As the 1st Edition Zombicide game went on with expansions, it slowly got more and more wacky and videogamey – in many ways. One of the ways it increased the wackiness was with the two V.I.P. Zombie packs. V.I.P. of course standing for Very Infected People rather than nay other acronym you might be familiar with. As a break from all of those Berserker Zombies I spent the last couple of months slogging through, I started on a few of these towards the end of October as something to be a bit more fun – with only 2-4 of each sculpt and a lot more detail and (silly) character in each of the sculpts. They also have a gameplay function, as killing five of them can get you a good piece of gear in the mission you’re playing. Given the point of re-playing all of the stuff we’ve done before before cracking open the later boxes and playing them as well is to play through ALL of the 1st Edition content that we’ve accumulated before moving on to 2nd Edition it makes sense to get onto them and give them some paint as “special” walkers so they stand out on the table.

The first two I painted were the ones dressed as Santa Claus, or more properly here, Father Christmas. I used a mix of two contrast-style reds on their clothing to try out, and it worked pretty well. I did add some final highlights using AK’s Dead Red (how appropriate!) Since these later models’ sculpts are much more distinct and detailed than those muddy-faced Berserkers, I also decided to emphasise their eyes. Since the colour code on the VIP Zombies is blue, I gave them glowy blue eyes rather than red, yellow or green as seen on some of the other zombies. I also painted the road marker lines on their bases in blue for this purpose. Blue isn’t especially common on the road itself, but it’s often found marking out car park areas.

After completing the Santas, the next models I concentrated on were the guys in Hot Dog Outfits, which we call “The Hot Dog Man” for what I hope are pretty obvious reasons. These were relatively straightforward, but did take a little bit of “what colour do I paint that bit?” I ended up giving two of them mustard and two without, though they all did get lashings of tomato sauce added at the end! These were fun, if rather silly models to paint.

If you’ve made it this far, I’d ask that you give this little ditty a listen. Make sure you listen closely to the lyrics and listen al the way to the end! It’s worth the six minutes! 😀

Finally, I’ve started on the Zombie Dogz – we’ll be adding them into the ongoing series of games shortly. We did play with them a couple of times in the previous playthrough, and they’re bloody nasty. we’ll drop them in after we have finished Prison Outbreak and then Toxic City Mall, which should give me a chance to get a lot more of them painted. Luckily they don’t take all that long to do, which is good since I have 40 of them to paint! I know that some people really aren’t fond of the little pegs that they’re attached to, but I find that it’s just a matter of learning to ignore them, much like the black-rimmed bases, or transparent flying stands with an air bubble trapped in the middle, etc – more importantly, from the front (check that top pic) or from the typical gaming eye-angle of pretty far above, you really don’t notice them much.

Once again, and for the last time this year, these models also fit into Dave Stone’s Apocalypse Me/Zomb’tober painting challenge(s) for November. Monthly Round-Up will be up in a couple of days!

As a little post-script, I updated a few of the original Zombie Fatties that I painted some time ago. Two of the Tradies and one of the Women were painted with orange overalls and a dress – and also some yellow road lines. SInce I did these first Fatties, I’ve tried to codify the colours a bit more for “special” zombies and the road lines underneath, and while I don’t at all intend to repaint these original fatties, I did want to make it a little more obvious to people that aren’t just me that these ones aren’t Berserkers – so I added yellow flouro stripes to the pant legs of the tradies and a white …sawtooth? pattern to the dress. The Berseker Fatty in the shot is there for reference, with his boiled-lobster chest. These three updates won’t be counted in the monthly tally, since they were already painted this year (I think?) and the amount of work doesn’t justify them being added, though I do like to throw in things I paint here regardless.

There are still a couple of odds and bods left from October, but I’m just going to add them into the monthly Round-Up post in a couple of days. See you then! (or in the comments, or on your own blogs…)