What, you might reasonably ask, the actual fuck are you doing painting shitty PVC Mantic Mars Attacks models? A very reasonable question, to be sure. The fact is that these models have been primed and sitting in one of my Zombicide Survivors tubs for a couple of years. Now that in current times I have found the character card generator for Zombicide, and these models all being reasonably simple – easy wins as it were – I decided to get them done back in December. High work stress time, so low-stakes models are the sort of thing I can get onto more easily.

Only two of these models are listed in the KS page as Novus Vira Infantry (whatever that is). The female and the guy rocking back on his toes. In the render, he’s leaning against a short wall but I guess they got rid of that for the production model without adjusting his feet or pose so he would look vaguely natural. I always felt that the inspiration for that model was John Matrix from Commando rather than Dutch Schaefer from Predator, so he got Arnie’s iconic 80’s “camo” paint across his face and arms. The other figure that I had a feel for was the female, so she got painted as inspired by PFC.Vasquez from Aliens, though those tight pants were never going to pass as fatigues, so she got tight jeans instead. The other two? I’m not sure if they’re also supposed to be Novus Vira, but probably. One is clearly the T-800 from T2, but he’s also comparatively very short.

Once again, Marouda and I sat down together for a little while to work out skills that fit the characters thematically without making them into killdozers.

We rewatched Commando to work out the skills for this character. I haven’t seen that film since at least the 90’s, when it was still fucking awesome. Watching it now it felt like almost a comedy it was so full of unrealistic silliness. Wow. Just…. wow.

This next figure is in military garb, but quite different to the US Military figures that came in the set, so I painted him in Desert Storm “choc-chip” 6-colour camo, since it’s something I always enjoy painting. I named him after Spike Jonzes’ character from Three Kings, which also gave us an excuse to rewatch that film. Which still holds up very nicely.

The last of the four got turned into Vasquez from Aliens. It’s the “tough chick” look and the bandanna, so now we’ve also got the well-known kick-ass latina for our games.

Ironically, the fact that these models now have Zombicide Survivor cards for us to use, they’ll probably get more table time than the most heroical heroes from all of the Warhamms!