Zombicide 1st Edition: Zombie Runners, Part 2 – Complete!

Zombicide 1st Edition: Zombie Runners

Hello again. Long time no post, I know. It’s because while you Northern Hemisphere people are enjoying what we’d call a warm summer afternoon, we’ve been in the depths of a hellish and freezing winter – which you’d call “it’s a bit chilly, maybe don’t just wear a t-shirt out”. Anyway, as a result of this I’ve been in the way of Sneezy, Drippy and Coughy. While the RATs have been negative, I’ve still had to stay home from work so as to not share the misery and because negative RAT or not, nobody wants a coughing, sneezing, snotty nose-blowing bastard working next to them – especially in 2022. So yeah, time off work, but not exactly being in the most productive state.

Zombicide 1st Edition: Zombie Runners

Zombicide 1st Edition: Zombie Runners

So in the time so far this month I started on the other half of my Zombicide 1st Edition Runners. The other 12 of them. Twelve. The second dozen. We have a guy who likes all-Adidas everything, and another who enjoys Jello.

Zombicide 1st Edition: Zombie Runners

Zombicide 1st Edition: Zombie Runners

The red on one of the ladies turned out a bit (a lot) more Magenta-ish than I’d planned. I wonder if Kuribo will pick up on the reference in this row of Zombies?

Zombicide 1st Edition: Zombie Runners

Zombicide 1st Edition: Zombie Runners

Oh, after I finished the dozen models that were the last of my Runner, I found another pair of them – so I had to prep and paint those two before blooding and photographing the ones I’d just completed. So we have 14 here. I find t-shirts tend to be the best surfaces to add modern pop culture references to. Shouldn’t go too far overkill, though – not everyonme wearing a t-shirt has a print, especially a back print – not that these zombies offer anything else. The one in the yellow and red outfit is either a superfan or Tomoaki Honma, but let’s pick those references!

Fantasy Flight – Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth Spreading War – War Oliphaunt

Fantasy Flight - Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth Spreading War - War Oliphaunt

It’s been a good couple of months now since I’ve gotten a Journeys in ME model painted, so in July I did that thing where you make yourself finish this model or that – I did it a few times actually, and the most recent one of those was this War Oliphaunt.

Fantasy Flight - Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth Spreading War - War Oliphaunt

I originally started painting it for one of the Monster Month challenges, but as with most painting month challenges, I bit off a bit more than I could finish. This model had a bit of an issue in terms of “what the hell is *that*? for some of the details, and so it took just knuckling down and slapping paint on the thing to get it done. There’s a fair bit of drybrushing on the Oliphant skin, since I didn’t have any interest in trying to neatly blend something this size – and besides, Elephant (and presumably, Oliphant) skin is dry and rough looking, anyway!

Fantasy Flight - Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth Spreading War - War Oliphaunt

I was at one point planning to paint an Eye of Sauron on the blanket underneath the Howdah, but as one side of the beast features that whole area compressed between the straps, I decided to leave it be. Similarly, I considered adding Peter Jackson-esque war paint on the skin, but left it off when I realised I could keep this piece pretty generic despite the fact that it’s supposed to be immense in scale – look at the logs supporting the howdah, and the size of the howdah – it’s almost like a person would be smaller than one of those tassels!

Fantasy Flight - Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth Spreading War - War Oliphaunt

It’s not an amazing model, but it’s a very decent model for a boardgame, and given that context I’m happy with the paint job I gave it in the end. Very much a case of “good enough” and one I was satisfied to round out my July models with!

Fantasy Flight - Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth Spreading War - War Oliphaunt, Reaper Miniatures 50153 Berkeley Zombie Survivor

Here you can see the size of the thing when alongside our friend Berkeley. It’s actually a size that could pass for a regular Elephant with something weird happening to it’s ears – so while it’s not exactly War Mammoh sized for games like the Warhams of Kings of War, I could potentially use it for similar in Dragon Rampant or the like. And now that this model is finally painted, I can start on something else for Journeys. Hm… should I start on a rabble of Orcs or another pair of heroic Adventurers?

Next post – July’s Round-Up!