uninspiring.
Sorry to hear about the injury and work overload, but you’ve still managed a very impressive amount this month mate
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Thanks Dave! The wrist is getting better a week on. I slept without the brace last night for the first time since last Sunday so that’s certainly a positive! 🙂
5 more weeks of work being insane and it should slow down a bit, though it’ll still be more intense than “normal” as we go into the final run before Christmas and a well deserved break. October and November are always the worst, though!
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These came out really well and I wouldn’t know you were dealing with an injury if you hadn’t mentioned it, mate. You will get these Zombicide minis done one day if you keep at it as well. Well, maybe as long as you don’t jump on every Kickstarter because that would have to be 1,000 plus minis at this point. I hope work settles down for you soon. My Oct. and Nov. are really busy too so I can relate!
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Thanks Kuribo! It’s really rewarding to see our games slowly transforming with more and more painted models on the table. I’m going to have to sneak a few regular walkers into the priority queue since they’re very much the bread and butter of the game. 🙂
And… well, I do have almost all of the Zombicde stuff, except for the direct-only Ninja Turtles that came out at one stage, and I declined to buy the gigantic Galactus model from the Marvel KS…
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That’s an impressive collection, mate! I don’t envy you painting them up but I bet you’ll have hours of gaming fun with all of it at the same time 🙂
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I’m just making the most out of the playing-painting enthusiasm while it’s here. I won’t lie and say that a lot of these zombie sculpts don’t get pretty fucking tedious to paint, especially in large numbers so I’m trying different ways to keep it less uninteresting as I go… with varying degrees of success..
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Great work on these Az. I like the uniform. Hope the wrist is on the mend.
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Thanks mate! It’s really starting to get better now after a pretty average week, so that’s good news.
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Good news.
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Looking good mate – that yellow stripe on the trousers works really well 👍
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Thanks Alex – a little detail to sell the “uniform” look. 🙂
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Gruesome, but in a nice way! 🙂 They have come out really well, uniforms, shattered bodies, the lot! Hope your wrist injury continues to improve!
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Thanks John. 🙂 Wrist is getting noticably better now. I’m still not going to lift weights with it for a bit because reinjuring myself now would be dumb, but hopefully another week (or less?) and I’ll be good again..
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Very nice. They’ll look great in the game.
Cheers,
Pete.
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Thanks Pete! Hoping to have them on the table sometime in the next week or so! 🙂
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Lovely work as always (even with the dodgy wrist). I can be a pain when you have multiples of the same sculpt to try and add a little variation to, but not too much as they need to be easily identifiable on the table, I’d say you’ve got it about perfect mate!.
Cheers Roger.
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Thanks Roger! yeah, a little variation just to keep them from being more repetitive than they could be – though still repetitive, they’re essentially tokens in the game with the purpose of being slaughtered by the players! 😉
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